Mavericks and memory (Ram)

Tomna8r,

What actually happens if you don't 'clean the memory', I read you say it slows down, but what does the Activity Monitor show (screengrab RAM, CPU & Disk), do you see any orange at all in the Memory pressure graph, how about red? What is the process using the most RAM? How about CPU? Is that dedicated to one process?

There is a built in command that also purges. It may be safer than 3rd party tools (you already know my opinion on this 🙂). It's called 'purge' see if that is any different.

Have you tried Safe mode?

Hold shift after the chime until the spinning 'gear' appears. Ensure the login window says 'safe mode'.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455

It will disable all third party extensions & startup items.

If the Mac is better in safe mode it is time to get a system report and look at the third party items. Be aware that some features will be disabled like wifi on some models, graphics drivers will be in a reduced mode - this is normal in safe mode.

Reboot to go back to normal.

How about another user account?

Create a new user account in 'System Preferences > Users & groups', give it the name test. Login as that test user & see if it works better.

YES indicates the problem may be inside your user account

NO indicates the problem may be further up in the system or third party software

It's clear you are dissatified with how it is behaving, are willing to try the tasks that might make it better?

It could just be a corrupted OS install (others have posted with apps that don't launch). A reinstall may resolve that, just backup & reinstall, it will overwrite the OS files.

If that doesn't help I'm afraid you might be right, but it's not what I am seeing with my 10.9 installations

P.S. Have a read of this you may see that 10MB of RAM free is not actually bad, compression will kick it as needed. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/#compressed-memory

Tomna8r wrote:

I know Mavericks is supposed to manage this but when your system goes down to 10 meg available (ya, it's that bad)

No it's not "bad". The most efficient situation is when you have NO Free RAM, Memory Pressure is in the green and Page Outs are zero. You should never click "Clean" unless your Memory Pressure has gone Red or you find your hard drive thrashing with pages in and out, and even then I'm not convinced that Memroy Clean has been optimized for Mavericks use yet.

Thanks Drew for the great tips. I'll give them a try. I'm really using Memory Clean to rescue my system from time-to-time. It usually crawls when I hit an intensive javascript page. If I disable javascript and go back to the same page everything is OK. I have very little or no third party extensions as I got rid of them.

I'll keep you updated.

Tomn8r

p.s. I have a sister-in-law in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada with your last name.

actually that's not the most efficient situation.

it would be if mavericks could release the memory that the programs need faster that what, let's say, mountain lion would take to get available free memory for them. he can't so no, it's not the most efficient situation.

the problem is escalating fast. anyone who has to be with two or more "heavy" programs on all the time is in a serious problem and i don't even take in consideration the "error pit" that safari 7 is.

i have a late 2011 macbook pro with 4GB of ram. i'm going to upgrade it to 16GB because i already had that in mind in mountain lion but that's not the way to go or at least it shouldn't be.

i've used some osx and after lion came out i always said that apple was on a downhill route with their os. they are turning them into a pretty shinny thing and that's not needed. i, for instance, consider snow leopard the best os from apple and i miss it a lot. mavericks is just another shot in the foot.

back to the topic. i hate all those hangings because it slows my workflow to the point that i need to vent a couple of times. i believe it could be easier to fix. i think that mavericks should give enough ram to the programs to have them on "workable" state so if you tab in a out you would have it available right away. like it is now they're not.

i always have to wait for them to remember that they need to work.

even waking up from sleep is a pain (steve jobs would be really mad about this since he wanted a "wake up from sleep and work immediately" os.

mavericks is seriously broken. safari 7 is broken.

until this works flawless just give us back the old memory management... or the lack of it.

@MadMacs0:

You talking nonsense. You wrote, "Free RAM is wasted RAM. " Really? If your computer doesn't have free RAM, but you need to run an app, then how would Mavericks will load the app to the memory? I am so frustrated with Apple that I don't even want to complain about Mavericks more. It is waste of time.

@Drew Reece:

You wrote, "The other option is to avoid using as much RAM as possible, it just means the user will have to wait for data to be moved to & from disk."

