Memory leaks?

[skierbri10]

My mid-2011 running Mavericks is such a dog. I have 12gb ram in it and it constantly runs with 11.99gb used. Only way to reduce it is to run purge. I have browser open and that is it. When the ram is knocked down its quick and snappy but once the memory creeps back to over 11gb it becomes slow and I get a lot of beach balls. Anything else I can do?

 

[GGJstudios]

My mid-2011 running Mavericks is such a dog. I have 12gb ram in it and it constantly runs with 11.99gb used. Only way to reduce it is to run purge.

It is quite normal for all of your memory to be in use by OS X. It does not mean that you are running out of memory or that it is maxed out. OS X will manage all available memory, making it available to apps on an as-needed basis. Refer to the following Apple support article for more information on how to understand your Activity Monitor readings.

OS X Mavericks: About Activity Monitor​

The combination of Free, Wired, Active, Inactive & Used memory statistics in previous versions of Activity Monitor have been replaced in Mavericks with an easy to read "Memory Pressure" graph.
Memory pressure is indicated by color:

• Green – RAM memory resources are available.
• Amber – RAM memory resources are being tasked.
• Red – RAM memory resources are depleted and OS X is using the drive for memory.

If you're having performance issues, this may help:

Performance Tips For Mac OS X​