Resolved RAM Usage: Is this a problem that needs to be fixed

[Michael Goff]

Let's start this off with this basics.

A) Yes, I know how OS X uses RAM. I know that it caches things in a way to make the entire system seem faster
B) Yes, I know Web Browsers take a lot of RAM.

I'm not really doing a lot, though. And this happens:

Is this something you'd consider an issue?

 

[Mr. Buzzcut]

I missed it. What happened?

 

[Michael Goff]

I have 8GB of RAM, and somehow it has managed to go into swap.

 

[Alrescha]

I have 8GB of RAM, and somehow it has managed to go into swap.

No, I have twice that amount of memory and have more in swap. That amount of swap is noise.

A.

 

[Michael Goff]

No, I have twice that amount of memory and have more in swap. That amount of swap is noise.

A.

So the amount of swap is meaningless and I'm just freaking out over nothing?

 

[Alrescha]

So the amount of swap is meaningless

Lacking any other information, yes. You have what appears to be ~3GB of free memory and another ~3GB in cache which could be dumped if the machine were to become memory-constrained.

A.

nb: if you are curious about actual swapping figures, the Terminal command vm_stat will tell you more than you will ever want to know, e.g.: vm_stat 10 will show you updated statistics every ten seconds.

 

[Mr. Buzzcut]

Well it's a tiny amount and not increasing so nothing to fret over IMO.

 

[Natzoo]

Is there an app, that can evenly distribute the RAM and CPU to certain apps? Never got the "not enough memory" warning on my new 15" retina but on my other one it used to happen alot

 

[KALLT]

Is there an app, that can evenly distribute the RAM and CPU to certain apps?

There are apps that promise something like, but I doubt that it will have a positive impact. When applications need memory, they need memory. The system can take memory away when it is needed elsewhere, but how applications respond to memory pressure is to a large extent dependent upon the applications themselves. Some will deallocate memory accordingly and reload when required, others start caching more data onto the hard drive, some may even experience problems. It is best to leave it as it is. If you are constantly reaching the upper limit of your memory, then you might want to consider expanding your RAM or tone down your application usage.