What you wrote is nonsense. The truth is the user will have to wait for data if there is no free RAM. Then the data will move to and from disk which is what paging is about. The bottom line is if you have free RAM, then the OS doesn't move data from disk, then the apps become more responsive. Mavericks doesn't seem to handle that.

ouksal wrote:

Mavericks doesn't seem to handle that.

Mavericks handles RAM differently than any past OSX. Please search on the topic before making statements that have no validity. (Unless you have links you can post that substantiate your claims.)

Pete

ouksal wrote:

If your computer doesn't have free RAM, but you need to run an app, then how would Mavericks will load the app to the memory?

Sounds like you really need to read up on Mavericks new memory management features. Here's one description OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review.

In short, it will first unload all the purgable memory, first from running applications and then from the system itself. Next it will compress what's already in memeory and as a last resort it will start paging inactive memory to virtual memory pages on your hard drive. The first and last methods are nothing new, but compressed memory is the key feature being introduced with Mavericks.

ouksal wrote:

Mavericks doesn't seem to handle that.

Actually, it can and here is a summary of exactly what Mavericks can handle from OS X Mavericks Core Technologies Overview October 2013:

Compressed Memory

Compressed Memory keeps your Mac fast and responsive by freeing up memory when you need it most. When your system’s memory begins to fill up, Compressed Memory automatically compresses the least recently used items in memory, compacting them to about half their original size. When these items are needed again, they can be instantly uncompressed.

Compressed Memory improves total system bandwidth and responsiveness, allowing your Mac to handle large amounts of data more efficiently. Through use of the dictionary-based WKdm algorithm, compression and decompression are faster than reading and writing to disk. If your Mac needs to swap files on disk, compressed objects are stored in full-size segments, which improves read/write efficiency and reduces wear and tear on SSD and flash drives. The advantages of Compressed Memory include the following:

• Shrinks memory usage. Compressed Memory reduces the size of items in memory that haven’t been used recently by more than 50 percent, freeing memory for the applications you are currently using.

• Improves power efficiency. Compressed Memory reduces the need to read and write virtual memory swap files on disk, improving the power efficiency of your Mac.

• Minimizes CPU usage. Compressed Memory is incredibly fast, compressing or decompressing a page of memory in just a few millionths of a second.

• Is multicore aware. Unlike traditional virtual memory, Compressed Memory can run in parallel on multiple CPU cores, achieving lightning-fast performance for both reclaiming unused memory and accessing seldom-used objects in memory.

ouksal wrote:

@MadMacs0:

You talking nonsense. You wrote, "Free RAM is wasted RAM. " Really? If your computer doesn't have free RAM, but you need to run an app, then how would Mavericks will load the app to the memory? I am so frustrated with Apple that I don't even want to complain about Mavericks more. It is waste of time.

Turn off the computer, step away from the machine & admire how you have 100% free RAM.

Arguing about the nuances of RAM management is a waste of time, actually bothering to post a list of symptoms, showing screengrabs of Activity monitor (full window) or EtreCheck will help you have a better week.

@Drew Reece:

You wrote, "The other option is to avoid using as much RAM as possible, it just means the user will have to wait for data to be moved to & from disk."

What you wrote is nonsense. The truth is the user will have to wait for data if there is no free RAM. Then the data will move to and from disk which is what paging is about. The bottom line is if you have free RAM, then the OS doesn't move data from disk, then the apps become more responsive. Mavericks doesn't seem to handle that.

Sorry you are just plain wrong, 10.9 is not the same a previous OS's. 10.9 will also compress RAM to accommodate approximately 50% more data than the installed RAM.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/17/#compressed-memory the second image shows it took 24.6GB to push the 16GB of RAM into swapping.

The RAM that gets used for 'file cache' is storing things like the images on this page. The OS predicts what you will need to use again. That RAM is marked as being 'purgable' - it will be freed under low memory conditions.

So if you return to this page in 30 minutes you may save a few milliseconds by avoiding paging Safari's cache in from disk.

If you then open Photoshop & start using lots of RAM the purgable memory will be freed & Photoshop will gain access to that RAM.

If you want help, post a new topic & explain what you are seeing. Link from this thread if you think they are related. Eventually someone may follow & help, otherwise the thread simply becomes another dumping ground for everyone who hasn't read how to look at 10.9's memory pressure graph.

