Weird memory issues in Snow Leopard (can't see all 4GB, hitting swap a lot faster)

Hey guys,

This is a clean 10.6 install, everything working perfectly and all apps seem to run ok.
One thing I noticed was that I'm hitting the swap file a lot faster than I used to. Activity monitor also reports 3.75GB or RAM instead of 4GB (using the default 32-bit kernel, haven't tried the 64-bit one).

Here's a screenshot

Any thoughts?

Mine's exactly the same,can't get to the bottom of it,normal?

My first guess, based upon the mac you appear to have, would be the 256m reserved for the 9400m as I would expect to see 3.75MB avail on a system with a gpu using shared ram taking 256m for video...

Nethfel said:

My first guess, based upon the mac you appear to have, would be the 256m reserved for the 9400m as I would expect to see 3.75MB avail on a system with a gpu using shared ram taking 256m for video...

Click to expand...

I'm using the 9600M GT chip, not the 9400. I did boot up with the 9400 and then switched. Could it be that the 256MB are being reserved for the (now disabled) integrated video?

It's possible. I don't know how apple handles the disabled 9400m - if it actually releases the memory, or leaves it locked due to hardware design.

To me it just seems odd that the exact amount you are short is the amount that would be reserved by the 9400m at the very least while it's in use...

Another thing to consider - I don't know how you all toggle the chipsets for graphics on the MBP (I don't have one), but if it's software controlled, maybe something has changed in SL that is causing it to not fully switch off the 9400m?

Nethfel said:

It's possible. I don't know how apple handles the disabled 9400m - if it actually releases the memory, or leaves it locked due to hardware design.

To me it just seems odd that the exact amount you are short is the amount that would be reserved by the 9400m at the very least while it's in use...

Another thing to consider - I don't know how you all toggle the chipsets for graphics on the MBP (I don't have one), but if it's software controlled, maybe something has changed in SL that is causing it to not fully switch off the 9400m?

Click to expand...

You have to enable and disable the video card in system preferences then logout and back in to make the change active. Maybe something is different in Snow Leopard.

Well, I just booted up up with the 9600M GT and it still shows 3.75GB of total RAM. However, "Free" + "Used" memory equals 4GB. This is weird.

.....

Wheeljack said:

Well, I just booted up up with the 9600M GT and it still shows 3.75GB of total RAM. However, "Free" + "Used" memory equals 4GB. This is weird.

Click to expand...

Hello. I have a 2.66 unibody MBP 5.1 running 10.6.2

System Profiler reports 4GB of ram (2 x 2GB ddr3)

Activity monitor is showing 3.75GB on the pie chart.

My energy saver preferences are currently set to (and locked) in "better performance"

When booting in 10.5, system profiler and activity monitor reports 4 GB of RAM in the corresponding fields, energy preferences are set at higher performance.

Technically if im using the other dedicated GPU, any ideas on why 10.6 will not allow me to utilize a full 4gb of RAM?

And in regards to the quote, when i add the :used: amount of ram to my "free" amount, total is 4gb

Wheeljack said:

I'm using the 9600M GT chip, not the 9400. I did boot up with the 9400 and then switched. Could it be that the 256MB are being reserved for the (now disabled) integrated video?

Click to expand...

The 9600m GT has 512 dedicated, but will allocate shared system RAM if needed too. My guess is that the system is still reserving that 256MB of RAM for VRAM.