Memory Leak??

[Chundel]

ok so i am new to the mac life.. ok not really the last time i had a mac it was a 1991 LC lol but whatever i got the macbook white 2.0GHz and its screaming fast until the end of the day i never shut it down i just put it on sleep alot but i realized after finding the task manager equivalent (activity monitor) that i had very low free ram near the end of the day so i checked it out and i have come to the conclusion it was a memory leak now i will give an example with random numbers.

i have 1024MB of ram i start up my mac and it now has 800 free after MAC OS X Starts up i open iTunes it uses 20MB giving me 780 i then close it, instead of gaining 20MB i will only gain some of it like 15MB having 5MB floating in space doing nothing now do this multiples during the day, the numbers are bigger i also use photoshop, final cut and Adobe premier alot so my ram gets to about 10MB fast lol, so i would like to know of a program that can clean up ram or a patch to fix this issue. also a side note is it normal for my mac to have 44 Processes running on average? i know in widows i cut it to about 28 ~ 32 but mac os is like 44 oooouch :P

[Mikuro]

This is all normal, and NOT indicative of a problem. I know, it seems crazy — I thought the same thing when I came over from OS 9. But I'll explain.

OS X caches everything. When you quit a program, it will not clear the entire thing from memory. Rather, it will leave it there and simply mark it as "inactive". If another program needs that memory, then it will be reallocated and overwritten. But if that memory is required again before that happens, then it's simply reused, saving loading time. You may have noticed that applications tend to take a lot longer to load the first time you launch them after starting up; this is why. The first time, everything needs to be loaded into RAM on the spot. Subsequent times, a lot of the required data is probably already cached in RAM.

On systems with a a decent amount of RAM (>256MB, I'd say), this is definitely a good thing. I did notice that things were a little snappier after rebooting when I used a RAM-starved system (only 192MB).

[Chundel]

oh ok so like is there anyway to clean up the cache anyways and whatebout the processes being at like 44

[fryke]

No, it's simply not necessary. As long as you have a couple of GB of free harddrive space left on the system volume, the system will handle memory just fine.

Of course single applications _can_ have memory leaks (web browsers being always my first suspects), but quitting them and reloading them usually helps that. (As well as updating to newer versions which might solve their problems.)

The important thing is: Classic Mac OS' memory handling looked very simple to the user. You saw what was free and this meant what you could still open. It just ain't that simply anymore, but the OS handles these things _for_ you by and large. For now, simply ignore it. Totally. When your Mac comes down crashing and being unresponsive, showing the beachball all the time, then is the time to look at these things again.

[Chundel]

ok thank you i dont have to worry to much but when upgrading the ram can i use DDR2 533MHz instead of 667 cause i have 2GB lying around so i can just use it if it will work

[fryke]

I don't think it'd work. You can test it, though. Just put _only_ that RAM in and try booting. If my guess is correct, it'll beep you about not having any at all.

[Chundel]

booo lol oh well i guess later on i will sell my 2x 512 and get 2 x 1gb it will only cost me like about 150 bucks due to ware house priving yay to working in a computer retail store :P