Activity monitor memory numbers don't add up

Activity Monitor reports that I have 7.99 GB of memory in use. However, the numbers for individual processes don't add up to nearly that large of a number. What could be causing such a huge disparity between those two? Is there something I'm missing (and yes, I have it set to show all processes)?

For one the File Cache is not included in the process display as the use of the file cache is system wide. It is also not shown in the kernel usage.
At the moment Activity monitor for my system shows the Kernel using 1.019 GB of real memory, the File cache at 2.95 GB.
There may well be other memory allocations that are system wide function and services that are not readily attributable or allocatable to individual processes. If you look at the screen shot above:
Memory Used = App memory + File Cache + Wired memory.
I suspect that App Memory = the sum of the Proceess Real memory column

Similar Messages

  • Activity Monitor -- Memory.   Details Needed.

    Could anyone point out what exactly the "Free" and "Inactive" memory spaces are??
    I'm running on a 2GB RAM MacBook Pro. I don't run too many mem intensive programs. But quite often the "Free" mem would drop to 100-150 MB. But at that point, the "Inactive" mem would be around 500-600 MB. So what exactly a I looking at? Am I facing a mem crunch?
    I'm new to OSX. from my previous experience with Windows OSes, how much ever RAM you give it, the OS will take a huge chunk and then free up as necessary. Is it something like that that I'm looking at over here? Or am I supposed to go for a mem upgrade?
    And I know the next question is might be out of place, but, after quite wome time of browsing on Firefox, it seems to take 500+ MB of RAM. Is that normal??
    Thanks in advance for your replies & suggestions.

    About OS X Memory Management and Usage
    Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
    Memory Management in Mac OS X
    Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X
    A detailed look at memory usage in OS X
    Understanding top output in the Terminal
    The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.
    It's not abnormal for browsers to eventually use a huge amount of RAM. Use the latest version of your browser that's available. Emptying some of the browsers caches like the History cache will help somewhat, but the best way to recover the memory is to quit then relaunch the browser - or just don't worry about it and put more RAM in your computer.

  • Activity monitor memory usage pie chart gone?

    What happened to the pie chart that sits in the dock that shows memory usage?  I found this very useful in the past, and Mavericks seems to have removed it from the dock options.

    Uhhh, I know it's a bit late for this but...
    darlingdearie wrote:
    I don't have a dock icon called "memory pressure graph".
    I have
    CPU Usage
    CPU History
    Network Usage
    Disk Activity
    so it's hard to know what you're taking about when referring the the "memory pressure graph".
    Please clarify. Thanks!
    ... it sounds like you have a previous version of the Activity Monitor.  The one that comes with 10.9 has
    CPU
    Memory
    Energy
    Disk
    Network
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  • Activity Monitor, Memory and Freezes

    I've had a few Logic freezes recently so I open Activity Monitor to try and find some info. Firstly if the CPU use and threads next to Logic Pro keep changing is there a chance that Logic will unfreeze if it's been stuck for say over 5 minutes?
    Also I'm trying to see how near I am to the memory ceiling. I've got 32 GB in my MacPro so it's not a shortage of RAM more hitting the single app limit. I don't understand the relationship between "Real Memory" and "Virtual Memory" as regards the single app limit. Logic has just crashed and the associated readings are Logic Real 2.13GB Virtual 3.88GB, VSL Daemon Real 7.02MB Virtual 867MB, VSL Server 2.35GB Real 3.31 GB Virtual. ousiad (is this East West Play plug-in?) 816kb Real 2.57 GB Virtual, Vienna Ensemble 882MB Real 2.5GB Virtual. Total free memory is 20.11GB.
    If someone can help my understanding this would most be welcome!
    Thanks
    Julian

    "Virtual 3.88GB" - That's the one that kills your Logic app.
    You can read a lot on the forums that Logic has this limit of around 3.5GB of memory that it can allocate. I want to point out two things from my experience.
    1) This limit is about the "Virtual Memory" not the "Real Memory".
    2) When you get close to that limit, Logic just crashes. You would figure that it might give you just an alert box with a memory warning, no - poof - Logic is gone.
    A few more things.
    * Keep your Activity Monitor open and be very careful when you go across the 3GB "Virtual Memory" line. Every additional Plugin could push you over the edge.
    * Besides loading additional instruments, there are other factors that you should be aware of. i.e. Apple Loop Browser. If you have a big Apple Loop library and you make a search on all loops, you can see in the Activity Monitor that such a search could require a few hundred MB of additional Virtual Memory. That's enough to cross the line and crash Logic. Believe me, it took me a while (and a lot of frustration and restarts) until I figured that out.
    So why the difference between the "Real Memory" and "Virtual Memory" number. I seems that this leads into hardcore programming voodoo,aka "I have no idea". One observation I made is the impact of the graphic cards. Usually the Virtual Memory number is about 300-500MB bigger thatn the Real Memory number. When I changed my 2 graphic cards to new ones with more VRAM the difference between the Real and Virtual Memory number grew to 1GB . Don't asked me how long it took me to figure out that relation. All I saw was that I couldn't load big Logic Projects that I worked on before with no problem.
    Bottom line:
    The more stuff you load into Logic, the closer you have to monitor Activity Monitor and save more frequently.
    Think about how often you read forum posts that Logic is completely unstable and crashes all the time. I bet that a high percentage is related to user hitting that Virtual Memory limitation.

