Memory

[tkowalski]

I just increased my memory from 4 gig to 12 gig on my iMac 27". When I pulled up activity monitor before upgrade free memory was 1.7g. After update it was about 10g. It really made a difference when I would multitask. I just checked it again and free memory is back down to about 2.5g. I really don't have anything running. Why the drop in free memory?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Free Memory is explained here:

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor​

 

[tkowalski]

Memory

Thanks. I've seen this. It still doesn't explain why my free memory went from 10g to 2g in 2 days with nothing really running.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Thanks. I've seen this. It still doesn't explain why my free memory went from 10g to 2g in 2 days with nothing really running.

Define "nothing". Have you opened a lot of applications or have opened a lot of tabs or windows of one particular application? If you can't provide more details, all we can do is guessing.
And if you don't have page outs or a growing swap file (in reality several), there is not that much to worry about.

 

[tkowalski]

I have not recently opened much. There aren't any major apps running in the back ground. Computer seems to be running ok. Just curious why the drop. 1.7g free and 7.4g inactive. Page outs are minimal. WhenI installed memory like I said free was over 10g. Just trying to understand, is this normal? If it's ok then I'll accept. Also I'm thinking about replacing the 2-2gig memory with 4g to max out system. Overkill? I just want to multitask and not have any slow downs.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I have not recently opened much. There aren't any major apps running in the back ground. Computer seems to be running ok. Just curious why the drop. 1.7g free and 7.4g inactive. Page outs are minimal. WhenI installed memory like I said free was over 10g. Just trying to understand, is this normal? If it's ok then I'll accept. Also I'm thinking about replacing the 2-2gig memory with 4g to max out system. Overkill? I just want to multitask and not have any slow downs.

Do you understand, what free and inactive memory is?

 

[leman]

Thanks. I've seen this. It still doesn't explain why my free memory went from 10g to 2g in 2 days with nothing really running.

Why would you care? Are you dissatisfied with the performance of your computer? All these memory/CPU usage indicators are only useful for problem diagnostics, that means, you can safely disregard them when everything seems to be ok with your computer.

To give you a small hint though: OS X aggressively uses available RAM for caching, speeding up the entire system. Unused memory is wasted memory.

 

[bogatyr]

Yes it is normal. Please review this section of the linked article:

Inactive:

This information is in RAM but it is not actively being used, it was recently used.

For example, if you've been using Mail and then quit it, the RAM that Mail was using is marked as Inactive memory. Inactive memory is available for use by another application, just like Free memory. However, if you open Mail before its Inactive memory is used by a different application, Mail will open quicker because its Inactive memory is converted to Active memory, instead of loading it from the slower drive.

 

[ljonesj]

mine never seems to free itself i know when i rip an anime if its 150 mb on the first episode i usually will purge or use a program to give me more free ram aka green the file when i rerip will be 80mb but if its blue it will be the 150