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Another reason to max out RAM on the rMBP?

L

ldburroughs

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 25, 2005
258
0
Virginia Beach, VA
For no important reason really, I took a look at my Activity Monitor and noticed I am using 10.42 GB of memory. Among my open applications are Safari, Mail, Calendar, and Preview. There are a few others that run in the background; however, nothing too intensive as far as I can tell.

I certainly do not experience any slow down or stutters. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw a beach ball. I just thought it was interesting that my system uses more than 8 GB of memory on a relatively light load. I also find it interesting that the Activity Monitor is not optimized for the Retina display. The text and icons within the window are pixilated.

So, for those wondering whether you will ever use more than 8 GB of memory, I'd say it's very likely. Do you need it? Probably not; however, it can find a way to put it to good use.
 

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ldburroughs said:
For no important reason really, I took a look at my Activity Monitor and noticed I am using 10.42 GB of memory. Among my open applications are Safari, Mail, Calendar, and Preview. There are a few others that run in the background; however, nothing too intensive as far as I can tell.

I certainly do not experience any slow down or stutters. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw a beach ball. I just thought it was interesting that my system uses more than 8 GB of memory on a relatively light load. I also find it interesting that the Activity Monitor is not optimized for the Retina display. The text and icons within the window are pixilated.

So, for those wondering whether you will ever use more than 8 GB of memory, I'd say it's very likely. Do you need it? Probably not; however, it can find a way to put it to good use.
Click to expand...



OSX will use more RAM than needed if RAM is there, once you run something else it will re-adjust
 
With Mavericks, your best bet is to keep an eye on Memory Pressure in Activity Monitor. If is is mostly green, your RAM usage is fine.
 
ldburroughs said:
For no important reason really, I took a look at my Activity Monitor and noticed I am using 10.42 GB of memory.
Click to expand...
You are using 5.35GB (apps). Most of the rest is disk cache. While cache is beneficial, it's not necessary in large amounts. If your system had 8GB, for example, you still wouldn't be swapping - you would just have a smaller cache size.
 
The question should never be will I really use 16GB today. The question is will I need 16GB by the time I replace my Mac. I am guessing most folks will keep a Mac around 3 years. No can accurate predict what they will need in 3 years from the OS, apps that come with the OS, and all manner of apps they will get that do not even exist today.

Ego....buy the most machine (CPU, memory, storage) you can afford. If you can afford maxing out....end of discussion. If you can't afford it, likewise no need to discuss it.

Here endth the rant.
 
I've seen beach balls numerous times this morning. I just received by rMBP about two days ago and today is the first day I have actually used it normally. I run an ebay business on the side and was scrolling through ebay pages and had 10 tabs open off and on. Meaning, I would have a lot of tabs open, close 4-5, and then open more, over and over again. This is a normal search routine. This was all done in Safari with only the mail app open.

I don't see any page outs yet today, but the beach ball did pop up a few times for a split second.

I have 8gb.
 
accountforit said:
I've seen beach balls numerous times this morning. I just received by rMBP about two days ago and today is the first day I have actually used it normally. I run an ebay business on the side and was scrolling through ebay pages and had 10 tabs open off and on. Meaning, I would have a lot of tabs open, close 4-5, and then open more, over and over again. This is a normal search routine. This was all done in Safari with only the mail app open.

I don't see any page outs yet today, but the beach ball did pop up a few times for a split second.

I have 8gb.
Click to expand...

I see beach balls in the same way described, too.
This also happens on 16gb, 32gb and 64gb machines. It has nothing to do with ram.

I can not fathom that this is another ram thread again...
I know they are fun but now they pop up about every 48hours.

And this time the OP doesn't understand the activity monitor again. :rolleyes:
 
disasterdrone said:
You don't think there's any benefit to cacheing?
Click to expand...

