Mavericks and memory (Ram)

Does the sluggishness plague the MBA too? Is it possible to get a normal performance by making a clean install?

I was just about to order a Macbook Air when I saw this thread, now I'm undecided.

Ulib,

I think 32 bit software (InDesign I'm guessing is 32 bit) has an upper limit to the amount of RAM that it can address. I'm not sure, but it seems like 4GB is that limit.

A few years ago when Apple first switched to Intel processors they used Rosetta to run applications that were designed for the older chips. Rosetta worked well but took quite a bit of resources which slowed things down. I ended up getting all new software, so I would not need Rosetta and things ran much better all the way around.

I'm guessing that in a similar way 32 bit programs would probably not work as well on a 64 bit machine as 64 bit software especially when addressing RAM.

Not sure if that's part of it, but some food for thought.

Right now out of 4GB of physical RAM; I am using 3.37GB (according to Activity Monitor). I have 5 applications open Finder, Numbers, Safari, Chrome (just trying it for data on it's parent company - I prefer Safari), Activity Monitor, and Mail. My Intel Video reports using 1024MB or 1GB of that RAM, so the other 3GB are what I have to work with presumably. Roughly the 5 programs with a couple of tabs in each browser and I have the iTunes Helper that is in the User Login active seems to use 3.37 - 1.00 (for video) = 2.27 GB used by the OS and loaded stuff.

Of course there are plug-ins in each browser and who knows what else in the background.

The laptop is working fine and will recapture RAM as I quit or close things. I haven't any swaps to disk at this level of useage. The performance is pretty good and system is stable.

haecceitas,

That's a really good question.

Last night, I had thought of using an SSD rather than HDD (in a mid 2012 MacBook Pro) as a way to get a bit better performace. In theory, reads and writes to the SSD are significantly faster, so swaps, if needed, would be faster too.

I'm guessing that is part of the SSD craze in the MacBook Air or now the new MacBook Pros too. The drives are faster period, so booting, reading and writing are significantly faster as they have no moving parts, so there are no heads to park: therefore, mobile reliability is enhanced as is battery life, heat and noise etc... A great option for road warriors.

It is my understanding that a "fresh install" of the OS with the intent of getting the OS all together on the fastest part of the HDD (spinning platters) does not apply to an SSD (cells of flash memory). I believe that all parts of an SSD can be accessed equally fast, so there is no slowing effect as the drive writes more data towards the slower parts of a platter type HDD.

This whole question of RAM and Mavericks might not be as bad as it might seem.

Firstly, what sofware is going to be used and how big is the data set that is being used? The idea is if your opening a huge file it will want RAM. I think Adobe has allways liked its RAM and uses it well. Or, if you are a multitasking monster (35 browser tabs in Safari, with video and all the iWorks, with Mail and who knows what else) you could well run into a slowdown.

I suspect that Mavericks is also managing memory pretty well too, as I can open enough stuff to get my Activity Monitor to report that all RAM is used but still have decent performance up to a point - some sort of magic going on there (I just don't know the engineering behind it). But, it does work. Technically I should be using a disk swap, but I'm not - seems like magic to me.

Sorry, this is getting long - I find it fascinating and relevant.

Bottom line: I think the MacBook Air will be fine (I'd really like one too).

• The SSD will spoil you on performance, so going back to HDD will be less than fantastic.
• How much RAM you get is up to you, but if you typically open huge files or tons of applications more is better, and the SSD is just much faster at everything even swaps if needed.
• I'm running on 4GB RAM and 500 GB HDD and while using a moderate load have RAM to spare (not a ton) but enough and haven't really had any real issues as I am now aware of it. I used to keep insane amounts of stuff open, but have cut back a little.
• BTW I had a 4GB MacBook running Snow Leopard, and it was a bit faster than my new 4GB MacBook Pro running Mountain Lion. ON SOME THINGS but NOT ALL. Progress to newer stuff has costs and benefits, but lagging behind also has costs and benefits. Obviously, I bought the new machine and updated to Mavericks as soon as it was available partly because I wanted iBooks to work on the laptop and it does.
• Use Modern software designed for the newer hardware.

The idea of Macbook Air, to me, is something fast, rugged and very portable yet fully fuctioning as an OS.

