Mavericks and memory (Ram)

I totally agree with you MarcelloM1973. Exactly the same happened with me

If the issue is continuing to cause trouble have you considered re-installing 10.9?

Others have reported it can fix weird issues like this.

The default 10.9 installer option will overwrite the OS files, but leave all the apps & user data in place on the disk. So if you take a backup (just in case) there is little you have to lose by trying. Obviously it won't help if you have 3rd party software installed that is breaking the OS, which is why EtreCheck (& your own thread) can help.

http://etresoft.com/etrecheck

I haven't tried reinstalling. I might give that a shot. I also have 8GB of RAM on the way, so I might try memory compression again after installing more ram. But it seems to me that the theory behind memory compression is that it is so fast to do the compression that it is quicker than writing to disk. If that's not true for some processors, memory compression is going to be a double whammy because it is slower to do the compression AND it is also giving you less uncompressed ram to work with, requiring more frequent swapping in the first place.

Frankly, I'm surprised Apple didn't offer the option to turn it off in settings. I'm much happier with it turned off, and I'll only be happier with more ram.

I have installed Mavericks on my home iMac and on seven or eight iMacs at work. Except with some problems with one application not running on two of them (IBM Notes-but I solved that), I have run into very few problems with Mavericks' memory management.

I have run into only one item I can actually identify, caught in the act, so-to-speak. If anyone has any version of Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader installed, then occassionally a small but deadly background utility will come up (in the wee hours of the night?) listed in Activity Monitor as "Adobe Acrobat update" or some such name (I forget the exact name because it has not come up recently) and it displays an Acrobat icon with the cycle arrow (typical of the updater icons). When it is up, my CPU usage goes up to the max and everything slows way down, even to the point of needing to wait seconds between typing letters.

I just select that in Activity Monitor and quit it. Immediately my usage specs go back down to nominal levels, and everything is responsive. You should check on that process happening.

I have to analyse my home iMac a little more, because my wife complains about everything being slow (Facebook games, mostly), and she always shuts down my user account, which shouldn't be needed with App Nap going on.

jbg7474 wrote:

But it seems to me that the theory behind memory compression is that it is so fast to do the compression that it is quicker than writing to disk.

The theory is correct. Please believe Apple on this. Even the slowest CPU qualified to run Mavericks can compress & decompress memory many, many times faster than it would take to page it in & out of VM on the drive.

All I really know for sure is that it is not faster on my machine. Not by a long shot. Maybe that is because of a software bug that only shows up on certain systems. Maybe there is a hardware fault in my system. Maybe the software I'm using doesn't like it (though I'm mostly using Apple software). It really doesn't matter to me because I'm a very satisfied customer with it turned off.

Apple don't give access to low level system settings unless there is a really good reason for it (like developers need it). Memory compression doesn't seem to be a bad thing in itself and could improve performance on systems with less RAM.

I'd have to agree with R C-R, all the info I have read on the topic says the the compression is much faster than swapping to disk, even the fastest SSD's are many times slower than RAM.

Slowdowns or freezes when compression activates suggest to me that an application may be attempting to use RAM in ways that are not compatible with compression. To confirm it install 10.9 on another disk & see if it happens with a clean system.

Otherwise the issue could be hardware related, in which case it would help to start comparing model numbers, but I don't think that is the case here.

Dear all,

I have been extremely frustrated this last week, installing Mavericks onto a fresh HD. As the people in this thread reported, I kept on encountering application out of memory errors, and the activity monitor reported the mds process eating up over 9gb of ram.

Eventually I managed to discover the issue. I had been running an old version of Alfred (v1), and as it is reported here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5470508?answerId=23618172022#23618172022, this version of Alfred does not play well with OSX 10.9. I forced quit from Alfred and also forced quit mds, and the problem subsided immediately. I've since installed a newer version of Alfred, so hopefully this is the source of the problem.

My tip is that if any of you are running into mds eating system processes, ask yourself whether you have any apps which are using the indexing function of spotlight.

Yo. Returning after a dozen pages.

