Hi,
I've just bought the 15" Retina Macbook Pro that has 16GB of RAM. I am very surprised to find out (from Activity Monitor) that the memory in use is 15.88GB while I only have a few applications (iTunes, iPhoto, Safari, Mail, Calendar, Contacts) and a 10 safari web pages running.
Mac OS X (10.7)
Having free memory sitting around doing nothing has no value. Having memory instantly available when requested, and having previously-read file data near-at-hand is the goal.
With that in mind, Mavericks and Yosemite completely re-vamped how memory is used. Now, regardless of how much you install in your Mac, you will see that almost all the installed memory will appear to be used up used in short order. Previously-read file data are kept in a special section so that when requests are made, this category is instantly re-allocated to fill your Applications' memory requests. In addition, certain portions of memory are stored in compressed form, which can be un-compressed for use in a tiny fraction of the time needed to fetch from a Drive.
The important factor to inspect to see if your memory is being used in an optimum way is the new "Memory Pressure" graph. If all green, your memory use is optimum. This is explained in this new article under Memory:
OS X Mavericks: About Activity Monitor
.
Having free memory sitting around doing nothing has no value. Having memory instantly available when requested, and having previously-read file data near-at-hand is the goal.
With that in mind, Mavericks and Yosemite completely re-vamped how memory is used. Now, regardless of how much you install in your Mac, you will see that almost all the installed memory will appear to be used up used in short order. Previously-read file data are kept in a special section so that when requests are made, this category is instantly re-allocated to fill your Applications' memory requests. In addition, certain portions of memory are stored in compressed form, which can be un-compressed for use in a tiny fraction of the time needed to fetch from a Drive.
The important factor to inspect to see if your memory is being used in an optimum way is the new "Memory Pressure" graph. If all green, your memory use is optimum. This is explained in this new article under Memory:
OS X Mavericks: About Activity Monitor
.
Here is a screen shot that I took this morning. It was showing Memory Used of 14 GB. I tried adding up those processes that are running as shown in the activity monitor. They do not add up to 14GB.
Also is virtual memory the amount of HDD that is being used like a RAM? I have the PCIe flash storage. I heard that it is not good for this type of storage to be used like a RAM as it will reduce the life span significantly. Is this true? Is there a way to stop the use of virtual memory?
What is that based on? Can you post an image of it in Activity Monitor?
To post screen shot do this:
Hi,
Thanks for your reply. So do you mean that I actually had too many applications opened at the same time? But I thought those applications like Calendar, Contacts etc are not very process intensive applications, and should not take up too much RAM?
Your idea of "a few Applications running" is wildly optimistic.
If you want it to use far less memory, open far fewer of those road-hog Applications at the same time.
Why is my ram usage so high while nothing much is running?