Test it! if you can get to a local Apple store go to one and open a bunch of stuff and see what the performance is like. That is how I was originally sold on Apple. The sales guy opened every application and file on the machine at the same time, and it did not crash. It did get slow, but I'm talking everything was opened, and it was still stable. That was a few years back, but I think they are still good machines and personally can't find a reason to switch to another - I've tried.

I hope this in some way answers your question. Perhaps, someone with a MacBook Air will chime in. But, the best way is try to get to a store for a hands on test.

Hope that helps.

Should I downdload Mavericks or do I have too little RAM?

Model Name: MacBook

Model Identifier: MacBook6,1

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

Processor Speed: 2.26 GHz

Number Of Processors: 1

Total Number Of Cores: 2

L2 Cache: 3 MB

Memory: 2 GB

Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Boot ROM Version: MB61.00C8.B00

SMC Version (system): 1.51f53

Serial Number (system): WQ949CLN8PW

Hardware UUID: 5BCF0740-FCF9-5DB3-8C80-64AFE9B49E9A

Sudden Motion Sensor:

State: Enabled

noggin31

noggin31 wrote:

Should I downdload Mavericks or do I have too little RAM?

Memory: 2 GB

Technically, no: OS X Mavericks: System Requirements. But I suspect you will be much happier with more.

Even if you don't install 10.9 you would probably be happier with a lot more memory.

Apple used to ship devices with the bare minimum installed RAM, 2GB is going to push your Mac into swapping with even basic tasks.

Have you seen the 'spinning beachball' very much? It is a sign that the system is out of resources & working overtime.

noggin31,

If I understand your system, it has 250 MB or ~ 1/4 GB of shared RAM with the Nvidia GeForce 9400M Video leaving the difference for the system.

As MadMacs0 posts; technically the laptop is within the specifications published by Apple to run Mavericks, but it is at the bare minimum regarding RAM. So technically it should run, but how well?

Drew Reece also points out that this is a bare minimum and asks a good question. Is the system currently lagging?

4GB of RAM is not too much money. I don't think I can post how much or through who. There are rumors that your system will actually recognize and use 8GB although the "official" maximum as per Apple appears to be 4 GB.

Why do you want to upgrade to Mavericks? Is it worth buying and installing 4GB of RAM if the install of Mavericks leaves you less than satisfied with performance? You could always make a backup or clone of your existing disk and try Mavericks with 2GB then revert back if unhappy or get the extra RAM if need be.

You asked (generally), "should I install Mavericks on a 2GB MacBook".

My Answer is yes if there is something about Mavericks that you must have or truly need (only you can determine that). If you do it, then accept that it will use more resources and leave less for you to open stuff. But you can upgrade RAM too.

My answer is no if you are just curious, but my answer changes to yes if you are curious, want to explore and have another system to get your stuff done on (while your testing) and the time to invest.

It works well enough for me on my 4GB system that's using 1GB for shared video that's 3GB left.

Yours is 2GB less 1/4 GB shared video or 1.75 GB for the system.

Don't expect much as you are at the bare minimum of RAM as the others have noted.

Good luck.

There is no performance issue with MBA (MacBook Air).

Based on my personal observation and testing at a local retailer.

What I did...

On an 11" MBA with 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, and Intel 5000 graphics I'm guessing this is or is close to the latest thing as it was on display.

I opened almost everything on the computer. All the things in the dock were opened, then I went to the applications folder and opened more, then utilities and opened still more...

Activity Monitor reported 3.99GB used and stayed at that number but performance was still good. There was 1MB Swap Used reported.

This was simply a display model. I could not believe how fast it opened Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, iTunes had a bounce or two but that was well after I had opened lots of stuff. Mission Control did stumble just a bit trying to display all that open stuff at the end, but come on who in their right mind would run nearly everything all at once even Garage Band, iPhoto, Safari, Maps, Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Stickies, iBooks, Disk Utility all of it!

I didn't run Terminal but most everything else was running.

I want one or an SSD for mine.

I was truly amazed at how snappy it was coming from Mid 2012 MacBook Pro with 4GB, and 500GB HDD. Right now I have a fair amount of stuff open on my MacBook Pro - Memory Used is 3.99GB with no Swap Used and when I go to Finder it is a bit slow to show the contents of the hard drive initially, but works well once it is opened and I go back to it from other open things I'm working on. It is still very useable but doesn't "pop" like the MBA I just tried.

