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RAM usage on rMBP?

U

unbelievable99

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 1, 2012
42
0
Hi everyone,

My 13 inch rMBP doesn't have any apps or documents or anything open, and I went to actcivity monitor to chech ram usage and 3.10 to 3.20 gb was used (out of 8gb), while my macbook air is only using 1.33 gb (out of 4) and they have the same apps. Why is that?

Thanks
 
unbelievable99 said:
Hi everyone,

My 13 inch rMBP doesn't have any apps or documents or anything open, and I went to actcivity monitor to chech ram usage and 3.10 to 3.20 gb was used (out of 8gb), while my macbook air is only using 1.33 gb (out of 4) and they have the same apps. Why is that?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Follow every step of the following instructions precisely. Do not skip any steps.
  1. Launch Activity Monitor
  2. Change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes"
  3. Click on the "% CPU" column heading once or twice, so the arrow points downward (highest values on top).
    (If that column isn't visible, right-click on the column headings and check it, NOT "CPU Time")
  4. Click on the System Memory tab at the bottom.
  5. Take a screen shot of the entire Activity Monitor window, then scroll down to see the rest of the list, take another screen shot
  6. Post your screenshots.

Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
 
Thanks for the replies,
For reply 1: For all of them (inactive, wired, and active) together.
For reply 2: Thanks, I'll try that and report that.

Thanks again
 
unbelievable99 said:
Hi everyone,

My 13 inch rMBP doesn't have any apps or documents or anything open, and I went to actcivity monitor to chech ram usage and 3.10 to 3.20 gb was used (out of 8gb), while my macbook air is only using 1.33 gb (out of 4) and they have the same apps. Why is that?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Because some apps cache (store) their interface graphics in RAM. They do that because loading graphics from storage (HDD/SSD) is slow, especially when those graphics are huge.

And then Retina graphics are 4 times larger in raw size than non-Retina graphics, so you'll end up seeing RAM usage exploding to the same ratio. Maybe not 4 times because not everything in RAM is graphics, but it's still a sizable increase from non-Retina graphics.

Bottom line: rMBP uses more RAM than an equivalent MacBook rocking a non-Retina display. That's just normal.
 
They wont upload for some odd reason but when there are no apps open the highest, activity monitor on average is using 2% of cpu (keeps changing as soon as I click something) and finder is second with around 0.2% and a few others are third with approximately 0.1%. I hope this helps. I will try to post the screenshots again if it helps but at the moment it wont post (probably file format problem)
 
unbelievable99 said:
They wont upload for some odd reason but when there are no apps open the highest, activity monitor on average is using 2% of cpu (keeps changing as soon as I click something) and finder is second with around 0.2% and a few others are third with approximately 0.1%. I hope this helps. I will try to post the screenshots again if it helps but at the moment it wont post (probably file format problem)
Click to expand...
Re-read the instructions and try again. You skipped the 2nd step, even though it's in bold letters.
 
here are the attachments. I took a couple of screenshots
 

Attachments

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Last edited:
ok so here they are again. Note that all 5 are the same page (i.e I didn't scroll down), I just did 5 screen shots of it. The rest (although they use 0%) are coming in the next post.
 

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  • Screen Shot 2013-01-02 at 11.35.22 PM.png
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  • Screen Shot 2013-01-02 at 11.35.25 PM.png
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unbelievable99 said:
ok so here they are again. Note that all 5 are the same page (i.e I didn't scroll down), I just did 5 screen shots of it. The rest (although they use 0%) are coming in the next post.
Click to expand...
No need to post more. Everything looks quite normal. You have plenty of free and inactive RAM available. How long has it been since your last restart? You have some page outs that have occurred since your last restart, but not a huge amount. Restart your Mac to reset your page outs to zero, then track them under normal use. You don't need to watch anything except page outs, which indicate you're maxing out your available RAM.
 
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