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John Kitchen Author

Level 3

665 points

Lion and Macs with 4GBs of RAM (or even 8GBs)

There is a consistent theme in various Apple Support Communities, here, and in other hardware and software communities

People with Macs which have 4GBs of RAM are asking, "Why is my Mac so slow under Lion, when it worked fine with Snow Leopard?"

I have suggestions for you if you are considering upgrading to Lion, no matter how much RAM you have, but especially if you have 4GBs or less. Lion uses more RAM, and this may hurt your performance after the move to Lion. You need to plan for this

Check Activity Monitor for Page Outs after you have been using your Mac normally for some hours. If Page Outs are zero or very close to zero, then you'll probably be happy with Lion
If Page Outs are not zero, identify your most commonly used apps which are significant consumers of RAM, and change them so that they run in 32 bit mode, not 64 bits, then reboot
Again, check Activity Monitor for Page Outs after you have been using your Mac normally for some hours. If Page Outs are zero or very close to zero, then you'll probably be happy with Lion
If you are still getting Page Outs, then try running fewer apps concurrently, but only if you can live with this compromise
If you still haven't reduced Page Outs to almost zero, then either stay with Snow Leopard, or upgrade your RAM

FAQ

How do I change an app to 32 bit mode?

Go to your Applications folder, find the app, select it and press Command-i
A window will open titled "applicationname Info" and about half way down you should see "Open in 32-bit mode" with a checkbox beside it. Check it.
If it doesn't say that, then look in this window for "Kind". If it says "Application (PowerPC)", then you have another issue to resolve before upgrading to Lion, because this app will not work under Lion.

How much RAM is enough? And how much time should I spend agonizing over how much to get?

RAM is cheap, so if you don't want to spend a lot of time in decision-making, just add at least 4GBs if it will fit, or 8GBs if you plan to keep the Mac for a while, or bite the bullet and just max it out, unless that would be just too expensive.
If the budget is tight, or the Mac is an older one with limits on RAM, consider 2 GBs an absolute minimum upgrade

Why should I change the apps to 32 bit mode? Why can't Apple "fix this problem" for me?

64 bit mode was introduced to allow apps to exploit large memories. Your Mac is not a large memory Mac. This is not a problem to be fixed by Apple. Use the app in 32 bit mode on a small memory Mac.

But Apple says that Lion needs only 2GBs to work! What's going on here?

It is true that Lion will work in 2GBs. It is not necessarily true that the experience will be enjoyable, unless you run apps which have low RAM demand and run few of them. For example, if you just wanted to run TextEdit alone on a 2GB Mac, you'd probably get great performance under Lion. It's marketing-speak. If you ask me, I'd say that 8GBs is the smallest realistic RAM size for Lion if you prefer a hassle-free experience, and if you can get more, do it.

Why is Lion using up more RAM, this sounds like it is less efficient than Snow Leopard, isn't it?

New releases of operating systems always use more RAM. Why? To save I/Os, to save you time, and to fit new function into your system. Because RAM is cheap and getting cheaper all the time, OS designers are always looking for ways to use more RAM if it will provide a benefit to the end user. What they are doing is optimizing expensive resources, like your CPU, and HDD accesses. And your time! RAM is not an exensive resource.

Hope this helps!

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), 2011 - 27" SSD + HDD 12GB

Posted on Aug 4, 2011 10:13 AM

69 replies

Aug 30, 2011 8:38 AM in response to pb1000

Although an erase and reinstall of Lion is fairly easy, personal experience suggests that reinstalling Windows on the partition under Parallels is rather more difficult. You can restore many things using Migration Assistant on the Time Machine or clone disk, including the Parallels application, but I found Windows and Adobe CS4 required a complete reinstall and update.

Aug 30, 2011 9:41 AM in response to pb1000

Do this...

- A full back of your Lion disk with SuperDuper! in trial mode or Carbon Copy (CCC) into an external USB disk

- Check that you can boot from the backup (press "option" after the boot chime) and that everything is on place

- Download this tool: http://blog.gete.net/lion-diskmaker-us/

- Run it to make a Lion Installation Disk using a USB Mem stick or a DVD

- Boot from the new Installation Disk

- Run Disk Utility

- Initialize your Lion partition as Mac OS Extended (journaled)

- Exit Disk Utility and continue with the installation

- At the end you will be asked to migrate your data from another disk. Have your backup disk connected, accept and migrate everything from it

- Otherwise you may skip the migration, create a new administrator account with a different username than the one you currently use and run Migration Assistant from your freshly installed OS X Lion.

