Ok, so I just got my 17" MacBook Pro about 2 weeks ago. I run an app (bought from the Mac Store) called "Free Memory" and it's always running in the menu bar at the top. When I first start up my MacBook Pro, there's no problem and it usually registers that I have about 2.5GB of Ram available to me. No Problem. However, if I start using iTunes and Chrome at the same time it drops to about 1.5 GB Ram that's still free...ok fine. I usually have about 6 or 7 tabs open and itunes running and after leaving it like that for awhile, eventually my available Ram just seems to drop like a rock. It goes all the down to somewhere between 345MB and 745MB of Ram available. (As I type this I have 4 tabs in Chrome open and Itunes as well and I'm sitting at 678MB of Ram available). Why is this happening? I owned a late 2010 Macbook pro and had the same App running and it registered that I could have the same tasks going and yet it would never dip below 1.5GB of available Ram...could I possibly have some sort of Ram defect? I just ordered 16GB of Corsair Ram that I was planning to upgrade anyways, but I just want to make sure this problem doesn't continue...any ideas whats eating up all the ram or causing it to drop so dramatically over time?
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Brand New 17" MacBook Pro eating up tons of Ram?
- Thread starter Smiller4128
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You don't need such apps, because there's more to the story than just free memory. Free memory is wasted memory. The whole idea of having RAM is for your Mac to use it. If it remains free all the time, it means you have more RAM than you need. Inactive memory is also available for any app that needs it, but has an added performance benefit when relaunching a previously closed app that used that memory. You don't need to manage your Mac's memory. Mac OS X does that automatically, without any interference from the user or 3rd party apps.
The only thing you need to keep an eye on is page outs. To determine if you can benefit from more RAM, launch Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab at the bottom to check your page outs. Page outs are cumulative since your last restart, so the best way to check is to restart your computer and track page outs under your normal workload (the apps, browser pages and documents you normally would have open). If your page outs are significant (say 1GB or more) under normal use, you may benefit from more RAM. If your page outs are zero or very low during normal use, you probably won't see any performance improvement from adding RAM.
Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor