Activity Monitor interpretation question

[theprizerevealed]

When you view the memory section in the activity monitor there is a section that shows physical memory, memory used, and cached files. I have 8 GB of physical memory but as an example my activity monitor says that 3 GB of memory used and 3 GB of cached files. Does that mean that actually 6 GB of the physical RAM memory is being used? thanks for your help

 

[keysofanxiety]

When you view the memory section in the activity monitor there is a section that shows physical memory, memory used, and cached files. I have 8 GB of physical memory but as an example my activity monitor says that 3 GB of memory used and 3 GB of cached files. Does that mean that actually 6 GB of the physical RAM memory is being used? thanks for your help

Cached files would normally be recently opened applications still in memory. If you open a new application that needs to use that RAM, those inactive applications will be purged.

So only 3GB of your RAM is being used.