I just bought my first mac (2010 13 inch base model) and i was looking in Activity Monitor when i noticed that my free system memory is around 15-20mb. Is this normal? The only things i have running is chrome, itunes, and steam. Would these programs eat up memory? if this is a stupid question please forgive me!!!!
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Is this normal? High System Memory Usage!
- Thread starter r3dhawk
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Is that a screenshot soon after all your apps were open? If so, that does appear to be abnormally high memory usage. However, if you've used the apps for several hours putting them through some good use, and opened and closed other apps, it may be fine.
when your mac has been running for a while the ram does get full.
restart your computer then open the same apps you have running now and the usage should drop down quite a bit.
nothing works quite as well as restarting your ram
restart your computer then open the same apps you have running now and the usage should drop down quite a bit.
nothing works quite as well as restarting your ram
Yep. Or just restart the app. Some apps like Firefox eat up memory like mad over the course of the day. I've seen it Firefox almost reach 1GB.
I'm not completely certain of this, so hopefully someone can address this, but I think that 2.25GB of "Inactive" memory in your screenshot, can also be considered Free memory.
evil_santa
macrumors 6502a
the number under the pie chart i assume is the amount of memory installed in the mac, so 3.75 is not right for a 13" mb , it should be either 2gb or 4gb
richard.mac
macrumors 603
looks fine to me.
all the memory is used because there is memory being held in inactive memory from recent processes for later use. this makes recently used apps launch quicker. free memory is unused RAM and so you are using your memory to full potential.
active memory will become quite big over time, especially with browsers, so if youre looking for more memory relaunch them.
what you need to look out for is when active memory becomes full and yoru page outs are similar in size to page ins.
more info: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342
the integrated graphics is using 256 MB.
all the memory is used because there is memory being held in inactive memory from recent processes for later use. this makes recently used apps launch quicker. free memory is unused RAM and so you are using your memory to full potential.
active memory will become quite big over time, especially with browsers, so if youre looking for more memory relaunch them.
what you need to look out for is when active memory becomes full and yoru page outs are similar in size to page ins.
more info: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342
the integrated graphics is using 256 MB.
spinnerlys
Guest
It is 4GB, just that 256MB (0.25GB) gets subtracted for the Shared Memory of the Integrated GPU.
Btw, the blue part in the pie chart indicates INACTIVE memory, so there is still plenty left.
Mac OS X has an intelligent RAM management system and stores even closed applications in its RAM, so if you decide to re-open it, it will open faster.
But if you need the RAM for other applications and documents, the RAM gets purged and the new application/document takes its place if necessary.
A restart is seldom required, I can run my Macs for weeks without RAM problems and I open application after application (up to 15-25 at the same time).
Btw, you can currently only see your processes, as you have MY PROCESSES selected. Select SHOW ALL PROCESSES to see all processes.
Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Am I right to assume that the other 2 major OSes, Windows and Linux, do much the same? Apps certainly launch faster after the 1st time in Windows, much like OSX.
chrono1081
macrumors G3
Short answer: Yes.
Sometimes Windows likes to make things start up fast the first time by making everything a default startup item but this is wasteful IMO so on my win machines I disable startup items.
Are you saying apps like browsers are somehow partially loaded up at reboot? I don't see any Firefox/Chrome processes when I bring up msconfig at startup. Or do you just mean there's lots of background processes running by default, like Quicktime, Adobe, etc. From my recollection, many of the processes at startup, I think, are third party. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you.