I have a Late 2011 MBP and was having issues with Mavericks. I've upgraded my memory from 4GB to 16GB and while it helped me it didn't solved some other annoying issues like iTunes and Quicktime stuttering on 720p iPhone videos and ALAC audio. iPhoto was a trial of patience and iTunes icons taking a few seconds to appear.

And no. No third party software. I don't even use stinking flash player or MS Office.

So I had the chance to get a Samsung Evo 840 last week. I've installed the SSD and my computer is fine now. The original HD was a 500GB 4900RPM Toshiba spinning rust disk.

Don't know if the issues were Mavericks specific against that model or my disk is having problems. I've tried SMART tests on that disk and everything was ok. Perhaps its because its a 4900RPM disk but Apple should had specified that on their "recommended" spec info. I'm using it as an alternative TM backup right now.

This one is a "works for me" response so do some research before acquiring a SSD because they are expensive.

Dear all,

I have a late 2010 iMac, 4GB, a very fast machine until I installed Mavericks (clean installation). I made a screen capture of the System Monitor. As you can see, it shows a very high memory pressure, almost 40GB of VM, and the only open application is Firefox (besides the Preview for the screen shot). Any ideas of what can be producing this (at least for me) very strange behavior? A possible incompatibility of Firefox?

I would thank any idea for fixing the problem. Best!

You have this Memory Clean app running.

Could well be that this is interfering with the Mavericks memory compression.

I'd remove that and see if this helps.

Thank you, I will try, just to have the system as clean as possible, but I installed the Memory Clean because of the memory problems, so I know I have another problem.

A:

I had speed problems too, my mac was too slow to work with.

Beach balls, "open" dialogs that took 10-15 seconds to appear, switching programs took ages.

Tried everything that was written here on the support forums, nothing helped.

Until I upgraded my RAM from 4 to 8 GB, from that moment on everything was working smoothly again.

AlvaroO wrote:

Dear all,

I have a late 2010 iMac, 4GB, a very fast machine until I installed Mavericks (clean installation). I made a screen capture of the System Monitor. As you can see, it shows a very high memory pressure, almost 40GB of VM, and the only open application is Firefox (besides the Preview for the screen shot). Any ideas of what can be producing this (at least for me) very strange behavior? A possible incompatibility of Firefox?

I would thank any idea for fixing the problem. Best!

What version of Firefox? How many extensons are installed in Firefox, are they current? Disable them & see if it still occurs. Did Firefox have lots of tabs open or none at all?

Does the memory pressure go high when when Firefox isn't running? Have you tried a safe boot? Have you tried opening apps in a new user account?

Have you been 'cleaning memory'? Disable or remove that app, reboot & see if it still happens. Memory doesn't need 'cleaning'. The OS may suffer if you purge items that it needs in RAM, it will just have to reload or recalculate the data. I know you said it wasn't added until after the issues began, but it clouds the issue IMO.

4GB isn't much RAM nowadays, but Apple do support that, the compression should help it get better performance (over <10.8).

You could enable the 'real memory' column in Activity Monitor to see how much of the processes are trying to use physical RAM, right click the column names to show it.

Was your clean install followed by Migration Assistant to restore from TIme Machine or an old backup etc? Did you erase the HD, or install over an older copy of data?

It looks like Spotlight could be indexing something, is that actually spawning many mdworker processes? Is it possible you have older 'spotlight indexers' installed? Sometimes they can choke on particular documents & just keep respawning…

I'd suggest the same advice as I suggested to others…

Make a new thread (so people have some incentive to follow your issue).

Post an EtreCheck report to show what is running

Clear out any apps that are old & focus on any items that are installed at the kernel or system level.

Good luck

I'm commenting on the various RAM related suggestions below.

First, i had two machines with 4GB. Both worked fine with 10.9, although the older, HD equipped machine benfitted greatly from 8GB. I am a heavy user, lots of apps open,, but NOT doing video editing etc.

So, 4GB is "ok" and my memory pressure never left green, and page-outs were essentially zero.

I conclude you have a problem.

I would seriously consider re-installing 10.9.

I would also look for add-on, especially system level add-ons thatr may be comflicting with it, Virus, memory management, etc.

Make sure all apps, including FF, are up-to-date.

My tle is 10.9 needs marginally LESS RAM than previous versions.

Grant