Lion - Memory Usage Problems

I've switched back to 64bit kernel adn 64 bit Safari after working in 32bit for a few days.

This sounds strange but so far, Safari is steady at 155Meg memory usage. Web Content is also manageable. There is no noticable memory leak. My system is not Paging. I'm not seeing beach balls or stalls.

I'm still using OS Lion. I'm not sure what happened to my system.

Now the only problem I have is the battery drain... but that's for another thread.

Michelasso wrote:

Still I wonder why the OS had the urge to page out some data still having a large amount of RAM available.

As has been mentioned, the first page out number shown in Activity Monitor is a running total of the amount of data paged out. That means the page out activity it shows could have occurred at any time when there was little free memory. Thus, you can't tell by comparing this cumulative number to the current free memory use 'snapshot' if anything was paged out when there was plenty of free memory.

I am also having the same issues. I just bought my brand new Macbook Pro 13in i5 with 4GB of RAM. Safari is a huge memory hog... even with Safari not open Lion seems to be eating up all the memory. I have an older mac that has a intel core 2 duo with only 3gb of ram running snow leopard, and i do not have any memory issues. I also had no issues before i upgraded my macbook to lion. Lion just seems to eat every possible bit of ram availble. I am upgrading to 8GB, but i really hope that this gets fixed! I switched to Google Chrome (canary - so that i have the full-screen app feature) which uses much less ram, I saw Safari reach up to 2GB of ram usage, luckily Chrome seems to have only used 200mb so far and i opened every one of my bookmarks (20) and it still used a signifant amount less than Safari... APPLE STEP YOUR GAME UP!

We hope so!!

Now, i'm back in 64bit, and i'm launching a "Purge" automator action as login item, and the situation in somewhat better for some longer time from boot...

mightymilk wrote:

Apple is seeding 10.7.2 Pre-Release to developers, and multiple people are confirming reduced memory consumption under the new update. ... Hopefully the rumors are true, and we can all put this problem behind us. Stay tuned I guess 😀

Reduced memory consumption is indeed good, although we can install Purge automators and fix the problem with 10.7, and the battery problems seem to still be here for many of us.

Did you also happen to hear anything about better battery performance under 10.7.2?

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i never had any battery issues, but i just did a fresh format of OSX Lion on my MBP 13in i5 model and it seemed to fix my RAM usuage issue. Before the fresh format, Safari was using up to 400mb sometimes 500mb, but now its staying around 100 to 150mb, and hasnt eaten up my ram. So far its been a whole night of constant use and it still hasnt slowed down. I recommend doing that if you havent, just download the install app and extract it to a flash drive with the disk utility restore feature.

RAM consumption as an X-FIles episode:

It's a RAM conspiracy between Apple and RAM manufacturers!

They increase the amount of RAM requiered to run the operating system so people have to buy more RAM.

They got me!

I bought another GB of RAM for my iMac from Crucial so Lion could run smoothly.

I think we've found them out!

mightymilk wrote:

Apple is seeding 10.7.2 Pre-Release to developers, and multiple people are confirming reduced memory consumption under the new update.

Keep in mind that applying an OS update, like reinstalling the OS, could repair damage to OS files that for some of you might be the underlying cause of your performance issues.

Also, make sure any third party add ons are up-to-date versions & (if possible) verify that they are compatible with Lion.

A quick check for that is to try a safe boot: if performance problems vanish in safe mode, they are caused by something that mode does not load, which includes non-essential fonts, third-party additions to the OS, & many non-esential OS components.

R C-R wrote:

... A quick check for that is to try a safe boot: if performance problems vanish in safe mode, they are caused by something that mode does not load, which includes non-essential fonts, third-party additions to the OS, & many non-esential OS components.

Of course we need to talk to the third-party developers to see if they, themselves, have issues with their products under Lion.

The problem is that many of these "non-essential" items are supplied by Apple, themselves, and they didn't mess up the memory management, the battery, or the speed under Snow Leopard. Arbitrarily defining any Apple-supplied components that cause these kinds of issues as "non-essential" is not an acceptable solution to these slowness/memory/battery/heat/fan issues under Lion.

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HippopotamusMan wrote:

Reduced memory consumption is indeed good, although we can install Purge automators and fix the problem with 10.7, and the battery problems seem to still be here for many of us..

I'd like to remind that the "purge" command mostly frees the disk buffer cache (the so called "speculative memory", as shown running "vm_stat"). That means it degrades performances because when needed the kernel has to read the pages from disk again. I also frees most inactive pages. This prevents the OS to start paging out when not apparently needed but doesn't really fix the possible memory issue. It also comes at the cost of hunging the system for seconds.

Now hopefully 10.7.1 (I think. 10.7.2 should be for iCloud only. Apple is making this very confusing) focused on the memory management issues. I don't know what are the major changes in the kernel that make Lion requiring twice the amount of minimum memory when compared to Snow Leopard.

HippopotamusMan wrote:

The problem is that many of these "non-essential" items are supplied by Apple, themselves, and they didn't mess up the memory management, the battery, or the speed under Snow Leopard.

You missed the point. If the copy of an OS file on your computer is damaged, it is no longer what Apple supplied. That's why reinstalling the OS, or sometimes just applying an OS update, often fixes issues that affect only some users.

This is true for any version of the OS.

Yes ***** as I use to have Chrome, Camino, Safari, & Aurora or FF -- all open at the same time every day with 20-40-60 tabs in each browser.

I'd have FF for email accounts, I'd have the once upon a time dynamic trio - as a resource to do searched be they from Google of whomever. Can't anymore, and especially Safari - which has several world leaks --- she really bogggggs down the whole system and I can be sure of a crash is she's up.

Michelasso wrote:

I'd like to remind that the "purge" command mostly frees the disk buffer cache (the so called "speculative memory", as shown running "vm_stat"). That means it degrades performances because when needed the kernel has to read the pages from disk again. I also frees most inactive pages. This prevents the OS to start paging out when not apparently needed but doesn't really fix the possible memory issue. It also comes at the cost of hunging the system for seconds.

I don't dispute what you are saying about the functionality of "purge". However, I have to say that at least on my own computer, periodically running "purge" to release Inactive memory causes over-all performance improvement: the system runs faster, the temperature remains lower, and the fan hardly turns on at all.

I can disable my "purge" hack, and these problems return. Then, I can re-enable my "purge" hack, and the problems go away again.

So irrespective of the way "purge" might have been designed, I have empirical evidence -- again, at least on my own machine -- of better over-all performance on Lion when I periodically invoke that program in a targeted manner in order to reduce Inactive memory.

If 10.7.{1,2} change Lion's memory management so that this Inactive-memory-reduction hack is no longer necessary, then all the better.

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I'm come back to 32bit kernel and 32bit Aperture boot.

In 64bit, the combination of Lion and Aperture use A LOT of memory, up to 6Gb without hard job on it.

With 32bit i can work with the combination of two.

Hope this will be fixed on 7.1 or 7.2, or i HAVE TO work in 32bit. Even with 4Gb of RAM, this is disappointing!

In Snow, i have normally 1Gb of free RAM on the same combination of programs/workload.

Great improuvment...sticazzi.