I've noticed heavier RAM usage with Yosemite. I generally have 11-12GB free when idling. I have 9GB free running two programs. Has anyone else noticed more RAM usage? I have 16gb and I don't think a system should be using this much! Thoughts anyone?
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RAM Hog?
- Thread starter TC400
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Did you enable FireVault? If so, it takes quite a while to index and then optimize. I upgraded maybe 2 hours ago and the process is nowhere near complete. Check out the security section in System Preferences and look under the FireVault tab.
Yeah mine is hogging almost 9GB / 16GB using just Messages and Safari. Must be Firevault, which I also have enabled.
I did not enable Firevault and Yosemite uses significantly more memory than Mavericks did. With just Safari running, I now show 7 GB free (out of 16) whereas on Mavericks it would be 10 or so.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Yosemite designed to make use of most (if not all) available memory? As long as I don't notice any lag in my apps/programs, I don't particularly care about the RAM usage.
A bit yeah 
Mavericks used to run quite well, using not all available RAM. Yosemite is currently showing (Activity Monitor) Physical Memory 8GB, Memory Used 7.93GB, Virtual Memory 9.00GB and Swap Used 36.0MB. Memory pressure is perfectly fine though.
Oddy iStat Menus is reporting 1.49GB used and 6.51GB free so I'm guessing something's not quite right there now.
Mavericks used to run quite well, using not all available RAM. Yosemite is currently showing (Activity Monitor) Physical Memory 8GB, Memory Used 7.93GB, Virtual Memory 9.00GB and Swap Used 36.0MB. Memory pressure is perfectly fine though.
Oddy iStat Menus is reporting 1.49GB used and 6.51GB free so I'm guessing something's not quite right there now.
That would be true if the OS consistently releases cached memory back to the pool in a timely manner. The problem is, OS X rarely releases memory quickly enough to prevent a page out, thus causing the OS and apps to use HDD/SSD instead of RAM for portion of its operation until you reboot the Mac.
Just noticed some horrible lagging when clicking on Menu Bar icons. Check Activity Monitor and I was using 7.98GB of the available 8GB, there was just under 14GB of Virtual Memory and about 4GB swap being used. Memory Pressure was red and near the top of the graph. System CPU was up at about 20% too for some reason.
Apps open? Safari, Finder and App Store. Never notice any slowdowns like this on Mavericks even when pushing it with multiple Safari, Finder windows and tabs open, using Handbrake to transcode a video file and using Lightroom all at the same time.
Apps open? Safari, Finder and App Store. Never notice any slowdowns like this on Mavericks even when pushing it with multiple Safari, Finder windows and tabs open, using Handbrake to transcode a video file and using Lightroom all at the same time.
That was true of Mavericks, but Yosemite seems to eat up much more RAM, and I find it dips itself into the Swap pool far too often.
Same here. With a couple of programs open, I feel the sluggishness of my 2013 rMBP (8GB). I've never experienced this on Maverick with more programs open.
Ram Hog
This is my first Mac and I loved Mavericks but I'm concerned with the Ram usage in the OS update. I have a MBP 13.3 with 4Gb of ram and I am noticing that there is less that a Gb of ram quite a lot of the time I use my mac for Djing and hope that this will not cause a lot of problems. I dropped windows for the reason of to much going on to and depleting resources. Any help or hints? when I did the upgrade I allowed file vault to encrypt was this the proper thing to do? it took 19 hours to complete.
This is my first Mac and I loved Mavericks but I'm concerned with the Ram usage in the OS update. I have a MBP 13.3 with 4Gb of ram and I am noticing that there is less that a Gb of ram quite a lot of the time I use my mac for Djing and hope that this will not cause a lot of problems. I dropped windows for the reason of to much going on to and depleting resources. Any help or hints? when I did the upgrade I allowed file vault to encrypt was this the proper thing to do? it took 19 hours to complete.
As long as your memory pressure is green, then you are fine.
If you have 8 gigs of RAM why not use it? Its a waste if you don't.
If you have 8 gigs of RAM why not use it? Its a waste if you don't.
Swap
I have a 13' MBA mid 2012 with 4 gb of ram. I performed a clean install.
All I do is light computig (Safari mostly 3 tabs and iTunes, maybe iPhoto).
I noticed that all my memory is full and Yosemite starts to swap files. This never happened with Mavericks. Also, the UI seems to be drastically slow compared to Mavs. Does anyone have similar experience? Can someone help me out? I think Yosemite is supposed to run flawsely on my Mac with even 4 GB of ram as I only do light computing.
I just begin to feel that Apple released an unfinished product (do not hit me, I love Apple, I use Macs for alsmost 10 years). I've been with every OS X from Tiger to Yosemite. And the only OS that was crappy until Yosemite was Lion.
I have a 13' MBA mid 2012 with 4 gb of ram. I performed a clean install.
All I do is light computig (Safari mostly 3 tabs and iTunes, maybe iPhoto).
