M3 Max 48GB is using more than my M2 Max 32GB even with the same things running

[David1986H]

Is this because the M3 MAX 48GB has more ram to work with so it might as well use it?

Also my M2 Max is the 30 core vs 40 on my M3 Max so maybe it needs/wants more to run smoothly.

I noticed right after turning it on it was using 5-6 gb ram so the base M3 must be restraint

 

[NT1440]

Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

 

[David1986H]

Also iv noticed that app memory and wired memory doesn't add up to the 32.90GB of memory used

 

[David1986H]

This video explains pretty must everything in the first 5 mins and why its using more.

Basically the Mac will give as much ram as it wants to make things faster / run smoother.

 

[gilby101]

Also iv noticed that app memory and wired memory doesn't add up to the 32.90GB of memory used

Frequently App Memory + Wired Memory + Compressed is greater than Memory Used. My experience is, mostly with Intel not AS, so there may be some differences there. The discrepancies are likely because App Memory is not well defined in terms of underlying memory management counters.

Also, your screenshot shows Used + Cached = 48.89 which is greater than 48!

On my Mac I always see Memory Used + Cached Files + Free Memory > Physical RAM! Free Memory (not shown in Activity Monitor) is one of the counters shown by using the command vm_stat. And if Free Memory is small this becomes Memory Used + Cached Files > Physical RAM.

I believe this arises because the values in Activity Monitor come from adding multiple memory management counters. The Used + Cached > Physical comes, I believe, from adding the same counter into both Used and Cached. The counter might well be Paged Purged - run vm_stat to see this. I have no hard evidence for this - just observation of vm_stat and Activity Monitor.

I reported this in July FB12796112