8GB RAM and Yosemite

[Curt14]

First of all, I've recently upgraded most of my laptop, including a 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM (From 4GB) and installed Yosemite.

It's working brilliantly, it's not slow and fans aren't running loud or anything, battery is going good and nothing is overheating. Love it to be completely honest, I love a good refreshing facelift. It's needed one.

But I've noticed that it seems to be using most of my RAM up even though I just have Safari open? (just switched from Chrome). I'm still learning about the more technical side of my laptop as of late, so I could just be confused considering there is no more pie chart

If someone could give me a heads up or just tell me what I'm reading wrong that would be great.

Mid 2009 MBP 15", SAMSUNG 840 EVO SSD, G.SKILL 8GB RAM

 

[Fzang]

Imagine your RAM being an extremely fast storage drive. Now, what would you gain from having an empty storage drive? Nothing!

Yosemite is therefore taking all the RAM and allocates it generously to everything you may or may not need to use right now. For example, a program you just closed is still stored in RAM unless something else specifically requests to take over this RAM.

Memory pressure and swap space is the real indicator of RAM shortage, and indicates how much is temporarily "swapped" to your hard disk because there's not enough space in RAM for everything.

 

[Curt14]

Imagine your RAM being an extremely fast storage drive. Now, what would you gain from having an empty storage drive? Nothing!

Yosemite is therefore taking all the RAM and allocates it generously to everything you may or may not need to use right now. For example, a program you just closed is still stored in RAM unless something else specifically requests to take over this RAM.

Memory pressure and swap space is the real indicator of RAM shortage, and indicates how much is temporarily "swapped" to your hard disk because there's not enough space in RAM for everything.

I see. That makes more sense. I just opened a few more and a few larger applications, is that still looking normal and healthy? How do I work out the memory pressure etc when it comes into play properly?

 

[cjmillsnun]

The memory pressure is colour coded. You only have to worry if it goes red.

 

[Fzang]

I see. That makes more sense. I just opened a few more and a few larger applications, is that still looking normal and healthy? How do I work out the memory pressure etc when it comes into play properly?

Image

You can check the compressed memory and swap used. Looks like your programs aren't actually using all 8 GB yet. The green graph thing will turn red once it starts to become a problem, but with the stellar memory management in Yosemite you really have to push it far.

 

[leman]

In your fist screenshot, only 3GB is used by the applications and it is likely that much of it includes volatile, low-priority storage that applications can use to speed up their operation. Additional 800Mb is used by the core system. The rest is used to speed up the disk operations.

In general, as the others have already mentioned, the most relevant statistics for you is the memory pressure. If its green, don't even bother to look at other numbers.

 

[Curt14]

Cheers everyone, now I know what to look for. Helped me a fair bit.

 

[h9826790]

Very normal, and actually looks good.

The most important item is to check if there is any Swap (Lower left hand corner).

If that stay at zero (or something like 2xxMB), that's nothing to worry about. However, if it keep increasing to more than a GB, that may be indicate the system lack of RAM.

In Mavericks and Yosemite, OSX is very smart to use all idle RAM to speed up the system. My system can easily use up all my 32G of RAM, however, most of it just use as file cache.

 

[b0fh666]

yep, but I noticed yosemite tends to grow a bigger disk cache... maybe it is caching stuff 'proactively' and mavericks did not.

 

[rodknocker]

As long as the swap file isn't used, everything is fine.

I already noticed that since OS X Yosemite, 8 GB seems to be not enough any longer.
Sometimes my MacBook Pro Retina 13'' is using the swap file.

 

[h9826790]

12MB Swap not really an indication that the system need to use Swap due to lack of RAM. It may cause by some system activity, but not real Swap.

However, it seems that you are very close to the limit, there is not much RAM used as file cache.

 

[rodknocker]

12MB Swap not really an indication that the system need to use Swap due to lack of RAM. It may cause by some system activity, but not real Swap.

Every use of the Swap file is related to low memory.
And this amount is growing here.

But 12 MB isn't that much, you are right... but it shouldn't be there.

 

[h9826790]

Not necessary, there are plenty of cases that the system create a 3xxMB Swap with plenty of idle memory.

I've seen that quit a few times on my own system, more than 12G free RAM (they are free, not even as file cache), but the system create a 2xxMB Swap, and the Swap stay there (when the system is not under heavy load).

This confirmed by other users that have 32G RAM or above, should be nothing to do with low memory.