RAM usage on unibody macbook pro

[tseitz89]

Today I compared my unibody 15in (15,1) to my buddies macbook pro (last model before the unibody) and noticed his has 3 gb of free ram after boot-up and mine has 2.7 free after boot-up. Has anyone else noticed this? Maybe others could post their amount of free RAM after boot-up?

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

There are literally 20.2343033 quintillion different reasons why this could be and all of them are irrelevant.

It's no big deal, let the OS take care of the RAM management.

 

[MrCheeto]

There are plenty of factors such as start-up processes, menu-items running (shovebox, caffeine etc..) as well as software version and settings.

Nothing to worry about, really, OS X and 'nix as a whole are master memory allocators. When you need it, it's ready.

 

[tseitz89]

Ya I know there's a million reasons that could be causing this to happen and I love how a good unix operating system handles itself better than a DOS any day lol.

However it is still interesting what would be the most logical reason behind this, considering are computers are almost identical in terms of software both 10.6.2 and same startup programs, does anyone think that because one is ddr3 memory that the system decides to use more instead of pageing it?

And I'd still be curious to know peoples free ram availiable to how much is installed

 

[gr8tfly]

Perhaps it's the 256MB which are reserved for the integrated GeForce 9400M.

 

[MrCheeto]

13" MacBook Pro, 2.53ghz

 

[tseitz89]

Perhaps it's the 256MB which are reserved for the integrated GeForce 9400M.

Ya I thought that too so I switched to the 9600 and my numbers are from that set up

 

[gr8tfly]

Ya I thought that too so I switched to the 9600 and my numbers are from that set up

In Activity Monitor, what does your total RAM show (under the pie-chart)? The reserved 256MB will be subtracted from your total (for instance, if you have 4GB, the total shown will be 3.75GB). So, you'll have less available as free space. Note that the 256MB is still reserved even when on the 9600M.

 

[tseitz89]

In Activity Monitor, what does your total RAM show (under the pie-chart)? The reserved 256MB will be subtracted from your total (for instance, if you have 4GB, the total shown will be 3.75GB). So, you'll have less available as free space. Note that the 256MB is still reserved even when on the 9600M.

O ok that explains it, just checked and yep 3.75 running both cards, thats really kinda screwy, I can see why it would always be reserved but I know Apple can find a way to allow the computer to use it with the 9600, o well

 

[Gabriel GR]

The 9600 has it's own memory chips.

Funny thing, in 32bit windows, the memory manager subtracts even the memory of discrete GPU's from the total amount of RAM.

 

[gr8tfly]

The 9600 has it's own memory chips.

No argument there. I believe the reason the integrated VRAM is reserved when either GPU is active, is because the 9400 is part of the integrated North/South bridge - which is always active.

Funny thing, in 32bit windows, the memory manager subtracts even the memory of discrete GPU's from the total amount of RAM.

Sounds like a Windows-like thing to do. I think the "funny thing" IS Windows , but that's another story.