Mavericks and memory (Ram)

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.

I noticed that Mavericks is utilizing more memory than Mountian Lion did, I purchased a new iMac 27 inch with 8Gb of memory last weekend. When viewing the utilization of memory under Mountain Lion i noticed I had about 4Gb of free memory. Upon installing Mavericks I now show less than 1Gb of memory free. I do have to say I havent notice any preformance issues thus far but it has made me reconsider purchasing additional memory for my iMac.

I agree, that sounds normal for Mavericks - unless 'Swap Used' is significant, there's no problem.

As cbs20 said, OS X Mavericks uses RAM much more efficiently than any other previous version of OS X. Mavericks now has a memory compression feature that will compress the memory occupied by applications that aren't being actively used and give the freed up RAM to the application that needs it the most. The result is a much more responsive system and less memory being dumped to a swap file to the HDD which is what reduces the performance of your Mac.

If I were you, I would not look at the RAM used number but rather to the Memory Pressure graph that tells you how stressed is the system in terms of memory.

I hope this clears out your question.

Fore more information about OS X Mavericks new system management technologies visit:

http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/#advanced-tech

Correct, checkout the MacRumors.com Mavericks forum. Developers were discussing this issue and have better explanations than I could provide.

>>so from what your saying. I'm fine... right

Yes, you are.

Why is my Mac running slower then. I see the little wheel spinning more often. To turn on Activity Monitor or Terminal used to be quick. Now, Mavericks thinks (RAM's) about it too much.

All this is after two days of Mavericks. Everything is Indexed. Everything I start now takes longer.

Would doing a "Clean Install" help?

-rt

I have years using this mac mini server to run a VMware Fusion session for a Home Office Asterisk PBX, never had a problem with memory until I upgraded to 10.9.

Now I cant last 24hrs with my PBX running without the application hanging and getting a message that reads...

"Your system has run out of application memory." with a Force Quit Applications dialog where VMware Fusion shows in red an labeled as "Paused".

If you only have 4GB then you are in the same boat as me, you will need to upgrade to 8GB RAM or aftermaket 12GB or 16GB

I have a MacBook Pro mid 2012, I bought it about 4 months ago, it came with Mt Lion and had no problems, now after installing Maverick it is running slow, tell the turth a snail moves faster.

What I have found out is Maverick is very heavy on RAM, if you have only 4GB like I have then you are going to be waiting a long time for anything to work.

At the moment I have 4GB but only 246.1MB Free for anything to run and the only thing I have open on the MacBook is Safari.

I make movies on iMovie and now it is impossible to do.

You will like me have to up grade, if you only upgrade to 8GB RAM, just do not buy though Apple. I was quoted about $US210 here in Japan, yet Buffalo has Apple 8GB for about $US70.

If you decide more then 8GB then you need to seach the web for someone selling them.

it's really strange that a system released with the promise of compress your memory is eating more memory than it's predecessor.

I think increase your memory would solve that but I hope that memory compressing would get us free of increasing it.

I have the same problem with my Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo (4Go RAM). With ML, I had no problem. The amount of free memory with 5-6 apps opened was about 1.5-2Go. From now, with Mavericks, it remains only 200-300Mo of free RAM. The OS is very slow with only one or two applications ! Increase my RAM is not a right solution. Where is the free space of memory offered by this new feature of memory's compression ?

In my case, I'm still stuck in Snow Leopard which I think is the best Apple OS. I really want some new features of MacOS like the airplay but I'm afraid of loose much performance since I have a old 2008 iMac.

I got so excited about the focus on performance of the new MacOS 10.9 but now I'm disappointed with soo many comments about the memory usage. It's a contradiction since it's a system that caims for memory compression.

Come'on Apple! Tell us something!

I have a 27-inch, Mid 2010 iMac with 3.2GHz Intel Core i3 and 8GB RAM installed. Since installing Mavericks the system has been laggy and unresponsive. I have never had slow responses in the 3 years I've owned this machine. Immediately on installing Mavericks the problems started. I am quite often near the limit of my installed RAM while having only a few applications running. Also, the memory usage on display for the individual processes in the Activity Monitor does not add up to the 'Memory used' at the bottom of the screen. I have read some of the explanations given on how Mavericks more efficiently handles memory usage. If degraded performance is experienced then it isn't working very well, is it? I'm disappointed in Mavericks so far.