  • New mac user concerned about my mac hot monitor, read something about checking the activity monitor but I don't know what to do from there'

    Please help

    If your system is <90 days old, or you have Applecare, call Apple for support. Here are the numbers.
    If over 90 days and you don't have Applecare, install iStat Pro to see what is heating up. You can bring up Activity Monitor (on your hard drive in applications/utilities) to see if any programs are churning the CPU keeping it busy with 20% to 30% + usage. Be aware that the newer systems run hotter than older systems, and this is generally OK. Also, the ambient temperature of the room has a lot to do with system component temps.  

  • Activity Monitor & Memory

    I have 8 GB installed in my MBP, so why does Activity Monitor report only 7.75 GB?
    Mark

    Hi Mark,
    256MB of the main memory (REM) is shared with the Nvidia 9400M graphics processor regardless if its in use or not.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/SP546
    Regards
    Stefan

  • Activity Monitor Memory Pie Chart

    I set the dock icon to monitor my memory usage as I do a lot of work in VM's that can chew through what's available.  After updating the only icons are CPU, Network, and Disk usage. What happened to Memory?
    And yes, I know there are other more informative resource monitors out there, but Activity Monitor had the best "at a glance" dashboard.

    This is no longer an option, especially since Mavericks has new memory management routines (ie, memory compression) that make the charting of memory usage less straightforward. Apple has switched to a new "Memory Pressure" approach to viewing memory usage, which is available in the Memory section of Activity Monitor, but so far has not been added as a Dock icon option. Hopefully Apple will do so, as this would perhaps be one of the more useful Dock icon options.

  • Numbers don't add up all the time

    I am new at this.
    using Pro 9
    I have an invoice and I have my numbers being mutiplied like this: Text41*Text42
    I have my numbered being added like this:  TotalRow17+TotalRow18+TotalRow19
    They mutipliy ok , but  they don't add correctly:
    I have  four bottom figures that should add up: 
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    I am attaching a fillable form,
    Thanks for any help

    Ok, I understand a little more about order, so I moved all my totals, to the bottom.
    this should have fixed any adding sequence, but it still doesn't compute right.
    check out the last 8 lines from the bottom--"add item.....................etc
    I put in 2 and then $2  on the first line, go to the second line, do the same it only computes some of it.
    then I go and delete them and some numbers stay in th "total cost".
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  • How much data does a cellular iPad use ? The numbers in usage don't add up

    WWhere has all the data space gone? I have 2 yr. old iPad running iOS 8. It has 16 GB storage and has cellular capability that I'm not using. Usage settings tell me I have about 1 GB of storage left. I have added up the usage numbers including 1.1 GB for iOS and come up with a total of 4.91. The numbers don't add up. Am I missing something that does not show up in the usage settings? Thanks

    Thanks for your reply however my problem is after adding up all apps and iOS using data storage I come up with about 5GB storage used. The iPad says there is only 1 GB of storage left. That would be a total of 6 GB. What happened to the rest of the storage space on my 16 GB ipad ? Thanks

  • Activity Monitor misreports RAM?

    I have the brand new aluminum macbook with 2 gigs of ram. I looked in activity Monitor before and it was telling me that I was using 500 megabytes of ram, with no programs running. I looked at all the processes and they could not possibly have added up to 500. I know that green and blue are free and that red is for the OS. It was just the yellow that I looked at and all the processes, even including kernel_task (which is counted under wired, right?), could not have added up to 500. Please help!

    You've given us nothing to suggest a problem. Activity Monitor does not provide information on background processes. When you say, "they could not possibly have added up to 500," that means you don't really know what they added to nor that you know what to add.
    See the following:
    About OS X Memory Management and Usage
    Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
    Memory Management in Mac OS X
    Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X
    A detailed look at memory usage in OS X
    Understanding top output in the Terminal
    The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.

  • Running Activity Monitor To Shut Unnecessary Functions Off?

    I just ran Activity Monitor to see how the CPU on my MacBook was doing and saw all these "root" functions and this Quicklook thing that list almost 600MB of RAM/Virtual Memory usage. iVirus usage 171MB. Are there ways to disable apps and directory actions that are totally unnecessary to save RAM and CPU actions? Any links to Activity Monitor tutorials?
    Also since the SL 10.6.1 update, the fan comes on more frequently and the casing underneath is getting warmer. I assume this has to be related to something related to what is going on in Activity Monitor. Any clues there?
    I have 4GB RAM.
    Thanks for any help and ideas on what could improve the MacBook performance.
    Steve

    I would stay away from killing processes you know nothing about as that can lead to the OS failing to function. As for Activity Monitor and memory management see the following:
    About OS X Memory Management and Usage
    Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
    Memory Management in Mac OS X
    Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X
    A detailed look at memory usage in OS X
    Understanding top output in the Terminal
    The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.
    About OS X system processes - MacFixIt;
    OS X Process Management- Guide to Activity Monitor - MacFixIt.

