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rMBP ML eating RAM?

M

MikesGravity

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 29, 2008
458
154
Southeast MI
My base rMBP seems to be eating memory like mad. I was down to 4xxMB just doing typical tasks today (itunes, safari, etc.). Resetting got me back to 6GB.

Do I have a problem? The attached pic is with NO apps running.

I KNOW someone is going to say I should have gotten 16GB but I figured 8 was sufficient for some routine things. It's like the memory is not freeing up like it should when apps are killed.
 

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MikesGravity said:
My base rMBP seems to be eating memory like mad. I was down to 4xxMB just doing typical tasks today (itunes, safari, etc.). Resetting got me back to 6GB.

Do I have a problem? The attached pic is with NO apps running.

I KNOW someone is going to say I should have gotten 16GB but I figured 8 was sufficient for some routine things. It's like the memory is not freeing up like it should when apps are killed.
Click to expand...

That almost definitely sounds like a memory leak. Are you running the latest OSX?
 
In your screen shot, why didn't you sort the processes by Memory (Real Mem) tab?
 
MikesGravity said:
Yes I am. When I purchased it (new, a few weeks ago) it had 10.8.2.

Would you do a fresh install if you were in my shoes?
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It depends on how easy a fresh install would be for you. Personally, I'd wait for some more *advanced and experienced* members to reply to this threat (AKA those above this post).
 
You have 5 GB free out of 8. Which means only 3 is being used. Inactive memory + free counted as available memory.

Are you concerned about how 3 GB got used up?
 
So I jumped the gun and downloaded ML from the app store and installed it, yet it went back to my exact same setup after install, no option for clean install.

Here's a screen shot after that:
 

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I don't understand what the deal with the latest versions of OS X and ram usage being so high is. its out of control. You can run windows 7 on 1gb no problem for web browsing and itunes and stuff but try that on mountain lion and its a unusable. 2gb on windows 7 flies in comparison to how it performs in mountain lion.
 
blackhand1001 said:
I don't understand what the deal with the latest versions of OS X and ram usage being so high is. its out of control. You can run windows 7 on 1gb no problem for web browsing and itunes and stuff but try that on mountain lion and its a unusable. 2gb on windows 7 flies in comparison to how it performs in mountain lion.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking too. Snow Leopard used to FLY on my 4GB macbook (non pro)
 
MikesGravity said:
So I jumped the gun and downloaded ML from the app store and installed it, yet it went back to my exact same setup after install, no option for clean install.

Here's a screen shot after that:
Click to expand...
Looks fine. Plus why did you do a fresh install? You know to do a fresh install you boot up into the Utility to allow you to freshly install it by holding the alt or option key.

Secondly, did you learn about memory usage at all? They were posted below my first one.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1342

Lastly, you know that retina computers use more memory right? They are also going to use more power and memory. It's intensive when dealing with vectors.

One final note, it looks fine.
 
It looks okay.

Retina apps use more memory than regular apps because they need to store graphics that are 4x larger.

And Safari in Mountain Lion as of 10.8.2 is still buggy. With a lot of memory leak.
 
kage207 said:
I don't notice memory leaks with Safari. When I use Chrome it uses more memory than Safari. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Well, if you run Safari non-stop for days without restart. Or in my case, I run my rMBP non-stop for weeks without a single restart, then you'll notice that after a while, free memory is extremely low.

And at some point it starts eating into swap (paging out), which indicates that there's some serious leakage.
 
bill-p said:
Well, if you run Safari non-stop for days without restart. Or in my case, I run my rMBP non-stop for weeks without a single restart, then you'll notice that after a while, free memory is extremely low.

And at some point it starts eating into swap (paging out), which indicates that there's some serious leakage.
Click to expand...
Well then don't run it that long. :D
 
kage207 said:
Well then don't run it that long. :D
Click to expand...

Closing it down doesn't help as the leaked memory is permanently marked as "in use" and the OS doesn't want to get rid of them.

The only fix is to either restart the computer, or use Webkit Nightly, which fixed the memory leak bug along with a bunch of other things.
 
Thanks for the help guys, I learned quite a bit about the RAM usage in the rMBP in this thread.

For piece of mind, I used option+R and did a clean install anyway. I do believe Safari was the issue, it could eat up to 1GB of RAM before I did a clean install.

I figured what the heck, a fresh start was easy since I didn't have too much on there anyway.

Hopefully the safari issue gets fixed :-/

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skysailing said:
The resolution of that photo
Image
Click to expand...


Beautiful isn't it?
 
I really didn't see a problem with your screen shot--looks a lot like mine actually. Yes, initially there is a lot of RAM used but once the system gets what it needs, my rMBP never comes even close to the max RAM--and never any page outs. I really was not worried about RAM usage so went with the 8GB option and so far, I am satisfied with how my RAM is used. Of course for some, the 16 GB option may be a better choice.
 
bobr1952 said:
I really didn't see a problem with your screen shot--looks a lot like mine actually. Yes, initially there is a lot of RAM used but once the system gets what it needs, my rMBP never comes even close to the max RAM--and never any page outs. I really was not worried about RAM usage so went with the 8GB option and so far, I am satisfied with how my RAM is used. Of course for some, the 16 GB option may be a better choice.
Click to expand...


I guess I was being paranoid and worried since I was used to more of the 8GB being available on my 09 13" MBP lol. Oh well, clean install, fresh start, things seem great. The 2.3 and 256 were good for me so I made the choice based on those and figured 8GB would be fine, which apparently it is :)
 
I'm almost in the same situation and this doesn't bother me at all.
1.i'll never reach 8GB RAM Usage even if i keep my computer 2 weeks without restart.
2.the more you will look on the monitor the more you will be disappointed.

8GB is fine and this rmbp is great computer.
 
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