I just restarted my computer about 40 minutes ago to solve this problem once and my active memory is already out of control. Activity monitor says there's over 5.2 GB of active memory, but looking at the process list there's not nearly that much. I'll add a link to a screenshot of my activity monitor. I have run absolutely nothing that is not in the list currently. Any idea what's going on?
Aaron Cohen2 wrote:
Any idea what's going on?
Everything there looks normal to me.
See
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342>
on how to interpret what you're looking at.
Do you actually have a problem? Because, judging by this, you're fine.
Couple of things.
One, my understanding is that most of the memory that is shown as active should actually be inactive (blue). According to how it works, memory that has been recently used by a program that is now shut down will generally show up as inactive, not active.
Two, like I said in my original post, my computer had just been restarted about 40 minutes before that image was taken. There was nothing running that I shut down before this picture was taken.
This does not look normal to me.
Aaron Cohen2 wrote:
This does not look normal to me.
As far as I understand it, and as far as I can judge from the info you provided, you don't have a problem and your memory usage is normal. I'm sorry you don't like the answer, but I'm not going to argue with you. There are people here with real problems. Good luck to you.
Well, thanks for your concern, but I won't miss you if you don't post another reply.
I did some watching and I have a little more info. I kept activity monitor open and kept an eye on it after another reboot. The apps I had open were: FCP, Compressor, Safari (open to gmail in the background and this thread in another tab), and iTunes. Nothing else.
At some point, without me doing anything specific to prompt it, the active memory (yellow) jumped from ~1.3GB all the way up to ~5.5 in the span of about 5 or 6 seconds. When I say I didn't do anything, I mean I happened to be doing something on my phone when I noticed it. I suspect it has something to do with Safari, but even when I shut every program down, the active memory stays at around 5-5.5 GB. The only thing I can do to get it down is to reboot.
...the active memory stays at around 5-5.5 GB. The only thing I can do to get it down is to reboot.
And is that the only reason you are rebooting, i.e., just because you see a little too much yellow in a pie chart? Is your perfomance degrading? Is anything not acting as expected (other than your interpretation of the Activity Monitor).
Like fane_j I don't see anything obviously wrong with what I see either?
That much RAM already being used after a reboot sure seems excessive to me. There's quite a few third party items running on my Mac, along with the OS, and I only have 1.9 GB active at the moment.
Your wired RAM is a bit less than half of mine, but your active RAM is darned high for a restart value. Change the pull down menu at the top to Active Processes. What stands out?
Oh! Duh. Just noticed that Final Cut Pro was running. By default, if you haven't changed the preferences, it grabs as much RAM as possible. Being a 32 bit app, that means it will commandeer 4 GB of RAM while running, not just the 170 MB shown in the Activity Monitor. Close FCP and I would bet just about anything your Active RAM will drop to less than 2 GB.
I appreciate all the replies!
I can't speak for how FCP is supposed to act, but to start, it o my takes up about 1GB. As I'm using it it very gradually grabs more. At some point though, the yellow part of the graph JUMPS to about 5.5 in just a few seconds. Once that happens, FCP is still only at about 1-1.5 according to the list.
An I've tried shutting everything down, with Finder being the only thing left running, and the yellow active memory barely goes down at all.
It's my work computer so I can post more pics on Monday to show you.
Big memory leak in Snow Leopard? Active memory out of control!
