Upgraded RAM in MacBook Pro 13" mid-2009 & still a lot of RAM used while idle...

[Eagle1156]

Hello all,

I recently upgraded my RAM from 4GB to 8GB in my mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro. I also did a thorough cleaning of all apps, caches, everything I could think of it to clean it out and refresh it and hopefully make it run faster as it was generally unusable it was so slow before I replaced the RAM.

The new RAM has helped a lot but oddly enough, Activity Monitor still shows a lot of usage of it, even right after I installed the new RAM. With the 4GB RAM, even with no applications open, I would have between 3GB - 3.5GB being used. Now, with the 8GB installed, even with no applications open, it's saying that between 4GB - 4.5GB is being used. I then opened Outlook and safari and started working as normal and it went up to almost 7.5GB. I have a feeling Safari is the culprit as every tab I have open always seems to take hundred of MB's of RAM but did every conceivable thing possible to clear out Safari and streamline it and nothing seems to help.

Any ideas? I'm about to install a new SSD hard drive and am hoping that helps as well. I'm running El Capitan and am also wondering if upgrading to Sierra might help? But I also read that on older machines like this one, Sierra might not be a good idea.

Thanks in advance.

Specs of my MacBook Pro are below:

MacBook Pro 13" mid-2009
"Core 2 Duo" 2.26 13"
Running OS X El Capitan 10.11.6
8GB of brand new RAM
MacBookPro5,5

 

[pm-r]

FWIW: I've read several articles on the Mac OSX's use of memory, which seems to have improved with it's more recent versions, and basically they were saying that your Mac isn't really running efficiently if it's not using most of its installed RAM.

Maybe do some googling on memory usage when using and running OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 and how to interpret what Activity Monitor has to report.

Meantime you could try a cold boot and try using the Safe Boot Mode and see if some third party stuff is mucking up or slowing up your Mac.






- Patrick
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[pigoo3]

The new RAM has helped a lot but oddly enough, Activity Monitor still shows a lot of usage of it, even right after I installed the new RAM. With the 4GB RAM, even with no applications open, I would have between 3GB - 3.5GB being used. Now, with the 8GB installed, even with no applications open, it's saying that between 4GB - 4.5GB is being used.

This is absolutely no big deal. The Mac OS (starting with OS 10.9)...began utilizing RAM differently than OS version's before 10.9. What you need to be concerned about is the "memory pressure" (which can be found in Activity Monitor). It will either be green, yellow, or red. If it's green...you're good to go.

- Nick