I posted instructions earlier to use the 'memory_pressure' command that will show your system under heavy memory load (just like in John Siracusa's review). Once you see it is unmistakable.

ouksal wrote:

The truth is the user will have to wait for data if there is no free RAM.

The truth is the user will have to wait for data any time it isn't already in RAM. It should be obvious that it has to be paged in from the disk before it can be used. If the OS just mindlessly paged out data ASAP to create more free RAM, it would need to page in that same data every time it was needed again. Not only would that slow processes down while they waited for that data to be paged in, it would lead to unnecessary disk thrashing, resulting in higher power consumption & heat generation to keep the disk spinning.

So instead, the OS only frees up RAM when it has to. Some data can simply be purged; some will need to be paged out to the temporary virtual memory store; & some will need to be written to persistent data files. By doing this only when necessary, this can be combined into fewer, more efficient disk operations. Doing it piecemeal would be slow, thrash the disk unnecessarily, & so on.

I am sure Mavericks is more RAM friendly, which is not the case on my less than a week old Mac Mini. Right after I turn it on it is already using almost all the RAM. If I open iTunes and Snowtape 2 it gets so,so sluggish and laggy to the point that it gets ridiculous.

I am talking about a Mac Mini i7-2.3 with 4GB RAM, it is bad just right out of the box. I bought the 4GB model because I wanted to upgrade it myself so I bought two 4GB RAM modules for 60 bucks on Ebay.

Now, I can notice a huge different, but I have to say that I have never seen a computer that uses all the RAM memory right after taking it out of the box, this is very weird regardless of all the new memory features that came with Mavericks.

I am downgrading my MacBook AIr, no need for a memory craver, I might end up doing the same on the Mini. So that being said and based upon others Mavericks is not that memory friendly.

I have 10.9 running on a 2009 iMac that only has 4GB of RAM. It probably has a slower HD than your Mini & the Macbook Air's SSD. It does run smoothly.

I have also run 10.9 on an external USB2 disk on the same machine & that is surprisingly responsive, I'd happily use it. It is a clean installation of 10.9, so the question I have is what have you got installed? Did you migrate old data & apps from another Mac?

My views on free RAM are probably clear if you read this thread, so I think you should ignore 'free RAM' as a way to troubleshoot (it's meaningless, the OS will cache & purge as required), 'Page-outs' a.k.a. 'Swap used' is another matter.

This thread is very long so I'd recomend you create a new topic & post some info on what you see.

Etrecheck can help people see what is running & then you can remove any items that are know to cause issues.

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

I use Windows and Linux and I've never ever use SWAP on any Linux distro even with multiple browser windows open and other programs running. I'm into SWAP with Firefox and a few windows open. My system on idle uses almost 2gb RAM. My KDE Linux box is around 500mg RAM. Too be candid I don't want to have to dig into what's going on with Mavericks. This isn't Linux. This isn't Windows this is OS X. Users shouldn't have a IT degree to have a working system. We shouldn't have to post diagrams and snapshots, etc. My system ran like a clock with Lion and ML.

The faithfull will tell you its you. Did you upgrade from Lion or ML? Sure. A fresh install of ML. I don't want to be a troll. I am a bit peaved. I'm too lazy to start over with Lion. I also apperciate that Mavericks was free and I've read some of why all the RAM is used. None is wasted... So that means my SWAP isn't either??? 2gb without any programs going? I don't have the kind of background many OS X users here have and they've told me I just don't get it. Seems I'm alone though. I'm not one of the faithful.

You are not alone. I have a mid 2011 IMac 27'' with 8gig RAM, and my system comes to a crawl when I simply have safari open. Never had this problem with ML. Never had SWAP with ML. I upgraded from ML and I installed A fresh copy of Mavericks. With so many people facing the same issues, I can't believe we have not had a word from apple. And there probably won't be.

I hd the opinion that the OS has a built in death cycle. Apple wants me to upgrade my 3000 dollar machine each year. That will never happen. I have a 5 year old PC running windows 8.1 that runs just as smooth as it did under win7. I expect more from apple.

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