Safari on Air

[jinxednuance]

Hello,

I have the base model, 2GB of ram.

Even though I only started noticing it after I installed a stat widget on my dashboard, when I use Safari my available RAM goes down to an average of 650MB (of 2GB) when running only Safari.

Is that normal? Any idea why does it consume this much RAM? Chrome, on average, seems to consume less.

I am considering upgrading to the 4GB model, not sure if I will notice a huge difference, or perhaps I should just switch to Chrome or FF?

Thanks

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

All modern browsers have memory leaks. However, that doesn't mean you are experiencing a memory problem. OS X and most applications coded for it, including Safari, will use up as much RAM as they want as long as it's free. If another application needs the RAM it will be purged and move it around.

Unless you are experiencing real performance issues with your computer I wouldn't worry about it.


And 650MB of free RAM is a lot of memory. I would uninstall that widget as it seems to make you paranoid about things you don't understand. If you really need to check system performance check Activity Monitor and Terminal.

 

[GGJstudios]

How much RAM is used depends on what sites you visit, how many tabs/windows you have open, Flash content on sites, etc., and not just which browser you use. Launch Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab at the bottom. If your "Page outs" and "Swap used" are excessive, you need more RAM.

 

[jinxednuance]

That was helpful, appreciate it.

 

[namtaB]

Sounds like you are going to places with lots of Flash. Do yourself a big favor and install clicktoflash and enroll in HTML5 on youtube. Your CPU will thank you.

 

[gglockner]

I'm a developer, and I'm not aware of any major memory leaks in Safari. What you're seeing is the difference between physical and virtual memory, and the MacBook Air does well with virtual memory thanks to its SSD. Nothing to worry about. That said, I second the recommendation to install ClickToFlash.

 

[aleni]

do u use widgets at all?

i turned off widgets because i don't use it at all. so if you aren't using widgets, it's better to turn it off. it might help a bit because you only have 2gb of rams.