Level 1

96 points

Big SWAP File, everything slow

Hi. Im having trouble with my PowerBook G4 (1,67 GHz, 1GB RAM). Since i installed Leopard the System is slow after a while (a few hours). Before 10.5 i used Panther with the exactly same Apps; Mail, Safari, iTunes. Ok Leopard comes with newer Versions of them. I found out that 10.5 is swapping much more than 10.3.9 does. But the "active" RAM isn't near 900MB, it is usualy 500-600MB. So why is 10.5 swaping so much, at this moment 1,15GB ! For what?

I think one of the Apps have an Memory Problem. But how can i check this? I opened Activity Monitor, list all Processes and sort by "RSIZE" and "VSIZE". *What does R/V SIZE mean and are my Values ok?*
VSIZE http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/9679/vsizebr9.png
RSIZE http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/2243/rsizens4.png

I searched Apples Site and found this ...

_*Inactive memory*_
This information is no longer being used and has been cached to disk, but it will remain in RAM until another application needs the space. Leaving this information in RAM is to your advantage if you (or a client of your computer) come back to it later.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107918

Thats maybe the problem. The System swaps inactive Data from RAM to Disc but doesent stop with that. This slows everything down when i open an App or switsch to other opend Apps. Never had this Problem with Panther and don't wont to stay with it. 😟

17" PowerBook G4, 1,67 GHz, 1GB RAM, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Mar 16, 2008 8:56 AM

26 replies

Tohu Author

Level 1

96 points

Mar 18, 2008 10:16 AM in response to Kappy

If you read carefully my first post you can see i found and read some of the information coming from apple that you provided. 😉
Im less interessted in what "page out" means than what "Swap used" do. Your declaration dosen't meet this one.

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Mar 18, 2008 10:19 AM in response to Tohu

Do you have any system add-ons or prefpanes or menumeters or anything? haxie? your Activity Monitor looks "unique"

Never ever seen anything in OS X of "swap used".

Tohu Author

Level 1

96 points

Mar 18, 2008 10:36 AM in response to The hatter

I have iStats Pro (Widget) and iStats Menu installed but i think this Entry in Activity Monitor was there before the installation.
By the way, these two Tools show the Value of used SWAP SPACE too.

Argh, this can't be! Today i installed 2 GB RAM and after a few hours of using Finder, Safari, Mail, iTunes the size of SWAP SPACE is 104 MB but memory in use is "just" 1,17 GB.
For what? I still think this is an memory lack of one of these apps.

Mar 18, 2008 11:39 AM in response to Tohu

Tohu wrote:
Argh, this can't be! Today i installed 2 GB RAM and after a few hours of using Finder, Safari, Mail, iTunes the size of SWAP SPACE is 104 MB but memory in use is "just" 1,17 GB.
For what? I still think this is an memory lack of one of these apps.

Tohu

I also have "Swap used" listed in Activity Monitor, so you're not dreaming 😉 It is showing zero right now. If you are getting a non-zero value after upgrading to 2 GB, try a different browser (for example, Camino or Firefox. It may just be Safari up to its old tricks.

Otherwise you'll need to monitor your other applications more closely.

Tohu Author

Level 1

96 points

Mar 18, 2008 12:33 PM in response to Michael Conniff

Thank you Michael. Good to know im not the only one with this information in Activity Monitor.

One thing i detected is that the swap used value is going down when i close one of these standard apps (mail, safari, iTunes). I will first update safari to this new version and then take a closer look to figure out wich of them is the hungry monster.

If i doppelclick an prozess in Activity Monitor there are some information about its memory usage.
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/8359/activitymonitorinformatwl1.png

But i don't know what this all means. I saw that "Virtual Memory" dont fit in any value, not for my existing RAM or the swap space in use. So that info is irrelevant. But what do these other points mean? Got anybody a clue? Because i can't find any info in help nor on Apples Website.

By that way: How much memory do your Macs use when you run these apps a few hours (Mail, Safari, iTunes)? Here 1,13 GB.

Message was edited by: Tohu

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Mar 18, 2008 1:08 PM in response to Michael Conniff

Michael,

Any chance that iStats Pro (Widget) and iStats Menu alter how or what Activity Monitor shows? or is your system just normal, no 'add-on'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_address

32-bit vs 64-bit memory address space in Windows has some useful ideas:
http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3034

Mar 18, 2008 3:50 PM in response to The hatter

No add-ons here, and the only non-Apple software would certainly not interfere with Activity Monitor. This is not an application I use much, but I started it to see what all the fuss was about. It appears in the "System Memory" tab, just as shown in Tohu's link, http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/9236/activitymonitorenlp8.png.

I don't have any Widgets, and any modifications to the MenuBar are my own 😉

Mar 18, 2008 4:09 PM in response to Tohu

Tohu wrote:
Thank you Michael. Good to know im not the only one with this information in Activity Monitor.

One thing i detected is that the swap used value is going down when i close one of these standard apps (mail, safari, iTunes). I will first update safari to this new version and then take a closer look to figure out wich of them is the hungry monster.

If i doppelclick an prozess in Activity Monitor there are some information about its memory usage.
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/8359/activitymonitorinformatwl1.png

But i don't know what this all means. I saw that "Virtual Memory" dont fit in any value, not for my existing RAM or the swap space in use. So that info is irrelevant. But what do these other points mean? Got anybody a clue? Because i can't find any info in help nor on Apples Website.

If you let the cursor hover over them, you get some further explanation. The "Virtual" memory is just that: it is the total address space the process can access. For many processes this can be quite "Sparse": I could for example write a program to use 3GB Virtual memory, where the code started at 0, the constants and data started at 1GB, and the shared libraries at 2GB. The "Real" memory used by this program could be as little as 12kB plus libraries—think of the "Hello World" program.

Kappy gave you some links: the Performance Guidelines: Memory Management in Mac OS X is very good, but look at any of the others you haven't already seen.

By that way: How much memory do your Macs use when you run these apps a few hours (Mail, Safari, iTunes)? Here 1,13 GB.

I don't use Safari, rather I use Camino. I don't use iTunes. At the moment my system has 955MB free out of 2 GB, but it was restarted after the Safari update earlier today. Generally speaking I am using roughly the same os you, between 0.9 and 1.3 GB, since I tend to close greedy applications when I'm done.

Tohu Author

Level 1

96 points

Mar 23, 2008 5:37 AM in response to Michael Conniff

Hi again. With 2GB RAM it is a little bit better. Instead of 1,5GB SWAP Space it is now 128 MB. But i still don't understand why 10.5 is swapping before my RAM is on peak. Example: yesterday i oppend an Photoshop File and the USED-RAM goes up to 1,5GB, so 500 MB are free! But Mac OS puts off 128 MB to SWAP SPACE. I don't know why this is happen.

Apr 25, 2008 9:37 PM in response to Tohu

SInce updating to Leopard, my MacBook disk drive's free space shrunk. It turns out the the system is allocating over 40GB to the VM. That pretty bad when I have a 160 GB drive. It takes a long time to shutdown. I then checked my new Mac Pro, and it is 62 GB. I checked the file size in the directory /var/vm and it is 67 GB. I rebooted, an check the usage an it starts at 38 GB. The minimum VM allocated for the processes is 585 MB.

What is going on?

There is a problem here.

Apr 28, 2008 7:09 PM in response to Albert Chang1

Never Mind. Activity Monitor has a bug when displaying VM when the default System memory is displayed. If add another column to the display like private memory, the proper size is displayed. I found this answer in the following thread:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1200448

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Big SWAP File, everything slow