2011 i5 13" uses more ram???

[jetblk328i]

Hey everybody, I recently sold my 2010 2.4 C2D MBP in favor of a 2011 i5.

I have been noticing that with the same apps running, the 2011 uses a CONSIDERABLE amount of ram...much more than my old c2d. I currently have

safari-3 tabs-facebook, newegg, and MR
itunes
mail
and word

activity monitor says...page outs are 3.1MB and i have 645 MB free and 683 inactive.

Why is there so much inactive ram?
Anybody notice the same thing?
Anyway to fix this?

Thanks!

 

[brentsg]

What is the problem that you want to fix? Is it running poorly?

Inactive RAM contains some data that the system thinks you might use later. There's no need to free up this inactive RAM because you have plenty of free RAM.

Would you prefer the inactive get flushed, increasing free? That's just going to cause the system to read from disk if and when it needs that data in a bit.

 

[jetblk328i]

I see. I guess I am just confused why I have half the free ram and a lot more page outs doing the same things on this 2011 compared to my 2010.

 

[brentsg]

Well 3.1MB of page-out isn't much. I've got 16GB in my MP and though I wasn't doing too much, I had 1.5MB of page-out when I looked, after reading your post.

Dunno why, but it's nothing that would ever get noticed.

OSX is good at managing memory, but if you're concerned just grab an 8GB kit. Should be only $80 or so.