Memory discrepancy as reported by Activity Monitor
I've noticed for a while that the sum of the "Real Memory" column in Activity Monitor (displaying "All Processes" is always significantly less than the Wired+Active memory. For example I just rebooted and the real memory totaled 375MB, the wired 417MB and the active 340MB.
Before rebooting the real memory totaled 804MB, the wired 570MB and the active 2.2GB.
My reading of the article, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342?viewlocale=en_US, suggests to me that active+wire memory should encompass all active background and user processes, whereas inactive memory refers to that memory which has been recently used but is not actively being used.
The person at AppleCare said I should run a hardware diagnostic, which I will, but had no other suggestions, other than bringing it in to an Apple store conveniently located 3 hours away.
So, at long last, my question is why are there such large differences?
Thanks
Before rebooting the real memory totaled 804MB, the wired 570MB and the active 2.2GB.
My reading of the article, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342?viewlocale=en_US, suggests to me that active+wire memory should encompass all active background and user processes, whereas inactive memory refers to that memory which has been recently used but is not actively being used.
The person at AppleCare said I should run a hardware diagnostic, which I will, but had no other suggestions, other than bringing it in to an Apple store conveniently located 3 hours away.
So, at long last, my question is why are there such large differences?
Thanks
macBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 4GB memory, 2.5 GHz