  • Activity monitor freezes and shows no processes

    I've been having a recurring problem lately. I have two large Numbers files with lots of cell references. When working with these files, my MacBook's brain seems to be melting: operations as simple as changing worksheets can take a few minutes, editing cell contents can take several minutes more. Copying and pasting is a "set it up, make some lunch, come back and check" kind of operation.
    The performance was so remarkably bad that I thought I should open up the Activity monitor and see how much of the CPU Numbers was using. However, I found that whenever I try to open the Activity Monitor, no processes are listed and the monitor hangs indefinitely with the swirling "waiting" pointer. No processes ever show up, no matter how long I wait, and the monitor is frozen with the "waiting" pointer. If I try to force quit the process, it is listed as "Not Responding".
    Any suggestions for what might be going on here and how to fix it? Could the Activity Monitor and Numbers issue be related? I'd like to troubleshoot the Activity Monitor first and then move over to the Numbers forum if necessary to figure out the problem there.
    Thanks very much,
    Adrian

    Had to do a disk repair from the Mac OS X install disk.

  • Activity monitor Page Out question

    Is there a way to get Page Outs to report the number of page outs rather than bytes ?
    And when did this change, as it used to report in # of pages.... I think in 10.5

    Sorry, but that cannot be changed. If you want a better report of that information then open the Terminal and enter: top then press RETURN. Top's information is more complete than what is reported in Activity Monitor. Also see:
    About OS X Memory Management and Usage
    Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
    Memory Management in Mac OS X
    Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X
    A detailed look at memory usage in OS X
    Understanding top output in the Terminal
    The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.

  • Checking Memory Usage via the Activity Monitor

    In trying to find out why iPhoto is so slow, it was suggested that I check the activity monitor to see what applications are using the most memory. Here is what I saw (see below). Does anyone know what kernel_task is? It is using up the most memorr and I have no idea what it is. I would have asked this of the very generous person who has been helping me but I could not reply to his last post....thanks for any information.

    Uninstall it. You don't need it.
    Be sure to uninstall it properly - there will likely be files littered around the various LaunchAgent, LaunchDaemon folders.

  • Activity monitor inconsistancy - what is real virtual memory size???

    When I look at my activity montior system memory screen I see real and virtual memory in MB (with the largest at about 500MB).  As in my previous post I see a VM size of >240GB.  When I go to the File menu and hit Save... and then look at the resulting processes.txt file I see that the virtual memory is now listed in GB.  The real memory is consistent with what I see on the activity monitor window.  See below.  What's up?  Which virtual memory is real and which is "virtual"?
    Active Memory: 1.47 GB
    Free Memory: 846.1 MB
    Wired Memory: 770.8 MB
    Used Memory: 3.17 GB
    Inactive Memory: 972.1 MB
    Total VM: 231.35 GB
    Number of processes: 100
    PID    Process Name              User       CPU      Real Mem        Virtual Mem   
    0      kernel_task               root       4.9      384.3 MB        4.45 GB         
    1      launchd                   root       0.0      2.2 MB          2.34 GB         
    11     UserEventAgent            root       0.0      4.4 MB          2.35 GB         
    12     kextd                     root       0.0      3.4 MB          2.33 GB         
    14     notifyd                   root       0.0      1.5 MB          2.34 GB         
    15     securityd                 root       0.0      8.9 MB          2.36 GB         
    16     powerd                    root       0.0      1.8 MB          2.35 GB         
    17     configd                   root       0.0      4.5 MB          2.34 GB         
    18     syslogd                   root       0.0      1.1 MB          2.34 GB         
    19     diskarbitrationd          root       0.0      1.5 MB          2.33 GB         
    20     distnoted                 root       0.0      2.1 MB          2.35 GB         
    21     cfprefsd                  root       0.0      1.8 MB          2.33 GB         
    22     opendirectoryd            root       0.0      9.8 MB          2.36 GB         
    25     warmd                     nobody     0.0      5.5 MB          2.34 GB         
    26     usbmuxd                   _usbmuxd   0.0      2.3 MB          2.34 GB         
    29     stackshot                 root       0.0      1.2 MB          2.33 GB         
    30     SleepServicesD            root       0.0      1.5 MB          2.33 GB         
    32     revisiond                 root       0.0      2.6 MB          2.35 GB         
    37     mds                       root       0.0      124.2 MB        3.04 GB         
    38     mDNSResponder             _mdnsrespo 0.0      3.8 MB          2.34 GB         
    41     loginwindow               prdwyer    0.0      27.8 MB         2.47 GB         
    42     locationd                 _locationd 0.0      7.3 MB          2.36 GB         

    Ignore that. The method it's calculated works as following:
    1. You have the Finder and Safari open.
    2. Both programs and no other ones use the content of a single block of data. This block takes up 2MB of RAM or swapfile space.
    3. The block is counted as 4MB in the VM size entry because it's being used twice.
    Expanding the scenario over many processes and blocks adds up to a VM size figure which is far larger than the actual amount in use or the combined total of RAM and swapfile space.
    (48360)

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