13" Retina MB Ram vs Macbook Air

[jbseventy]

Hello everyone!

I have a 2012 13" 1.8ghz i5 Macbook Air and a 2013 13" 2.6ghz i5 Macbook Pro Retina. Both have 8gb ram. My normal usage is having Safari open (one tab, maybe two), Airmail, and Microsoft Word. I've noticed that while the Air has approximately 3-4gb of ram free during this usage, the Retina Pro only has 1.5-2.5gb free. I have tried the pro at different screen resolutions and the amount of free ram stays about the same.

I am just curious if anyone else has similar results, and why the drop in available ram for the same tasks over the two different machines.

Thanks!

 

[simon48]

Unless you are out of free RAM and swapping a lot it's no problem. The OS (and Mavericks is really good at this) manages the RAM and if it's running out it'll free up more. It sounds like you're doing just fine.

Are you running Mavericks? If so you can see if the memory pressure is in the green in Activity Monitor.

 

[jbseventy]

Thanks for the response! I think I've figured out what the culprit was (and I'm running the Mavericks with the latest updates). I tried disabling dictation and then restarting.

Between the disabling dictation and (I'm thinking) some rogue apps running in the background (I downloaded quite a bit of apps from the app store that didn't get backed up when I used time machine to set up my new retina pro plus some from the mac game store), I am happy to see my free ram is the same as it was before on the Air.

Thankfully, a simple solution for a relatively simple problem.

 

[simon48]

Thanks for the response! I think I've figured out what the culprit was (and I'm running the Mavericks with the latest updates). I tried disabling dictation and then restarting.

Between the disabling dictation and (I'm thinking) some rogue apps running in the background (I downloaded quite a bit of apps from the app store that didn't get backed up when I used time machine to set up my new retina pro plus some from the mac game store), I am happy to see my free ram is the same as it was before on the Air.

Thankfully, a simple solution for a relatively simple problem.

Glad you're happy, but just to reiterate, 1.5-2.5GB free RAM is totally fine, if the OS needs more it will make room.