Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
REMOVED
- Thread starter Rossagues
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
RAM is there to be used.
Open Activity Monitor and select All Processes and then sort by Real Mem to show you the process(es) using up your RAM,
also go to the System Memory* tab and look for Page Outs and Swap used and report back (but that only helps after a day of usage).
Open Activity Monitor and select All Processes and then sort by Real Mem to show you the process(es) using up your RAM,
also go to the System Memory* tab and look for Page Outs and Swap used and report back (but that only helps after a day of usage).
Why would you ever get a full unused RAM?
The operating system, background applications, drivers, even the utility you are using to view the amount of RAM you have available uses RAM. Remember to include the 'inactive' portion of your RAM when figuring how much available RAM you have. Inactive memory can be allocated to other applications, it just means the OS didn't 'delete' the data from the RAM, it's still there, but not being used (helps some frequently re-opened applications work faster, and it also speeds up the whole process as the computer doesn't really need to 'clean up' after itself)
The operating system, background applications, drivers, even the utility you are using to view the amount of RAM you have available uses RAM. Remember to include the 'inactive' portion of your RAM when figuring how much available RAM you have. Inactive memory can be allocated to other applications, it just means the OS didn't 'delete' the data from the RAM, it's still there, but not being used (helps some frequently re-opened applications work faster, and it also speeds up the whole process as the computer doesn't really need to 'clean up' after itself)
Nope, since it is the most important process on your Mac. I uses the same MBP as you do and I still run Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and my kernel_task currently uses 458 MB. I have that much RAM to be used, not to be wasted, and unless you experience a lot of page outs during your normal activity due to not enough RAM, either go back to a less RAM hungry OS or replace the Mac with one being able to have more RAM.
Yeah, if you shut down your Mac. kernel_task is the core of the OS.
Btw, i've seen a similar behavior on my Mid-2009 and Early-2011 17 MBPs (each model with 8 GB RAM).