Maverick and Macbook Pro with 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM. I upgraded and found my RAM in the 3.9 GB range. Mac hangs sometimes. Help?

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Cliff2001 Author

Level 1

9 points

Maverick and Macbook Pro with 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM. I upgraded and found my RAM in the 3.9 GB range. Mac hangs sometimes. Help?

I have a Macbook Pro with 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM. I upgraded to Maverick and found that my RAM usage is up in the 3.9 GB range and my Mac hangs sometimes. Went to Apple store yesterday and they ran their diagnostics. Both Mac hardware and software passed their tests. He went to my user preferences and deleted all my Login Items. There was about an initial 1 GB drop in RAM usage; however, by last night and again today, RAM usage is back up in the 3.9 GB range.

What should the normal RAM operating range be in Maverick?

Any insight on what might be causing the issue?

Or is it a simple matter of needing to upgrade my RAM to 8 GB?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9), 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM

Posted on Nov 3, 2013 3:23 AM

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Answer 1

mario49

Community Specialist

Nov 4, 2013 9:02 AM in response to Cliff2001

Hello Cliff2001,

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

For more information on this, take a look at:

Viewing Mac OS X memory usage and installed RAM

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2353

you can see the overall percentages of memory in use or idle at the bottom of the Activity Monitor window.

Best of luck,

Mario

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Answer 2

Nov 4, 2013 11:54 AM in response to Cliff2001

Same over here.

Apple Mail block system. Using over 2.5 GB at startup.

See my comment: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5516492

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Answer 3

Nov 4, 2013 12:38 PM in response to mario49

My activity monitor shows that I have 4 GB RAM and am using up to 3.99 GB with Maverick. The question is why. Apple specs say Maverick should run on 2GB RAM.

The Apple store tried to tell me I should switch to Safara (from Chrome) and that will help. They also deleted all items under Login items. This used less memory initally, but as time went on memory creeped up to 3.69 GB on average and has been as high as 3.90 GB with only four programs running (Finder, Chrome, Mail, Skype).

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Answer 4

hands4

Level 4

2,246 points

Nov 4, 2013 1:21 PM in response to Cliff1108

Mavericks manages memory differently than previous OS releases. Seeing 3.9 out of 4 GB used is not an issue. If there is excessive paging activity then that would an issue.

Note on my machine 3.92 of 4 GB is used but only 1.36 GB is for App Memory and the Memory Pressure is low.

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