Hi all, i have no applications besides Activity monitor open here, but RAM in use is over 4 GB. Even whn i close Activity monitor, it's still over 4gb. I had aperture, itunes, and firefox open last night. Which is when it reached 4gb. Next morning, it is still that high, with all apps closed. Any ideas?
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Memory problem here? (pic attached)
- Thread starter elvingomez
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Hello,
Seems alright to me.
As far as I know, in your case, the active memory is simply there to "remember" your previously opened apps. So if you launch those apps again, they'll do so very quickly.
But if ever the system needs more ram than the "free" ram it has, it will start to use that "active" ram, paging it out to VM.
Only the wired ram is essential and cannot be used for something else.
Loa
Seems alright to me.
As far as I know, in your case, the active memory is simply there to "remember" your previously opened apps. So if you launch those apps again, they'll do so very quickly.
But if ever the system needs more ram than the "free" ram it has, it will start to use that "active" ram, paging it out to VM.
Only the wired ram is essential and cannot be used for something else.
Loa
ahh, thanks for the explanation. i thought some app was holding onto the memory, and not letting anything else use it. Thanks for taking the time!
I thought that was normally put under "Inactive Memory".
Here is a link that explains the different categories of memory in OS X:
http://sg80bab.blogspot.com/2007/03/is-my-mac-using-too-much-memory.html
It seems to me that there may have been a memory leak somewhere. I would suggest a restart to clear it up.
That's a non-issue... Just need a little education, then you'll know there's actually more free memory than you've first thought.
Not picking on anyone in particular but why do people answer without checking? This is like the 4th thread I've read today where the first answer(s) were completely wrong and a simple search would have shown the correct answer. I don't mean the OPs either as in many cases they don't know what to search for - thus they ask. But anyone who answers should check first if they aren't sure - or just not answer. Hehehe, we'll have to rename this place: MacErrors.com after much more of this. 
