High Memory Usage

[freaky]

I have 3 GBs of RAM installed and just about every time I go to check Activity Monitor it shows Safari is using 1.54 GBs of Virtual Memory and kernel_task is using 1.71 GBs.

Does anyone know why so much memory is always being used? Is there anyway to lower it permanantly?

 

[sredish]

virtually, my kernel_task is generally using 1.2 GB and I use firefox, which with 2 or 3 tabs up, pulls around 500 MB. My safari with 1 window is usually around 300 MB and several windows will put it to 500 or 600.

I'm also working with 2 GB of Ram.

 

[tfucini]

whens the last time you rebooted, or emptyed your browsers cache? because every site you visit is stored in the cache until you reboot or reset the cache and that will take up some of your virtual memory

 

[Mikuro]

It's not unusual for kernel_task to have massive virtual memory space.

Keep in mind that the Vsize displayed in Activity Monitor is shared. Even though kernel_task is using 1.7GB, that's not 1.7GB that's reserved for it, and other apps might be using that same virtual memory. So usually high Vsize numbers are nothing to worry about.

1.5GB for Safari is an awful lot, though. If you quit & reload Safari, does it still give you the same readout?

 

[freaky]

I just emptied my cache and the Real memory went down from 550 MBs to 497 MBs but the Virtual memory is still at 1.84 GBs.

When I close Safari and reopen the VM goes down considerabily (I believe down to around 600 MBs). I usually have about 6-12 tabs open at once so I'm not sure if that makes a difference, but it still seems like an insane amount of memory that is being used.