Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

8GB of ram not enough?

O

outsidethebox

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 10, 2008
90
27
I'm finding the 8GB of ram in my rMBP is getting used ridiculously fast whenever I start doing anything.

Here are two screenshots, the first is using Safari with only 3 windows open and just a minor flash ad (so clicktoflash would hardly help), and almost HALF my 8GB memory is already gone.

screenshot20120721at935.png


I tried using Chrome to compare, and I've got ONE window open with some minor flash, and I've only got 5.3GB left?

screenshot20120720at112.png


How are people using 8GB to do any productive work whatsoever when having a 1-4 tabs open on a browser is taking up 30-50% of my memory? This is happening to me w/o iTunes, photoshop, Skype, or anything else whatsoever on at the same time, I don't know what's going on.
 
yes, it does sound like you don't know whats going on. ever heard of memory management?

i've been using a 2008 macbook non-pro (upgraded to 8gb of ram) for full-time design/development work. this means photoshop/illustrator/coda/multiple browsers/vm's for testing. for my usage, more ram would be nice but it certainly is usable at 8gb.
 
oxfordguy said:
You've still got more than half your memory left unused, what's the problem?
Click to expand...

My issue is that on my 5-year old MBP with only 2 GB of ram, I could run multiple-tab Chrome with iTunes, Photoshop and Bridge on and only then max out the 2GB usage.

Now I have 8GB, and almost 4 of it is being used by just the browser?
 
They seem to hog more RAM, I think it's common with Lion, but I still have SL on my MacBook. This is why I went with the 16 GB BTO.
 
outsidethebox said:
My issue is that on my 5-year old MBP with only 2 GB of ram, I could run multiple-tab Chrome with iTunes, Photoshop and Bridge on and only then max out the 2GB usage.

Now I have 8GB, and almost 4 of it is being used by just the browser?
Click to expand...
Mac OS X will use whatever RAM you have available. Free RAM is wasted RAM. The only thing you need to watch for is page outs. As long as you're not paging out, you don't need to think about memory management in Mac OS X.

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
 
outsidethebox said:
My issue is that on my 5-year old MBP with only 2 GB of ram, I could run multiple-tab Chrome with iTunes, Photoshop and Bridge on and only then max out the 2GB usage.

Now I have 8GB, and almost 4 of it is being used by just the browser?
Click to expand...

Well, run all the things you want to run and let us know if it slows down. In other words: Use your computer instead of staring at activity monitor all day.
 
StuLax18 said:
They seem to hog more RAM, I think it's common with Lion, but I still have SL on my MacBook. This is why I went with the 16 GB BTO.
Click to expand...

its not 'common' with lion. your computer just knows you have more ram to use so obviously its going to use it. if it didn't, that would be extremely inefficient.

and yes, OP, obviously with 2gb of ram your computer will try to memory manage with what it has. or would you prefer your computer to not take advantage of more ram?
 
stevelam said:
its not 'common' with lion. your computer just knows you have more ram to use so obviously its going to use it. if it didn't, that would be extremely inefficient.

and yes, OP, obviously with 2gb of ram your computer will try to memory manage with what it has. or would you prefer your computer to not take advantage of more ram?
Click to expand...

I've heard people say that Lion is more of a RAM hog than SL, which is why I never updated. Sounds "common" to me. :confused:
 
calderone said:
Well, run all the things you want to run and let us know if it slows down. In other words: Use your computer instead of staring at activity monitor all day.
Click to expand...

FYI, the computer just froze under even minor stress. I had safari, word, and iTunes open, and I began transferring some doc's via USB when everything completely froze. This is the third time this week, all under different, but "light-stress" situations.
 
outsidethebox said:
FYI, the computer just froze under even minor stress. I had safari, word, and iTunes open, and I began transferring some doc's via USB when everything completely froze. This is the third time this week, all under different, but "light-stress" situations.
Click to expand...

this has absolutely nothing to do with ram usage. why the hell would that crash your computer? if anything it would just cause more page outs.
 
outsidethebox said:
FYI, the computer just froze under even minor stress. I had safari, word, and iTunes open, and I began transferring some doc's via USB when everything completely froze. This is the third time this week, all under different, but "light-stress" situations.
Click to expand...

Your machine has issues irrespective of RAM usage.
 
outsidethebox said:
FYI, the computer just froze under even minor stress. I had safari, word, and iTunes open, and I began transferring some doc's via USB when everything completely froze. This is the third time this week, all under different, but "light-stress" situations.
Click to expand...

Same as above this is not RAM related, you need to start looking at installed app`s and their behaviour....
 
I found the same apps just used more memory when I upgraded and I put it down to the system making use of whats available so when more was available then more would be used.

Is this the case, the computer deciding how much is used for certain apps based on how much the system has?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back