Why is my MBP using so much RAM?

[tmiddled]

I have a Mid 2012 15-inch MBP. It has never ran smoothly. In fact it was my dads for almost 2 years, and he gave it to me because he wasn't happy with it.

It has short mini-freezes. It might work perfectly fine for 10 minutes or so, but then will just freeze for 10-15 seconds doing normal things. Just whilst typing, switching between tabs or opening in a file. It does this more often than not, making it impossible to use.

So I took it to a Genius Bar, and he said that the problem was definitely not enough RAM, which I was sceptical of for the reason that I have the same RAM in my Air, and have no issues. So I monitored the RAM usage in activity monitor, and I was almost always hovering at or near 4GB. So I took his advice and purchased 2X4GB Crucial RAM and installed them today.

But there is no change. Looking at the activity monitor now I am just always hovering at or near 8GB of ram, despite having almost no applications open.

This leads me to believe that there is something else wrong, why would it use 8GB of RAM with almost nothing open? I've attached a screenshot of my activity monitor when I had pretty much nothing open except one safari tab.

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks!
Tom

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I have also replaced the hard drive (under warranty at apple store), and have reformatted the computer. The hard drive replacement helped a bit, but still having massive issues.

I have a macbook air and love it, it is so much faster in every regard and the specs are a lot less.

Thanks

 

[yjchua95]

I have a Mid 2012 15-inch MBP. It has never ran smoothly. In fact it was my dads for almost 2 years, and he gave it to me because he wasn't happy with it.

It has short mini-freezes. It might work perfectly fine for 10 minutes or so, but then will just freeze for 10-15 seconds doing normal things. Just whilst typing, switching between tabs or opening in a file. It does this more often than not, making it impossible to use.

So I took it to a Genius Bar, and he said that the problem was definitely not enough RAM, which I was sceptical of for the reason that I have the same RAM in my Air, and have no issues. So I monitored the RAM usage in activity monitor, and I was almost always hovering at or near 4GB. So I took his advice and purchased 2X4GB Crucial RAM and installed them today.

But there is no change. Looking at the activity monitor now I am just always hovering at or near 8GB of ram, despite having almost no applications open.

This leads me to believe that there is something else wrong, why would it use 8GB of RAM with almost nothing open? I've attached a screenshot of my activity monitor when I had pretty much nothing open except one safari tab.

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks!
Tom

----------

I have also replaced the hard drive (under warranty at apple store), and have reformatted the computer. The hard drive replacement helped a bit, but still having massive issues.

I have a macbook air and love it, it is so much faster in every regard and the specs are a lot less.

Thanks

You need an SSD, not a new hard drive. A new HDD isn't going to solve anything, and neither will more RAM if you memory pressure is always green.

 

[DeltaMac]

... So I monitored the RAM usage in activity monitor, and I was almost always hovering at or near 4GB. So I took his advice and purchased 2X4GB Crucial RAM and installed them today.
But there is no change. Looking at the activity monitor now I am just always hovering at or near 8GB of ram, despite having almost no applications open.
This leads me to believe that there is something else wrong, why would it use 8GB of RAM with almost nothing open?
...
Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks!
...
I have also replaced the hard drive (under warranty at apple store), and have reformatted the computer. The hard drive replacement helped a bit, but still having massive issues.
...

(Pretty much everything that yjchua95 said ^ ^ ^ )
I assume that you are running Yosemite.
That system will attempt to use as much memory as you have available.
There's no problem with that, if system performance is not affected.

What can show a difference is that Memory tab in Activity Monitor.
When you watch that memory window, is the Memory pressure green , or yellow/red? If you see yellow, and particularly red, you may still benefit from more memory (your 2012 MBPro can have 16GB as a maximum) If it is always green, then you likely have some other issue, and you may need to check for particular software using a lot of processor time, for example. You can check for some of those kind of issues in your Activity Monitor.

And, with Yosemite, it is a worthwhile investment to change out a hard drive for an SSD.
The change in performance with an SSD is also why your Air is better performing, even with less RAM.

 

[tmiddled]

Thanks, I misunderstood how the memory in activity monitor works. My memory pressure is currently green so maybe the additional RAM has fixed the issue. I'll see how I go over the coming days.

I am running Yosemite, just installed a few days ago.
Cheers,

 

[yjchua95]

Thanks, I misunderstood how the memory in activity monitor works. My memory pressure is currently green so maybe the additional RAM has fixed the issue. I'll see how I go over the coming days.

I am running Yosemite, just installed a few days ago.
Cheers,

PS: Yosemite doesn't play well with ordinary HDDs. Get an SSD for it and it'll absolutely fly.

 

[simonsi]

I have a Mid 2012 15-inch MBP. It has never ran smoothly. In fact it was my dads for almost 2 years, and he gave it to me because he wasn't happy with it.

No need to guess or throw parts, RAM or SSDs at it. Look at Activity Monitor, something is likely using CPU or HDD in those pause periods, sort the appropriate tab so the highest usage is at the top, then you should be able to see what is causing it and fix it... post a screenshot of the results here if you aren't sure what it means.

 

[Meister]

So I took it to a Genius Bar, and he said that the problem was definitely not enough RAM, which I was sceptical of for the reason that I have the same RAM in my Air, and have no issues. So I monitored the RAM usage in activity monitor, and I was almost always hovering at or near 4GB. So I took his advice and purchased 2X4GB Crucial RAM and installed them today.

But there is no change.

Oh, Lord!

Of course there is no change. The chances are very, very slim that what you are experiencing is caused by insufficient amounts of ram. We had posters on here telling the same story as you and the "genius" also recommended more ram! and of course it also didn't help. It never does. Why would it? I personally know an ex-genius and I can tell you that many of these people don't seem to be very computer literate. They do only seem to be a tad more competent than what you get on the other line when you call care.

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I have also replaced the hard drive (under warranty at apple store), and have reformatted the computer. The hard drive replacement helped a bit, but still having massive issues.

I have a macbook air and love it, it is so much faster in every regard and the specs are a lot less.

Thanks

Your macbook air's specs are not less. That's why it is faster.

At least the old hdd was under warranty, but as recommended by everyone else:
Get an ssd!

 

[UrMacGenie]

By my calculations 10.10.5 is using at least 500mb more ram. Every time Apple has increase ram since 10.0 it has made the OS slower. Looking through the Activity monitor we find new CRAP like Photo Agent and Keychain Circle Notification even though I don't use these. Wonderfull to have a new machine every year but sorry Apple at what your charging this is not a reality for 85% of your users. The only saviour is to either not be on "the bleeding edge of technology" or get yourself a Samsung SSD with 5-10 year warranty on the Pro version, yes puts Apples money grab for Applecare 3 year warranty to shame.

 

[simonsi]

By my calculations 10.10.5 is using at least 500mb more ram.

Having stuff in RAM doesn't, by itself, consume any processor e.g. if the Photos code is siting there waiting for you to plug in a camera, so what until you plug said camera in.

If your machine is slower in use, what processes are using the cpu? I find 10.10.4 uses less cpu than 10.10.3 and 10.10.5 is even better, each one has delivered better battery life as a consequence - YMMV

 

[Kissmyne]

No need to guess or throw parts, RAM or SSDs at it. Look at Activity Monitor, something is likely using CPU or HDD in those pause periods, sort the appropriate tab so the highest usage is at the top, then you should be able to see what is causing it and fix it... post a screenshot of the results here if you aren't sure what it means.

Seriously, it is silly to jump into spending money on hardware when you don't know what the issue actually is...