Need some rMBP RAM advice

[surjavarman]

I got the 2.3/256/8 retina MBP right now and I have been reading the threads about ram and the majority recommend 16gb. Well here is a screenshot of my just woken up RMBP. I got chrome open with 4 tabs, itunes and the mail. You can see I am only using about 2gigs of ram. But its an illusion. I noticed that when I use my RMBP for a day its sucking my memory like crazy. Mail, Chrome and iTunes combined can already use more than 4gigs at the end of the day. And if I run a few other apps like a video player or a program to download some torrents. At the end of the day it usually looks like:

Free RAM: 200mb
wired: 2gigs
active: 4gigs
inactive 1gigs
page outs: significant

Roughly. I barely use any programs at all. That means I have no room whatsoever when I want to use the heavy hitters like virtualization or photoshop. Yet on my old MBP13 (early 2011) 4 gigs was more than enough for what I am doing now and virtualization. Before I had a laptop with 2 gigs and that was also enough. Over the years my usage hasn't changed at all.

Do I need to get 16gigs? Btw I didn't notice a slowdown whatsoever when it was paging out. Cause I think the RMBP might be the one. The one that I am going to use for 3-4 years.

 

[jav6454]

You didn't notice slowdowns during Page-Outs because you are accessing an SSD which is significant;y faster than an HDD.

However, accessing an SSD each and every time is bad as write cycles are limited and you don't want to cycle through all of them quickly.

At any rate, going with the highest RAM configuration you can afford is always suggested. True 8GB is more than enough for the majority of people (hell, even 4GB is enough); but, as you have witnessed, higher usages tend to suck dry the RAM.

At this point it is entirely up to you if you need the extra 8GB. I suggest you get it if possible.

 

[ajcadoo]

Get the 16GB. You can sell your Retina for more when the time comes, and you will probably need it in 2-3 years. Better to be safe than sorry.

 

[Dangerous Theory]

I don't see how mail, chrome and iTunes can consume 4GB RAM, can you screenshot this very high usage?

 

[Gomff]

For the apps the OP is using, 8GB should be more than enough. You only need more than 8 if you're using Pro apps, often more than one at a time.

By all means exchange it if it makes you feel better but IMHO, unless you're planning on using your mac for more than surfing, music playback and email, I think it's an unnecessary expense.....8 should be enough for the lifetime of the machine.

 

[throttlemeister]

You say page outs are significant? How so? Your screenshot indicates nothing. You only have to consider more ram if page outs are more than half of page ins. If it is under that, you are not running out of ram.

 

[Rajpdx]

392 Kilobytes paging out?

what's that - 2 sentences out of of War and Peace?

 

[leman]

You have almost no page outs. You are fine. Actually, you would probably be more then fine with 4GB RAM. I have 4GB on my 2009 MBP, I have lots of open applications all the time and I also use some memory-heavy database applications etc. - and my page-out-to-page-in ratio is just barely over 5%. Yours is practically 0%.

And btw: usage statistics tools are troubleshooting tools. They are meant to be used if there is some sort of performance problem. It you are happy with your computer performance, why would you even bother looking at RAM utilization? Of course your system will use lots of RAM - you have lots of RAM to give it in the first place! If you had 16GB, it would end up using even more RAM probably.