For those with rMBP lets talk Ram

[bioyuki]

I recommend getting the 16GB of RAM. OS X and browsers are RAM hungry beasts. With 16GB on my RMBP, I usually have less then 8GB free and all I'm running is Chrome with a bunch of tabs, Spotify and Lightroom.

 

[randomnut]

I picked up the 512/8GB rMBP last night and was surprised that straight after booting, with no apps installed etc, it is using 4GB ram just idle. 4GB!! Surely OS X can't require 4GB of RAM.

Is OS X doing any Pre loading of apps it thinks I will use (mail, itunes etc) which means there is some extra buffer where it will flush those out of memory if I am running memory-demanding applications? Or is OS X by default really requiring 4GB of memory?

If so I am very disappointed and this MBP will be going back to the store (If I can even return it??) until I can get hold of a 16GB model.

 

[daleski75]

If you can afford to max it out as you never know you might actually end up needing 16gb. I run a couple of VM's on my current MBA and I can pretty much get down to 300mb and that's without running too much and it's the biggest limiting factor for me but the portability makes up for it.

 

[JohnDoe98]

I picked up the 512/8GB rMBP last night and was surprised that straight after booting, with no apps installed etc, it is using 4GB ram just idle. 4GB!! Surely OS X can't require 4GB of RAM.

Is OS X doing any Pre loading of apps it thinks I will use (mail, itunes etc) which means there is some extra buffer where it will flush those out of memory if I am running memory-demanding applications? Or is OS X by default really requiring 4GB of memory?

If so I am very disappointed and this MBP will be going back to the store (If I can even return it??) until I can get hold of a 16GB model.

I don't buy this for a second. Right now mine says 6gb free and I have safari open and the base model. Maybe you have indexing running or something, in which case the system is far from idle.

 

[WarrenFields]

I recommend getting the 16GB of RAM. OS X and browsers are RAM hungry beasts. With 16GB on my RMBP, I usually have less then 8GB free and all I'm running is Chrome with a bunch of tabs, Spotify and Lightroom.

Yes! I've found the same thing, but I need to go back and check and see what is actually running so I can see why so much memory is being eaten up.

 

[gabicava83]

I'm a heavy VMware user. I have 16GB on my MacPro and utilize it often. Having exactly the same in my rMBP mixed with 3 external screens makes this a real desktop replacement machine. The text is amazing and the speaker's spacial wideness is awesome.

I'd like three none apple external monitors and ethernet.....

16GB is great, I use VM's too.

The SSD makes the biggest difference though.

 

[randomnut]

I don't buy this for a second. Right now mine says 6gb free and I have safari open and the base model. Maybe you have indexing running or something, in which case the system is far from idle.

I do hope this is true - I monitored it for about 4 hours after I first turned it on and it constantly hovered around the 4GB mark - I did not check if indexing was running though. I would have imagined with an SSD indexing a vanilla system would have completed in minutes though.

 

[Mac-Tech]

This is a different take on the 8 Vs 16Gb question. When the iPad 3 came out we all had to re-adjust what was acceptable for a base iPad when everybody bumped up their apps to retina. Which leaves all the current metrics like page out useless.

Can we do the same, but for ram. For all those moving from a cMBP tell us how much ram you used to use and what you now use, and what programs you have open to make the change.

I'm a 8gb because I don't really want to spend the money on what will be a second machine for internet, photos and work (excel and word not photoshop). (I have a 3.4 iMac with 12GB as a primary) Or wait the reset time. I occasionally play games but as a soon to be new dad I think that will be going out the window.

I also want the machine to arrive soon and don't want to go to the back of a 3-4 week queue as I'm currently due for delivery 12-18 Jul.

Just remember 16GB of memory will be good for 5-6years. So basically it pays for itself. Believe it or not there are people out there still using 4GB of ram and its 2012!!!

 

[Centsy]

Yea mine is also only using 2GB with Safari, Mail, Reeder, and Steam open. I don't know what's up with yours.

 

[Jaimer26]

Yea mine is also only using 2GB with Safari, Mail, Reeder, and Steam open. I don't know what's up with yours.

My rMBP, base model 8GB/256SSD, has safari and iTunes open and I have only 1.44GB used with 6.55GB available.

Must be your machine or something running in the background? Check your processes for what is hogging it up.

 

[VacantPsalm]

I currently have 4gigs of RAM in my 09 17" MBP. Yesterday I decided to check my page ins/outs. Despite the fact that I hadn't even touched any dev apps or VMs, that day I had 6+ gigs of page outs, 10+ gigs of page ins, and 6+ swap used. (I forget what the rule of thumb was for determining when it was too much, but I'm pretty sure that passed it.)

I have a SSD, so I actually had no idea this was going down. I would of bet it never happened, never the less been able to guess when it happened based on lag or something. Running out of RAM isn't nearly as dire these days as it once was.

Given that, I'm sticking with my 16gig order. I like the idea of just not caring at all, even when I give a Windows VM 8 gigs so I can not care about that too.

 

[samediff]

I picked up the 512/8GB rMBP last night and was surprised that straight after booting, with no apps installed etc, it is using 4GB ram just idle. 4GB!! Surely OS X can't require 4GB of RAM.

Is OS X doing any Pre loading of apps it thinks I will use (mail, itunes etc) which means there is some extra buffer where it will flush those out of memory if I am running memory-demanding applications? Or is OS X by default really requiring 4GB of memory?

If so I am very disappointed and this MBP will be going back to the store (If I can even return it??) until I can get hold of a 16GB model.

It will be buffered data (applications, filesystem), so not really 4GB used. Your true "unused" memory is "free + inactive". Inactive memory is automatically discarded by OS X if a program needs it. If you want, you can open up a Terminal window and type 'purge' which will flush the inactive memory. It doesn't make a difference performance wise, but makes it easier to see how much RAM is being used as a cache vs how much RAM is being used by programs.

 

[randomnut]

It will be buffered data (applications, filesystem), so not really 4GB used. Your true "unused" memory is "free + inactive". Inactive memory is automatically discarded by OS X if a program needs it. If you want, you can open up a Terminal window and type 'purge' which will flush the inactive memory. It doesn't make a difference performance wise, but makes it easier to see how much RAM is being used as a cache vs how much RAM is being used by programs.

Thankyou so much. I figured it must be cached data/applications etc but coming from a windows background I do not know a great deal about how OS X manages resources.

Thanks for the explanation, clears absolutely everything up. Free ram looks like around 5gb which should be enough for me.