iMac RAM Assistance Needed, Possible Leak

[schaffinosx]

I know I made another thread in this section recently concerning RAM, but the matter of discussion has slightly changed, and I didn't want to double post in my own thread.

The issue I'm encountering is a lot of RAM being used with very little being done on my computer. Right now I have Safari, iChat, Microsoft Messenger, and Activity Monitor running, and 3.34 GB of my 4 GB of RAM is currently in the "Used" category.

That much RAM having been used makes just about every process of my computer a bit slow, but the main issue is coming in when I attempt to play a RAM eater; World of Warcraft. Having that little RAM available for a game that needs about 2 GB to run normally, well, doesn't work out too well.

Now you're probably thinking that this is simply another case of a guy who needs more memory. And I'd be inclined to agree with you if this hadn't been a problem in the past. My computer used to run just fine (and for the most part still does with some hiccups) and I was able to play WoW with little to no lag.

What I'm trying to figure out is what changed. Clearly something regarding RAM consumption has changed considerably, granted I must have had about 2 GB available at all times for WoW in the past. Why is there an extra 1.5 or so GB in use than there was before?

Someone on another forum suggested that I might have a memory leak. If that's the case, I'd need some help concerning how to fix such an issue, and how to identify it.

There has also been the assumption that Lion simply uses more RAM... but over 1 gigabyte more? I can't believe that.

So I've come to you guys again to help me make sense of this issue, and hopefully help me come to some sort of solution.

 

[DJJAZZYJET]

Run a hardware test

Restart your mac and hold the d key and run the apple hardware tests to see if there is anything wrong with your components. I think that you hold d im not 100% sure, if its not working look up Apple hard ware test on the internetz. If you have faulty ram, you'll know.

 

[schaffinosx]

Restart your mac and hold the d key and run the apple hardware tests to see if there is anything wrong with your components. I think that you hold d im not 100% sure, if its not working look up Apple hard ware test on the internetz. If you have faulty ram, you'll know.

The hardware test apparently found something wrong with my HDD fan. It's probably moving too quickly or too slowly; not sure. Likely unrelated to my issue, though.

Oddly enough, my RAM usage seems to be normal right now. Last night it was at about 1.3 GB used, and after having had some applications running through the night while I was asleep, I'm only at 2.06 GB or so used.

The most frustrating part of this for me is that the "issue" just isn't consistent enough. It's there, it's gone, it's there, it's gone. Seemingly at random every time.

 

[alust2013]

I think it's probably just inefficient RAM management in Lion. It's still reasonably buggy, so I'm betting that issue will be fixed or reduced in the next release.