M3 Max MBP Excessive RAM Utilization

[Mity]

I opened and used my M3 Max MBP for the first time yesterday and I found excessive RAM utilization for just basic tasks.

This is me watching an 8K demo on YouTube: 20.85GB

Moving to Safari and watching 4K HBO Max reduced it but still unacceptable: 16.02GB

And usage was still unacceptable with nothing playing: 7.5GB

The only other item I had open was Pages to test out the keyboard. I had written maybe a paragraph.

Why is RAM being utilized so much, especially at rest? The M3 Max machine is hitting RAM even harder than my M1 MBA which consistently utilizes 12GB with ~10 Chrome windows open.

I know people like to say, the computer indexes for the first few days but I really can't imagine this much background process as I'm not a heavy user of iCloud.

Anyone have the same experience? Does it get better?

 

[steve123]

Checked my RAM usage, Memory used was reported 47 GB. Not much open, mail, messages, safari, VS Code. Closed everything except Safari and Memory Used is now 43 GB. MBP M2 Max.

Closed Safari and Memory Used went down to about 32 GB. I had another user account logged in so I logged that user out and memory usage reduced to about 23 GB. Rebooted and memory usage was 7.3 GB.

OMG, Macrumors is using 406MB!

 

[Mity]

Checked my RAM usage, Memory used was reported 47 GB. Not much open, mail, messages, safari, VS Code. Closed everything except Safari and Memory Used is now 43 GB. MBP M2 Max.

This is ridiculous. My 2019 Intel 16" MBP has 64GB of RAM and the most I've ever utilized is ~30GB and never dipped into any swap!!! I literally have ~50 Chrome tabs open that I never close along with ginormous Jupyter notebooks running, Zoom, and regular Apple productivity stuff like Calendar, Mail, Notes, etc.

 

[Apple_Robert]

MacOS will load and use as much RAM as is available. That doesn't necessarily mean you have a problem. Your focus should be on memory pressure. As long as it isn't red on a regular basis, (thus casusing performance problems) you are fine.

 

[poorcody]

Your screenshots don't show the Memory Used details. That is all that really matters, in addition to Swap, which is showing zero. The Mac will use up as much memory as possible caching things like closed Apps that will be available quickly if you reopen them, for example. If there is no memory pressure or swapping, it is making good use of otherwise unused RAM for speed.

See:
https://support.apple.com/guide/act...ac-needs-more-ram-actmntr34865/10.14/mac/14.0

 

[Mity]

MacOS will load and use as much RAM as is available. That doesn't necessarily mean you have a problem. Your focus should be on memory pressure. As long as it isn''t red on a regular basis, (thus casusing performance problems) you are fine.

I don't think MacOS is the culprit. I think this is caused by Apple Silicon. There is no reason for 16GB to be utilized by the system for a mere YouTube video.

I paid for 128GB of RAM in hopes to use my machine for a long time without having to swap. I haven't even setup my Python work environment yet. I dread what that will do.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I don't think MacOS is the culprit. I think this is caused by Apple Silicon. There is no reason for 16GB to be utilized by the system for a mere YouTube video.

I paid for 128GB of RAM in hopes to use my machine for a long time without having to swap. I haven't even setup my Python work environment yet. I dread what that will do.

I explained the reason. There is no problem with your Mac.

 

[casperes1996]

Unused ram is wasted. macOS knows this. The more ram you put in a Mac the more it will use (to a point)
Leaving the ram empty has zero benefit. In your first screenshot with the 8k video playback only about 9HB constitute memory the os and applications have asked for. Over 11gb is stuff macOS just put in ram in case you might need it later. And of the 9gb applications have actually asked for a lot of that can most likely be paged out either without writing to disk at all if it’s memory mapped files that aren’t dirty or CoW that aren’t written to.

Everyone seems to misunderstand macOS Memory view in activity monitor. Used does not mean what you think it does. Look at the pressure graph. Look at app memory plus wired memory. Notice that cached memory can be cleared at any time at no cost and is just there to speed up potential future activities not what you’re actively doing right now.

 

[hovscorpion12]

1. All screenshots show Memory Pressure in low-green status
2. Your watching an 8K video on a browser that is publicly known for extreme RAM usage. I suggest Safari.
3. In all screenshots you have 0% Swap used.
4. You have 128GB of RAM.

As someone who also has 128GB of RAM, I bought my machine to never look at Activity monitor. Ever. I open all my work apps every day and use them. In the 4-months of ownership i've only had 10GB of total swap in that period of time.

 

[Fishrrman]

Get rid of google Chrome.
That's a good start.

 

[john123]

I don't think MacOS is the culprit. I think this is caused by Apple Silicon. There is no reason for 16GB to be utilized by the system for a mere YouTube video.