Caching is indeed beneficial since free RAM is essentially wasted RAM. However, this is just another case in which an OP knows very little about how Mavericks handles RAM, sees 10GB of RAM in use in Activity Monitor, and then jumps to the conclusion that a user needs at least 16GB of RAM to have enough headroom to use programs like Safari and Mail simultaneously. The result of that thought process is a thread like this. That, or OP loves a good RAM thread, like most people here seem to do.
 
heisenberg123 said:
the OP does not understand how RAM works, this is just another one of those "urvrey body neeeds 16GB of RAM" threads
Click to expand...

Thanks RAM master. I understand how ram works. I am not, however, well versed on how OS X utilizes additional ram when it's available. If it's using it for any other purpose, there's clearly a benefit. Sure, it would work fine without more, but it surely isn't wasted. My point is, if you have a fixed memory system, here's another benefit. That's all. Relax.
 
ldburroughs said:
Thanks RAM master. I understand how ram works. I am not, however, well versed on how OS X utilizes additional ram when it's available. If it's using it for any other purpose, there's clearly a benefit. Sure, it would work fine without more, but it surely isn't wasted. My point is, if you have a fixed memory system, here's another benefit. That's all. Relax.
Click to expand...

im no master but if you start telling people, you need 16GB for Mail, Calendar, Safari and Preview your misleading people to waste money

do you sell used cars by any chance?
 
TheEnthusiast said:
Caching is indeed beneficial since free RAM is essentially wasted RAM. However, this is just another case in which an OP knows very little about how Mavericks handles RAM, sees 10GB of RAM in use in Activity Monitor, and then jumps to the conclusion that a user needs at least 16GB of RAM to have enough headroom to use programs like Safari and Mail simultaneously. The result of that thought process is a thread like this. That, or OP loves a good RAM thread, like most people here seem to do.
Click to expand...

I honestly don't read "ram" threads. It was just an observation. Besides, why feed into a thread if you don't like the subject matter? Simply don't reply and it will die out more quickly. This is silly really.
 
ldburroughs said:
Thanks RAM master. I understand how ram works. I am not, however, well versed on how OS X utilizes additional ram when it's available. If it's using it for any other purpose, there's clearly a benefit. Sure, it would work fine without more, but it surely isn't wasted. My point is, if you have a fixed memory system, here's another benefit. That's all. Relax.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm not going to argue about whether or not you understand how RAM works. The fact remains, however, that you made more than one loaded claims: no slowdowns or stutters [because I have 16GB of RAM], no beach balls in sight [because I have 16GB of RAM], among others. I'll just give you the benefit of the doubt since you said you don't understand how OS X utilizes RAM. Though, that could be interpreted as one way in which you really don't understand how RAM works, for a specific OS, but I'm not getting technical. :D. By the way, beach balls aren't related to RAM in every case, especially with OS X 10.8.5 and OS X 10.9.x.

Also, as it turns out, Activity Monitor is optimized for the retina display on my end. Not sure what's wrong with yours? Could it be all that RAM?
 
TheEnthusiast said:
Also, as it turns out, Activity Monitor is optimized for the retina display on my end. Not sure what's wrong with yours? Could it be all that RAM?
Click to expand...

How would RAM affect HiDPI support in one app!? No way that's happening.
 
disasterdrone said:
You don't think there's any benefit to cacheing?
Click to expand...
There is a benefit when you have an HDD in the system but if you run on a PCIe SSD it is really rather useless.
There are instances where disabling the cache actually helps because maintenance just takes up more resources than it is worth.

On a system like the rMBP disk caching really might as well be disabled and you would not notice any difference in almost any workload.

Just because RAM is free and used for something does not mean that something offers any appreciable benefit. Unless that RAM pressure line goes well past the half way mark and turns yellow, you have way more RAM than you need.
The RAM pressure level of the OP is really low. He would be fine with 8GB and would still have plenty of spare.
 
dusk007 said:
Just because RAM is free and used for something does not mean that something offers any appreciable benefit. Unless that RAM pressure line goes well past the half way mark and turns yellow, you have way more RAM than you need.
The RAM pressure level of the OP is really low. He would be fine with 8GB and would still have plenty of spare.
Click to expand...

Bingo. Folks should stay out of these tools if they can't take a few minutes to understand what the data means. They especially shouldn't post about it declaring people need unnecessary upgrades.
 
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