- Reboot and login with your usual username.

Everything should work exactly as it does now, including your Windows virtual machines. Hopefully removing some old caches, files and other things that they may confuse the system.

Oct 7, 2011 7:10 AM in response to John Kitchen

Some great info in this post, a learning experience for people new to OSX like me, but... what if my page outs are 0 and I STILL get the beachball spinning all the time?

My machine is a recent iMac, 2.5ghz i5, 4gb of ram, running 10.7.1, only had it about two months. I'm getting the beachball spinning, lag when I type, sometimes it takes ages to boot. I've been keeping an eye on activity monitor today and page outs is always 0, free RAM is always about 1.6GB, idle processer is always above 90%. So it seems like the machine has plenty of free resources but still won't run smoothly. Any ideas?

wcarlton

Level 1

10 points

Oct 7, 2011 7:32 AM in response to traffordjd

Getting more RAM has been like getting a new Machine. I put 8 more in for a total of 12 and my machine runs so smooth. I think i spent only about 150 for the 2 chips.

Oct 7, 2011 7:40 AM in response to wcarlton

But according to my activity monitor, I'm not even maxing out the 4gb that i've got. I'm not using any programs that are real memory-hogs either.

Oct 7, 2011 8:08 AM in response to traffordjd

traffordjd wrote:

I'm getting the beachball spinning, lag when I type, sometimes it takes ages to boot. I've been keeping an eye on activity monitor today and page outs is always 0, free RAM is always about 1.6GB, idle processer is always above 90%. So it seems like the machine has plenty of free resources but still won't run smoothly. Any ideas?

I am afraid beachballing isn't part of this thread. Unless you get it when there is a massive page out, sure. But that doesn't seem to be your case.

Personally I seldom get any beach ball (case above excluded). If your system came with Lion pre-installed it should just run fine. Unless you migrated applications and accounts from another Mac/disk. If you have any anti-malware installed, do yourself a favor and uninstall it immediately. Usually the beach balls and unresponsiveness are caused by applications that installed some kernel extensions or services that start at boot time. In your case it shouldn't be a memory issue at all.

Oct 7, 2011 10:25 AM in response to Michelasso

I haven't migrated anything, the machine came with Lion installed (it was a refurb from the Apple store). I don't have any anti-malware installed.

Mysiaq

Level 1

0 points

Oct 28, 2011 12:33 AM in response to John Kitchen

I have done everything what i can to minimize ram consumpsion and the only problem i've got at this point is when I run Xcode. I had 4gigs of ram, than bought 8 gigs and always 've got 10-30 MB of free memory after 3-5 minutes of Xcode running. I tried to switch to 32-bit running mode but no change. Can anybody help me please? 😟 😟 😟 😟

Mersh

Level 1

128 points

Nov 9, 2011 7:40 AM in response to John Kitchen

Thanks for this post, John. I've been going crazy lately after installing Lion on my late 2009 Mac mini 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB shortly after it was released. At first it didn't seem like the performance dropoff was that bad but lately it's been basically unusable. Unfortunately it doesn't look like I can install any more RAM since I bought it maxed out but I'm going to try a few of your 32-bit tips as well as booting the kernel itself in 32-bit mode. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3773

Hopefully that frees up the resources I've been lacking b/c my Page Outs were enormous. I have another year on the AppleCare so I'm not looking to buy a new one yet. If this doesn't do much I'll try a fresh install since I did upgrade from SL.