***Just for completeness and fairness my MacBook Pro has 220GB of just audio files on the hard drive along with the rest. The Hard Drive has about 200GB free out of 500GB; it probably makes a difference in quickness dragging around all those audio files around. Yet, another theory to test.

Just for comparison,

I just opened essentially all programs on my mid 2012 MacBook Pro 4GB and 500GB HDD with Bluetooth Magic Mouse active.

It worked, and I'm writing this post with most everything open. It was obviously not able to keep up with each program that I clicked instantly, but it did open them and is stable.

By alt+tab or option+tab I count 22 open icons (programs) this is from a fresh cold boot.

Mission Control shows 22 separate icons and my 3 separate desktops without incident. It isn't able to show each thing opened in any detail as there are too many to cram onto the laptop screen.

Memory Used reports 3.99GB and no Swap used.

Finder seems resposive and working well.

Who knows? I have so many things open that it is hard to keep track. Okay now I'm streaming music to wireless speakers via Airport Express Router and iTunes no problems. I was going to try and play a music file at the same time from within Finder, but I can't as the laptop speakers are disabled with Airport Express streaming music. So plug in external speakers through the headphone jack and ? It works - music from within Finder (preview play) plays on the external speakers while iTunes streams in the background to the other wireless speakers via Airport Express.

Somehow the Memory Used in Activity Monitor has actually dropped to 3.75GB while messing around. I haven't closed anything either???? It must be recovering or compressing in the background.

Enough - I Hope someone finds this helpful.

Speech Feedback is open too - I'm not even sure what that is, and it doesn't even show up in my icon/program count. After quitting everything except this post and another Safari tab and Activity Monitor the Memory Used has dropped to 2.70GB.

Thanks for everyboy's advice. I'd better do without Mavericks until I get a new Mac with more RAM.

Mike

Hi guys! In november I've installed Mavericks on my MacBook Pro 15, 2,2 Ghz, 4 Gb RAM, early 2011. It was incredible slow, and then I decided to delete completely whole system. As I have an 2011 Model I also have 2 CDs with OS and Apps. I installed my previous Snow Leopard and my MBP began working very good.

So now my question is: does many Mac users still have that lags because of wrong use of RAM like it was 1-2 months ago, or Apple fixed it with any new Softwear update?

Best regards!

evghenii wrote:

does many Mac users still have that lags because of wrong use of RAM like it was 1-2 months ago, or Apple fixed it with any new Softwear update?

There is no indication that Apple has changed anything about the way Mavericks uses RAM nor do they have any concerns about it. Seems to be doing exactly what they intended for the majority of users.

I'm occasionally still getting problems, but I cannot figure out why.

It is not frequent, but occsionally, I still slow down on something a simple as Finder. It almost seems like the HDD is re-indexing. In Spotlight, at times, it does report that it is re-indexing my HDD and of course that slows the system down.

I have tried to open all applications at once - no problems. Just now, I tried opening tons of tabs in Safari with the usual group of open applications in the background and have not experienced any problems.

OOOPS! Scratch that. I wrote all the above and was editing it for punctuation and "Safari Quit Unexpectedly". When I came back the text was automatically saved so that is good. I did have lots of tabs open, but It seems like I used to have more than that open regularly on Mountain Lion, Lion, Snow Leopard, Leopard, ect...

Don't know what to make of it. Seems like you can't use the system as hard by having as many things or tabs ect... open at once. The thing is it doesn't always happen just occasionally for me at least.

Well I got rid of the memory compression thing in Mavericks (says my RAM is stressed but who cares, RAM is electronic...it's supposed to be stressed like ****) and that made Parallel's run a bit faster. The other thing is I know occassionally purge the cache so I can get some nice contiguous free memory without waiting for the kernel to do it automatically.

It does take some more time to load applications (like normal load time), but since I never reopen apps more than a couple times a day, I can wait, and I always keep the mac in sleep mode so they're always memory resident for the most part. I suppose newer heavy weight applications will take advantage of the new memory management paradigm (they all have their own RAM and disk caching techniques) but I really need the older way of memory management for some things to work as smoothly as they did in Lion.

What I can't wrap my head around is why the **** the terminal emulator ocupies 11 Megs? Or why tops (you know tops, from the olden days of unix) occupies 2 megs?

This is all wrong, they shouldn't even occupy more than a half a megabyte in memory...where does all this bloating come from?

That is interesting. So how do you go about removing that Memory compression thing?

Thanks

Pete