My Mac's RAM is false.

Question

My Mac's RAM is false.

So about a little more than two years ago I bought a Macbook Air. I always thought that it had 8 GB of RAM, but recently I found out otherwise. The computer is generally laggy; I cannot use high graphics for games that I like to play, and the reason I found out why just recently really just shocked me. I don't want to believe that I got scammed, but here I am.

In the "Activity Monitor" application, it clearly says my computer has 8 GB of Physical Memory in total. However, the amount of RAM it needs to process most if not all of the applications is just absurd, and to what I believe is inaccurate. So I figured out that you can actually check the amount of RAM the device has by going to "About this Mac" on the top left of the screen. In the "System Report" tab it says under "Memory", "Size: 4 GB".

I hope I didn't get scammed, but if I did, I would like an explanation and a refund.

Thank you.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Oct 31, 2021 11:05 AM

Reply

Answer 1

RosaAlba

Level 3

553 points

Oct 31, 2021 11:51 AM in response to DanielJacob15

You don't state precisely what model of Air you have but, as you've said it's 2 years old, I'm assuming it's mid-2019. As the MacBook Air is Apple's 'budget' laptop, unlike the MacBook Pro, it doesn't have a discrete graphics chip and, depending on what you're doing,, the on-board graphics chip will be utilising up to 1.5GB of the computer's RAM. So, whilst it was advertised as having 8GB, there's never actually 8GB available to the OS and apps. The Air is a perfectly good machine if all you're wanting to do is basic office stuff (word processing,, spreadsheets, emails, etc.), and general Web browsing, but it’ll struggle with anything too graphically demanding.

Apple really does need to make it clearer that the Air has an on-board graphics chip which will 'steal' from the advertised amount of RAM.

I think Apple made a mistake by discontinuing the non-Pro MacBook. For many people, the Air isn't powerful enough, but the Pro would be overkill for what they need.

Reply

Answer 2

Oct 31, 2021 11:21 AM in response to muguy

Oh, didn't realize that it meant two different memory cards. However, isn't 8 RAM supposed to process applications smoother than it does on my device? The amount of lag I receive just doesn't seem realistic. Thank you for the answer, though!

Reply

Answer 3

muguy

Level 10

93,208 points

Oct 31, 2021 11:16 AM in response to DanielJacob15

You have two 4GB memory cards in your system, hence the 8 GB of physical memory. Bank 0 and Bank 1 each are 4 GB

Reply

My Mac's RAM is false.

Similar questions