I paid for 128GB of RAM in hopes to use my machine for a long time without having to swap. I haven't even setup my Python work environment yet. I dread what that will do.

This is mildly terrifying. You write code AND you shelled out for 128GB but you don’t understand the fundamentals of Mac memory management?

Yikes…

 

[NT1440]

You’re just looking for a problem here. The system will cache what it thinks is needed, and grab as much RAM as possible without interfering with performance.

In short, there’s no such thing as “using too much RAM” in macOS unless you start seeing actual pressure. You paid for the RAM, but you don’t want the system to use it?

 

[macjoshua]

As others have said, this is how Macs run now. They will allocate a lot of RAM to any open apps and processes and manage it across the system as needed. I have 32GB, and just starting my machine will use up about half of that. It's not an issue, and I've never had any lag when the system reallocates RAM to multiple programs, etc.

 

[TechnoMonk]

I am surprised you bought 128 GB RAM with out understanding how RAM works in Linux/Mac.
It’s normal, OS will load as much memory available for tasks for performance. If it didn’t you would be complaining why is the OS loading, offloading memory every time and is slower.
My 64 GB consistently uses 50 GB memory, I have no problem with it, I fact I love how snappy my Mac runs even under load.

 

[hovscorpion12]

If your M3 Max is under the return window, you are more then welcome to return and try to configure a 192GB of RAM Mac Studio.

 

[Mity]

1. All screenshots show Memory Pressure in low-green status
2. Your watching an 8K video on a browser that is publicly known for extreme RAM usage. I suggest Safari.
3. In all screenshots you have 0% Swap used.
4. You have 128GB of RAM.

As someone who also has 128GB of RAM, I bought my machine to never look at Activity monitor. Ever. I open all my work apps every day and use them. In the 4-months of ownership i've only had 10GB of total swap in that period of time.

I bought 128GB of RAM to future-proof, not to utilize it NOW! I want to setup a dev machine for the next 5 years and not worry about RAM and storage.

I don't know what you're doing but how do you end up utilizing 10GB of swap with 128GB of RAM?

 

[Egk]

This is mildly terrifying. You write code AND you shelled out for 128GB but you don’t understand the fundamentals of Mac memory management?

Yikes…

What do you expect from someone who uses Python... Might not be a programmer, but coming from the machine learning crowd.

 

[Mity]

Get rid of google Chrome.
That's a good start.

See the screenshot of utilizing Safari - not much different.

 

[Mity]

I am surprised you bought 128 GB RAM with out understanding how RAM works in Linux/Mac.
It’s normal, OS will load as much memory available for tasks for performance. If it didn’t you would be complaining why is the OS loading, offloading memory every time and is slower.
My 64 GB consistently uses 50 GB memory, I have no problem with it, I fact I love how snappy my Mac runs even under load.

It's not normal. I literally provided my use case with my 2019 Intel MBP 64GB RAM. I have YET to install Python, Jupyter and run my projects. What will RAM utilization be then?

 

[NT1440]

I bought 128GB of RAM to future-proof, not to utilize it NOW! I want to setup a dev machine for the next 5 years and not worry about RAM and storage.

I don't know what you're doing but how do you end up utilizing 10GB of swap with 128GB of RAM?

That’s…not how computers work.

You then followed up comparing an Intel machine RAM usage as if that’s applicable to a Unified Memory Architecture.

There is nothing wrong with your current usage. Learn about how RAM works in macOS before exclaiming something is wrong.

 

[Mity]

You’re just looking for a problem here. The system will cache what it thinks is needed, and grab as much RAM as possible without interfering with performance.

In short, there’s no such thing as “using too much RAM” in macOS unless you start seeing actual pressure. You paid for the RAM, but you don’t want the system to use it?

What process is running that requires 16-21GB of RAM being utilized?

 

[Mity]

That’s…not how computers work.

There is nothing wrong with your current usage.

How is it that my Intel machine never utilized swap? None. And that was with 64GB of RAM?

 

[NT1440]

What process is running that requires 16-21GB of RAM being utilized?

System caching, as already explained to you. MacOS prefetches what it thinks you need based on your usage.

 

[Egk]

Mity: you have no basis for talking about what is "normal" when you don't understand that the OS is caching a bunch of stuff to make things snappy while being used.

You cannot state that your Intel machine never utilized swap at all, that's just weird. You're obsessing over something that isn't a problem at all. From the screenshots everything is cached and not swap for instance.

You don't have a problem, the computer is working fine!

 

[NT1440]

How is it that my Intel machine never utilized swap? None. And that was with 64GB of RAM?

It’s a different memory management model.

I don’t mean this to sound mean, but you need to learn how this system works before proclaiming there’s a problem here.