Virtual Memory usage on Leopard

[John Jacob]

I have a unibody Macbook 2.4 with 4GB RAM, running the latest version of Leopard (10.5.5). In activity monitor, I see each process has uses virtual memory of over half a gig, with a total VM size of over 40GB. 😱 Is this normal? Is all this virtual memory eating space on my hard disk? Why does each process require so much virtual memory? Is all the software on my Macbook, bloatware?

The attachments show what I am saying. Do others also have similar VM statistics?

 

[xUKHCx]

This is a known issue with Leopard. If you add the Private memory colum to activity mointor the size of the Virtual memory will drop.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/375389/
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/401064/

This thread has some details about what virtual memory is

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=4392907

To answer your questions

Yes, No, See above, No, Yes

 

[John Jacob]

Wow, thanks! That was some interesting information. Good to know it's not just me. I guess I should have searched before posting. Sorry.

 

[trainguy77]

Mine is sitting up at 79 GB. Excellent post xUKHCx.