Ram use in mavericks

[Meister]

I just bought a rmbp haswell 8gb/256gb and a mba 4gb/256gb.
I noticed that on the rmbp i have 7.5gb used memory with hardly any apps open, just safari.
is this a feature of mavericks?
y is so much memory used?
i know this has been extensively discussed, but apple seems to find only 4gb fit.
even the entry model rmbp has only 4gb. so i assume 4gb should be well enough for the mba.does this also have to do with mavericks (which runs on only 2gb theoretically?

 

[ufkdo]

It's a new feature of Mavericks. Without going further in technical details, I can say that Mavericks does not let RAM to be idle so that it uses it more efficiently.

I am right now on an 13inch 2010 MBA with only 2 GBs of RAM. I have upgraded from Snow Leopard without clean installation. I don't see any lags etc. although RAM almost always seems to be full.

 

[benwiggy]

is this a feature of mavericks?

Yes. It's a Good Thing.

y is so much memory used?

Because RAM is there to be used. It's the workspace of your computer. Having free RAM is pointless.
Mavx has completely different memory management, which uses most of the RAM, most of the time.

 

[matthewscott661]

I just bought a rmbp haswell 8gb/256gb and a mba 4gb/256gb.
I noticed that on the rmbp i have 7.5gb used memory with hardly any apps open, just safari.
is this a feature of mavericks?
y is so much memory used?
i know this has been extensively discussed, but apple seems to find only 4gb fit.
even the entry model rmbp has only 4gb. so i assume 4gb should be well enough for the mba.does this also have to do with mavericks (which runs on only 2gb theoretically?

the ram isn't allocated the same. if you look on the graph in activity monitor it will tell you the "memory pressure" which is how much it is compressing (instead of paging out and back in)

as long as the graph is green and fairly low, you are fine.

 

[Weaselboy]

is this a feature of mavericks?

Yes it is. Good article here that explains how memory management works in Mavs.