Inactive memory is huge hit on performance

Yeah, "purge" works and it takes a couple of seconds.
Every person here that sees this has either a hardware fault or a funky installation of the OS? Seems presumptious and absurd. And a bit trollish.

Do you have a why this "should fix it"? Did you have a reason it ought to have been hardware-based? Purge does address it. I have an elaborate and completely stable system I should take down and put back up on that quality of assumption? I don't think so.

notevenhardly wrote:

Yeah, "purge" works and it takes a couple of seconds.
Every person here that sees this has either a hardware fault or a funky installation of the OS? Seems presumptious and absurd. And a bit trollish.

Because there are only 2 possible causes, a hardware problem or a software problem, unless you know of a third.

Do you have a why this "should fix it"? Did you have a reason it ought to have been hardware-based? Purge does address it. I have an elaborate and completely stable system I should take down and put back up on that quality of assumption? I don't think so.

To live with the problem is your decision to make.

It's hilarious that supposedly " High " level ranking members reduce themselves to merely TROLLS on this thread. Here is the latest cowgirl " Csound1 " with single word replies like " SO " or " If it is a software problem then a reinstall should fix it, do you want it fixed? " ....

Contribute with something constructive please !

We all love Mac and APPLE Inc. That doesn't make them error free. This is a serious fault and needs fixing.

Can't confirm.

C'nt confrm wa't !!??

purge is the silver bullet!

This is hardly the forum for the promotion of bulimic habits. Come on.

notevenhardly,

I've noticed that when I load my software into VE pro, that it starts to pile up in 'Inactive Ram'. When all of my software is loaded, I have 20+ gigs of inactive ram. When you purge, does it unload all of your software from VE pro? Does VE pro operate normally even though the inactive ram it stored is cleared?

Thanks.

Also got the same problem 2010 macbook pro i7 15in, 8gb ram. After about 2-3 hours using after a purge and the system is running low on ram and I'm not even using high demanding applications. I am using chrome 4-8 tabs open mostly. Safari has the same problem. So what's the deal with this? I thought mac os x was supposed to be great for the non-techy as well but I can't understand it, did a full reinstall even updated to maverick same thing.

I'm a researcher using a MBP 17 mid 2007 and after upgrading to Mavricks I discovered I had to up the memory fom 4GB to 6GB. This is just for having lots of Firefox windows open at the same time as well as pdfs in FireFox and/or Preview.

The documented maximum for my MBP is 4GB but many incliding OWC sell a 4GB module compatible with my MBP model (see OWC eshop at http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/5300DDR2S4GB/ ) which allows a 2GB+4GB=6GB the documented max for my MBP model.

I read about memory fragmentation and decided to install Memory Clean which is free on the AppStore (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/memory-clean/id451444120?mt=12 .

However I noticed that Memory Clean rarely recognises all the RAM and it takes several Clean Memory button clicks to purge substantial chunks of RAM.

I've reported this to the developers FIPLAB and I'm awaiting their responce, which may shed more light on Mavricks handling of RAM.

No, it unloads nothing. Everything is normal, it just clears out the inactive chunk.

Your logic is fallacious. It's either a hardware or software issue, so addressing hardware failure or reinstalling the OS are the only two things you have.
It could be an intersection of third-party and OSX; but it clearly is pretty widespread third-party if that's it.

I saw it asserted today that something was changed for Mountain Lion. "due to the removal of automatic garbage collection and move to ARC."

So there is one person with pretty much my workflow type here that finds that 'inactive' is released where I do not find that. They are are on ML, I am on SL. That could be the actual answer. Despite all the 'don't expect it to be addressed by Apple, as there is no problem'.

So, maybe reinstall OSX with a version that doesn't do this.

notevenhardly wrote:

Your logic is fallacious. It's either a hardware or software issue, so addressing hardware failure or reinstalling the OS are the only two things you have.
It could be an intersection of third-party and OSX; but it clearly is pretty widespread third-party if that's it.

I suspect that it is the unhappy interaction of 3rd-party software with OS X. If it were a simple OS X failing, then everybody would experience the issue. I never have. Since 2007, Tiger, Snow Leopard and now Lion have all been very solid. I don't experience disproportionate page outs, but nor do I see beach balls such that I would care to poke around Activity Monitor to check on my inactive memory. Let's see …. 975.3 MB inactive vs. 1.88 GB free. 4.10 GB used. Of course, it's only been 3 days since my last reboot, so that probably has something to do with it.

I don't have an answer for why some experience issues and others do not. I do, however, intuit that it has a lot more to do with poorly coded applications than it does (at least in 10.7.5) OS X itself. Certain apps are notorious for earmarking huge swaths of memory. Anybody who's doing heavy lifting in various apps would do very, very well to invest in an SSD. Installing 6GB RAM and a Crucial M500 960GB SSD have helped keep this Early 2008 MacBook4,1 in the game.