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Mavericks and memory (Ram)

Hi


Anyone else noticed how Mavericks uses memory ?

I have a new Macbook Air 2013 with 4GB of memory and after a short wile.

The system have used 3.99GB of the total 4GB 😟 Isn't that a big problem. Thats can't be right.

I would think that the computer would suffer greatly after a short time of use and the computer

needs to be restarted. If thats true. The new Mavericks ***** big time on Computers with less

memory. Or is there something i don't know.


Thanks

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 8:07 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 8:11 AM

Mavericks uses memory smarter than previous OS's, not necessarily less memory. Look at the swap memory if that is high then you have a problem. Also, if the mac is still running fast then there isn't a problem.

460 replies

May 4, 2014 12:53 AM in response to fentonwinmill

fentonwinmill wrote:


My observasions regarging this problem.

Thank you! Finally a well thought-out analysis of the issues involved. I never considered that SSD's would make any difference. I hope you communicate some of your thoughts to Apple Engineering. Probably the best way for normal users would probably be to joint the OS X Mavericks Beta program and use their Feedback mechanism.

May 8, 2014 10:09 AM in response to Sami_Smurf

No.

294 MBs worth of Page Outs isn't a lot to worry about.

I does indicate,though, that you have barely enough RAM installed.

I would statrt to worry if the Page Out amounts get to 1 GB and higher in size.

That would be the time to consider installing more RAM.

WIthout knowing your year and model MBP, no one can tell you what the max. amount of RAM your Mac will take.

Correct and reliable Mac RAM can be purchased from online Mac RAM sources Crucial memory or OWC (macsales.com).

May 8, 2014 11:06 AM in response to MichelPM

The thing is I''ve seen a Gig of swap used with 16gb of memory on board with very little running.

File cache allocation is far too aggressive forcing you into a swap situation which hammers the boot disk. If you have and sad/fusion drive it saturated the bus. The new memory management makes for an unbalanced system.

You'd never see and enterprise server set up like this.

May 8, 2014 12:35 PM in response to fentonwinmill

I have never experienced this with OS X Mavericks.

Memory Page Outs are still an indicator of insufficient, physically installed RAM.

Mavericks handles memory different from previous OS X versions.

Mavericks does not let free, unused RAM go to waste or stay dormant in the system any longer.

If there are few apps running under Mavericks, Mavericks will grab all of the remaining RAM for itself, but will start dole-ing out that RAM when more applications launch or when an Application needs more during operation.

This is different from the old way RAM allocation used to work under older versions of OS X.

That is leaving unused RAM alone until needed.

I think the reason Mavericks deals with the free, unused RAM situation differently is because it takes all of the excess, unused RAM as part of the new memory compression routines in Mavericks.

Mavericks and memory (Ram)

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