Why am I always running out of RAM?

in the activity monitor look at which process consumes all the RAM. sort by the Real memory column in descending order. what programs are you running?

Message was edited by: V.K.

[This read (especially email 2)|http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010613140025184], while a little dated, should help you better understand what is happening with your RAM. What's happening may not be bad unless you are confident that you are having performance degradation. And, if you are, then the read may explain why. And, [here is another good read|http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Performance/Conceptua l/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html] on memory.

none of this adds up to anywhere close to 5GB. is there more to that list? also, are you running any torrent programs? those can consume RAM in unlimited amounts.
test your RAM just in case. the best RAM testing tool is memtest
http://www.memtestosx.org/joomla/index.php

JeffKasper wrote:
. . .
So I have been running activity monitor and what I am seeing is 40 MB of "Free" RAM with 630 MB "Wired", 2.5 GB "Inactive" and about 5 GB of "Active".

Both "Free" and "Inactive" are (supposed to be) available for use by any process that wants it.

When you first start up, most memory is, of course, "Free." As apps or system processes need memory, that's where OSX gets it. When they release it, however, it does not go back to Free, but to "Inactive" and is identified with the last process that used it. This is done to speed up assigning it back to the previous process if it requests it (which of course is quite common).

So as time passes, you'll see less and less Free memory and more and more Inactive memory; this means your Mac is working properly. In fact, after running for a long time, if there's much Free memory left, it is, in a sense, wasted!

The thing to watch for is Paging. If the "Page outs" figure is high, or changing rapidly, then OSX is having to page stuff out because it's out of both Free and Inactive memory.

A better way to monitor page-outs is via a Terminal command. (The Terminal app is in your Applications/Utilities folder.) Enter the following, exactly as shown, at the prompt:

sar -g 60 10

Leave the terminal window open, then try to re-create the unresponsive problem.

This should tell you if you are doing pageouts. You'll see a line in the Terminal window every 60 seconds for 10 minutes (or until you quit Terminal), showing the number of pageouts per second. A few pageouts is normal. If you have large numbers of pageouts, then you have a memory problem.

So how many pageouts?

When you Go to Folder: /var/vm how many and large are the swap files?

Take it you've said no heavy work or large files in graphics or running CS4 and Illustrator?

I'd test your memory and keep your eye out. And how fragmented your free space and "crowded" your boot drive is. A fast boot drive helps if you are paging.

I've seen Safari chew up 800MB with multiple windows, each window with 10 or more tabs.

Was this article mentioned on using Activity Monitor?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342

When I've downloaded 3GB files, they have stayed in cached memory for some reason; or opening 2GB files.

Would be fun and interesting just to see what happens with 4GB on your system, or 6GB. And to run AHT (Apple Hardware Test).

Are you only looking at USER processes, and filtering what is shown in Activity Monitor? there should be kernel task and others, windows manager, taking up 1GB.

JeffKasper wrote:
I didn't finish reading this entire post because I wanted to jump in.

you said: "When they release it, however, it does not go back to Free, but to "Inactive" and is identified with the last process that used it"

Here's my question, when I close one of the two apps I have running, I can see my "Free" RAM jump in an amount roughly the size of the RAM it was using- by your sentence above, I would see that as being contradictory. Help me to understand this?

My understanding is, quitting an app entirely is treated differently than an app releasing some of it's memory. Think of Mail, for example, wanting to check for new mail every 5 or 10 minutes, or however it's set, but being idle the rest of the time.

And it appears that some apps or processes are treated differently, too, but I don't know enough of the nitty-gritty to be sure.

And of course if there's an app (or process) with a memory leak, it can consume all sorts of memory.

Yes, as Pondini indicates, a large pageout number is a primary indicator of short of RAMness. Unfortunately, it is hard to know how many is too many. But, performance degradation, plus a seemingly large pageout value is a better indicator.

And, as the hatter says, checking on swap file size and quantity is a 3rd indicator. Still, it's a bit hard to know when there is too much of a good thing. Putting all three together though--perceived performance degradation, a seemingly large number of MBs of swapfiles, and a seemingly large number of pageouts--gives an even better indicator of short on RAMness.

Read the first read I linked. All that seems bad is not necessarily bad. But, the root user? Hummmm!