VM Size is 196 GB!!!

[Zeus86]

I was checking the activity monitor after just installing my Samsung 1TB in my Macbook Pro i5 and I saw that the VM being used is 196GB. That is insane!! Is there anyway I can change that?

 

[macfanboy]

Mine is 260 GB on a 320 GB drive. It doesn't literally take that much space. There is no need to change it.

 

[Intell]

Virtual memory is like ghost memory. It doesn't really exist or take up space. Sometimes one program can use over 16Tb of virtual memory, it doesn't mean a thing.

 

[gentlefury]

basically the way mac utilizes memory is, the more you have the more it uses....when you need it, it frees it. It is very efficient. No need to worry about those numbers.

 

[Hugh]

So say I have 16gig jump drive that I have Lion on, and looking at VM saying 215gig means nothing? Nothing to worry about? Cool!

Hugh

 

[filriyadh]

i realize this is an old thread but..

May be someone can shed some light on this ? I have attached a screen shot from activity monitor, problem with my macbook pro 13" is that, as while i was writing this message, it just freezes, memory is full, i had to wait 6-9 seconds for it to unfreeze and stop displaying that 'processing' circle.

i honestly am starting to hate my mac because of it. going on for two months now. i cant load any application without waiting for like 2 minutes

if i load anything more than a web browser, vlc, and either a pdf file or an office document, thats it kaput.

4gb of ram and its almost always less than 40mb free........ i am extremely frustrated without a doubt.

i have sophos to scan for viruses

 

[Intell]

Change "My Processes" to "All Processes" and repost a new screen shot.

 

[Sankersizzle]

May be someone can shed some light on this ? I have attached a screen shot from activity monitor, problem with my macbook pro 13" is that, as while i was writing this message, it just freezes, memory is full, i had to wait 6-9 seconds for it to unfreeze and stop displaying that 'processing' circle.

i honestly am starting to hate my mac because of it. going on for two months now. i cant load any application without waiting for like 2 minutes

if i load anything more than a web browser, vlc, and either a pdf file or an office document, thats it kaput.

4gb of ram and its almost always less than 40mb free........ i am extremely frustrated without a doubt.

i have sophos to scan for viruses

My 2010 17" MBPS is the same, except it's not as slow as you describe. I also had 4GB and safari will eat it all in 10 minutes and it won't ever get released from inactive memory. Then the computer ends up swapping huge amounts from my hd.

 

[filriyadh]

more pics

some screenshots to further explain.

the screenshot of my reply to this thread was meant to show the rainbow circle for 30 seconds as i tried to click and reply..

Thanks for your advice.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

the screenshot of my reply to this thread was meant to show the rainbow circle for 30 seconds as i tried to click and reply.

Do not use WebKit-based browsers such as Safari and Chrome! I see you use Firefox. This is a good start. Disable all plugins in Firefox, if you do not need the plugins and use extensions like Adblock Plus and NoScript.

 

[filriyadh]

Quick Update

i was about to write back last week after trying it for a week but figured i'd wait longer before giving full response.

Most of the problem was solved the moment i stopped using Safari. I can use 10 word documents, same excel documents, same in adobe pdf, with more than 50 tabs open in chrome no problems.

Quite happy with that.

Its not perfect but its way better than Safari. And I havent yet made the transfer to Firefox yet, I imagine relatively soon maybe, but very honestly, I find chrome much more responsive than firefox for now on Mac.

Thanks for the advice, if any feedback please do send it.

 

[throAU]

It is reporting virtual address space, not memory consumption

 

[Gwyneth Llewely]

Do not use WebKit-based browsers such as Safari and Chrome! I see you use Firefox. This is a good start. Disable all plugins in Firefox, if you do not need the plugins and use extensions like Adblock Plus and NoScript.

Just for the record, why shouldn't we use WebKit-based browsers? Do they have issues with memory allocation?

I'm just curious, really. I have nothing against Firefox, btw. But on many tests I've done, Firefox doesn't really behave so much better than Safari/Chrome. I have a lot of issues with Flash on either of those three browsers: once any of them loads a Flash application, then all of a sudden, the whole Mac will start seriously slowing down — and consuming gigabytes of RAM. This seems to be a "known issue" but I assume that, because Adobe and Apple aren't the best of friends these days, whatever the issue is, it won't be fixed — specially because everybody "expects" people to have 8 or 16 GBytes of RAM on their Macs these days. It would be nice (for me), who only has 2.5 GBytes on her two Macs from late 2006/early 2007, to believe that this issue with Flash only happens with WebKit-based browsers but not with Gecko-based ones...