Nov 9, 2011 9:13 AM in response to Mersh

I think you can upgrade the RAM to 8 gb, try http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/8566DDR3S8GP/ for a matched 2 x 4 kit. I used to have this same mini and have since replaced it with a new i7 mini server w/ 8gb. You may be able to find the same RAM cheaper if you do a search. I only suggest this as it may extend the life of your mini and save you some $$$.

good luck

Dan

Mersh

Level 1

128 points

Nov 9, 2011 9:40 AM in response to hornshwangler

Thanks for the suggestion but wouldn't I somehow void my Applecare if I upgrade the memory myself? Found this on the support site: "You can upgrade or replace the memory in your Mac mini (Mid 2010), but memory on other Mac mini models should be installed by an Apple Authorized Service Provider." http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4223😕

I cherish my Applecare so I'm not sure I wanna take the chance. Besides, if I can limp along until June 2012 then I can use some IRS money to get a new one! 🙂

Mersh

Level 1

128 points

Nov 13, 2011 9:34 AM in response to Mersh

Went to reinstall Lion from the recovery partition. Turns out my hard drive is in predictive failure. Just dropped it off @ the Genius Bar. Like I said, I CHERISH my AppleCare.

Dec 9, 2011 11:28 AM in response to John Kitchen

Hi everybody,

I'd like to share my experience and try to get some help if it is the right thread for that:

I have a mid 2010 17" MBP with 8GB and have upgraded it to Lion from Snow Leopard in July and everything was fine ... until I've upgraded to 10.7.2.

It's getting me crazy now: it's a race between it using all the RAM and me cleaning it with either Free Memory or a purge automator script. I spend 2/3 of my time in front of the computer monitoring the ram usage and waiting for it to be freed...

I tried to re-install the system 3 times. It's going well the first days and then the problem starts again. I tried to reboot regularly, but would need to do it several times per hour. I've tried to use a few apps only, for instance Safari only or firefox only, no way to get it better. The available ram goes down to a couple of MB after 20' freezing the mac until I reboot (if I don't use a memory cleaning tool).

The point is that I'm using (or I try to use) VMware extensively now (was not the case, when I tried to find a solution) and I need the 64-Bit mode for some virtual machines.

I possibly have done something on my machine that lead to that problem but can't figure out what.

Anyone who could help?

Thanks in advance for your support.

Regards,

Dec 22, 2011 10:12 AM in response to John Kitchen

Something I've noticed while reading this and other threads is that typical examples of page ins/outs that indicate the need for a RAM upgrade are in the range of hundreds of MB. (Usually page ins are at a GB or two and page outs are a fraction of that.) Looking at mine, for a system that was restarted a couple days ago, I see my page ins at 3.11GB and my page outs at 3.38GB. Is there any special significance for 1) having them both in the GB range and 2) having page outs actually exceed page ins?

A couple of likely-related observations:

1 - My 500GB hard drive has only about 30GB free at present. (I'm working on that.)

2 - According to both Activity Monitor and iStat Pro, my wired+active RAM increases under use until it essentially flat-lines with about 1GB free+inactive. I have 4GB of RAM, but it very rarely makes use of that 4th GB (which it used to do a lot more; it has only started this behavior recently, perhaps around the time I upgraded to Lion).

Thoughts?

Jan 20, 2012 2:36 PM in response to etresoft

@etresoft

Lion had no enhancements to memory effciency, the only enhancement to memory for Lion was to address space layout randomization (ASLR) has been improved for all applications. It is now available for 32-bit apps (as are heap memory protections), making 64-bit and 32-bit applications more resistant to attack.

Lion had very little enhancements to backend system-support where that was the bulk of Snow Lepoard. The majority of Lion dealt with system-storage enhancements, user-interface, iCloud, and other features.

Microsoft states for 32 bit systems 2 GB; but for 64 Bit systems it recommends 4 GB minimum. Based on Lion and what was altered I'm sure it runs on 2 GB but truly 4 GB would be a better recommendation. I don't care how tailored the software is to the hardware; 4 GB is more in retrospec especially with the bandwidth between Intel's CPU and DDR3 memory controller. 2 GB is far too limited for a 64 Bit system and will certaintly have bottlenecks creating a vast limitation in use to most users.

But just like Microsofts Vendors; Apple has fallen slightly irresonsible. If your Mac is using an integrated graphics system from Intel then you're taking memory that is viable to the system. So why sell at 2 GB integrated graphic card knowing it is going to drop you below the 'recommended' as it is? Also, knowing that 2 GB might not be enough for applications. I'd never buy any of the base machines Apple has to offer- especially since some base machines are a Dual Core with 2 GB of Memory.

That just doesn't cut it for a vast array of applications I use.

4 GB should be the recommended; especially with Apple's sticker price...

Lion and Macs with 4GBs of RAM (or even 8GBs)