I noticed that all my memory is full and Yosemite starts to swap files. This never happened with Mavericks. Also, the UI seems to be drastically slow compared to Mavs. Does anyone have similar experience? Can someone help me out? I think Yosemite is supposed to run flawsely on my Mac with even 4 GB of ram as I only do light computing.
I just begin to feel that Apple released an unfinished product (do not hit me, I love Apple, I use Macs for alsmost 10 years). I've been with every OS X from Tiger to Yosemite. And the only OS that was crappy until Yosemite was Lion.
Yeah, that's my issue with it. I have 100% no problem at all letting all the RAM be used so things work quicker. However, when there's swapping now going on that didn't happen before, then to me that means it's not quite working as it should and rather than flushing unused RAM it seems to be using the swap. Under Mavericks I could use the iMac quite heavily and get no swapping, or very little. At the minute my Yosemite install seems to swap out stuff just because it wants to. I've seen the swap file grow by 50MB (OK not a lot I admit) between putting it to sleep and waking it back up again.
Memory pressure is fine, although again, I have seen it rise higher under lighter use than it was rising under heavy load under Mavericks.
I'm not finding any problems with the UI being slow apart form a couple of occasions where clicking menubar icons has resulted in the beachball but RAM usage does seem......flaky I think is the best way I can describe it. But I'll see what 10.10.1 brings when it comes before I mess about with clean installs. Just don't have the time.
Memory pressure is fine, although again, I have seen it rise higher under lighter use than it was rising under heavy load under Mavericks.
I'm not finding any problems with the UI being slow apart form a couple of occasions where clicking menubar icons has resulted in the beachball but RAM usage does seem......flaky I think is the best way I can describe it. But I'll see what 10.10.1 brings when it comes before I mess about with clean installs. Just don't have the time.
The argument: it's a waste if you don't use it, so be happy it is being used - is a bit silly.
It's not efficient and not a good sign at all if you have 1 window open and your OS is hogging the memory as if you were to have 100 windows open.
The OP poses a legitimate question. I currently have Photoshop and Safari open and it uses 8.5GB of 16GB, so I'm content with that, but someone else reporting 9-11GB of usage without those apps (or any other apps) open should not be content with those results.
It's not efficient and not a good sign at all if you have 1 window open and your OS is hogging the memory as if you were to have 100 windows open.
The OP poses a legitimate question. I currently have Photoshop and Safari open and it uses 8.5GB of 16GB, so I'm content with that, but someone else reporting 9-11GB of usage without those apps (or any other apps) open should not be content with those results.
The number of open windows is no indication of what your computer is doing.
You need to fire up Activity Monitor and order the results in decreasing use of memory to find out where your memory is being used. Depending on how recently you upgraded the OS, or what background processes you have running, wildly different amounts of memory can be in use at any time.
If the Memory Pressure is green you have zero memory problems. You should not be afraid if your computer is claiming a large amount of RAM. It does it on a speculative basis, and if memory is subsequently required by a higher priority task, it will be released.
OS X is not Windows XP in this respect!
I have 32G of RAM, can't feel any difference about RAM managing between Mavericks and Yosemite. They both constantly shows about 2G of wired memory, another 8G of app memory, and the rest are basically for caching under normal usage (Safari, email, iMessage, etc.).
However, I am very impressed by Yosemite that can almost always fully utilise my 3G or VRAM. In Mavericks, it occasionally use more than 1G, but now, almost alway use all 3G. Of course, I mean normal use, not gaming or 3D work.
However, I am very impressed by Yosemite that can almost always fully utilise my 3G or VRAM. In Mavericks, it occasionally use more than 1G, but now, almost alway use all 3G. Of course, I mean normal use, not gaming or 3D work.
I'm still trying to comprehend the RAM usage!
I'm still trying to comprehend the RAM usage in both Mavericks and Yosemite. Clearly on my MP 5.1 with 24GB RAM OSX 10.10 uses Swap and Mavericks dos not. Do I need to upgrade my RAM?
Top 5 users of RAM:
Puzzled!
I'm still trying to comprehend the RAM usage in both Mavericks and Yosemite. Clearly on my MP 5.1 with 24GB RAM OSX 10.10 uses Swap and Mavericks dos not. Do I need to upgrade my RAM?
Top 5 users of RAM:
Puzzled!
This is why you buy the most memory you can when you purchase the computer. I felt that Mavericks combined with the apps I use was at its limit at 16GB. With the same apps plus Yosemite I feel that 16GB is the bare minimum.
I am hoping that the 2015 MBPs will offer something more than 16GB. I would happily pay for 32GB.
I can't imagine running Yosemite with some professional apps in only 8GB of memory. Yikes!
-P
I am hoping that the 2015 MBPs will offer something more than 16GB. I would happily pay for 32GB.
I can't imagine running Yosemite with some professional apps in only 8GB of memory. Yikes!
-P