OS X Mavericks - Awful Performance

If you have a router between you and your MBP, I would deactivate/disable OS X's own firewall.

This maybe one of your issues. You do not need to use OS X 's own firewall protection if you already have firewall protection at the router level.

This may improve OS X Mavericks performance.

Most wireless routers are already setup with firewall protection and you can increase the protection, if necessary, by login into the router' own software from a web browser.

infinite vortex wrote:

Hardware Information:

MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011)

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro8,1

1 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2 cores

4 GB RAM

Disk Information:

TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF disk0 : (500.11 GB)

EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 499.25 GB (424.02 GB free)

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

I too have a MBP 13" Early-2011 although it's a 2.7GHz i7 with 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. There are two areas that will substantially change the experience you get from your MBP with Mavericks…

1) RAM - 4GB IMHO no longer cuts it. You can see by your page outs that the memory manager is having to toss RAM contents to HDD. This will send system performance into the toilet. Upgrade your RAM to at least 8GB and you'll see a marked improvement.

2) HDD - the HDD in your MBP blows chunks. Before replacing my HDD (the same model as yours) with an SSD (Samsung SSD 840 EVO) the performance of the MBP with Mavericks was far from pleasing, or even acceptable, even with 16GB RAM. The HDD just seems to slow things down no end. If you swap the HDD out with either an SSD or an SSHD you'll get a big performance lift here too.

Basically, Mavericks pushes hardware in different and unexpected way (compared to Mt Lion and prior) and there are ways to overcome them with a small spend. Whether it's right or wrong with the decent hardware you have is another matter but it is what it is. I was rather surpised how much this MBP was dragged down by Mavericks but this has, for me at least, been overcome.

1) RAM: No longer cuts based on your usage maybe? I can understand it comming from someone who works with memory intensive applications the whole time but I don't. As I've said I basically use a terminal and safari. All my tests indicate that memory is fine. I have ZERO swap usage and Etrecheck reported only 29MB page outs (which is data that isn't on RAM). This is wayyyy bellow a 10% threshold which is generaly recommended by people. The help page on Etrecheck also states that "A low level of free RAM is not necessarily a problem. The operating system tries to make the best use out of the memory you have given it. Unused RAM is wasted RAM."

2) Disk: aside from server software I haven't found this day something that requires an SSD to work. And since we're also talking about memory most of the work will be done on the RAM. The number of IOPS and data writen and read from the disk is quite low. So disk speed isn't the bottleneck.

Mavericks hasn't changed that much from the ML code base or even implemented something that revolutionary to obsolete 2 year old hardware.

Thanks for your time tho.

I'm getting an upgrade to 16GB this week from 2x8GB 1600Mhz Corsair memory sticks. I will report if it helps to solve the problem but even if it solves it kinda sounds like throwing more hardware to solve a faulty software behavior.

The help page on Etrecheck also states that "A low level of free RAM is not necessarily a problem. The operating system tries to make the best use out of the memory you have given it. Unused RAM is wasted RAM."

That's true. However when your system is paging to swap space (signified by page outs) this is in fact a bad thing. Swap space usage occurs when your system, physical, memory is over-subscribed and needs to be passed in and out of HDD/SSD. The circumstance Etrecheck refers to is when memory is in an inactive state where something is there and is essentially kept in case is needs to be "read back" into active memory. It's much faster to just leave it there and to purge it when necessary rather than purge it, leaving more free space, and then having to potentially read it back in from HDD/SSD.

With compressed memory in Mavericks the page outs may look less under the same circumstances in Mt Lion however is actually worse as it's compressed. Mt Lion doesn't compress memory.

Disk: aside from server software I haven't found this day something that requires an SSD to work. And since we're also talking about memory most of the work will be done on the RAM. The number of IOPS and data writen and read from the disk is quite low. So disk speed isn't the bottleneck.

You'd think, but the difference is like night and day when you swap in an SSD for a less than stellar performing HDD. If you use and/or install a monitoring app, I use MenuMeters, and watch when you HDD is being accessed and for how long you can distinctly see where an SSD will work for you. The HDD you have will cap out at around 60-70MB/s (less depending on the actual state/usage of your HDD)… SSD will be 400MB/s+. All you need to do is watch it.

SSD made a massive difference to my MBP 13" is all I can really say and I don't push it that hard unlike my rMBP.

Mavericks hasn't changed that much from the ML code base or even implemented something that revolutionary to obsolete 2 year old hardware.

Actually a lot has in fact changed. Most with Apple and the assumptions they, rightfully or not, are making. With the push towards always open apps like iOS and the presumption of more RAM plus SSD/Fusion things have changed a lot.

but even if it solves it kinda sounds like throwing more hardware to solve a faulty software behavior.

In a lot of ways you're right although I wouldn't say "faulty" exactly. There's a lot wrong with Mavericks that's for sure. There's a lot right too. The trick is having the right hardware match for the direction that Apple are going. If you look at my system implementations all but one are on Mt Lion or less… it suits me to have things this way and it'll change when it suits me to have it another way. Everyone needs simply do what's right for them. While we jump up and down and say Apple should have done a better job, which I agree with, it's not what we have and nothing will change no matter how one protests.

End of the day it's your computer and you're the one that has to use it. Do what you need to do to enjoy it.

Looks like the general consensus about Maverick is that its basically a flop.....Pass the word on, it needs definite work and to be honest what does it really offer, I didn't see any major differences between ML and Mav....

I posted a colorful explanation of my problems and they deleted my post......which proves they know it has major problems....

"Looks like the general consensus about Maverick is that its basically a flop.....Pass the word on, it needs definite work and to be honest what does it really offer, I didn't see any major differences between ML and Mav...."

I'll have to let my Mini know it is not behaving to your standards as it runs Mavericks flawlessly.

"I posted a colorful explanation of my problems and they deleted my post......which proves they know it has major problems...."

No, it just proves you're a major idiot.

TOWjr wrote:

Looks like the general consensus about Maverick is that its basically a flop.....Pass the word on, it needs definite work and to be honest what does it really offer, I didn't see any major differences between ML and Mav....

I'm getting at least 20% better battery life and measurable performance improvements on all my Macs... and it's free.

The only general consensus that I have been able to discern is that anti-virus junk and unsupported system hacks account for the vast majority of problems reported on this site. That is approximately the same as for every OS X upgrade there has ever been.

I have a fully loaded iMac 27", and Mavericks has been working fine for me. The only issue I have is that gestures for moving forward or backwards in Safari for example, seems to be a little touchy and takes a more attention to the swiping motion.

It has been great. Yes, it is not a 'major' change. But there are a lot of suble changes that I enjoy.

I think thats very shortsighted of you to say. My iMac is a 21.5" 2011 i7 model with 8GB ram, I have no pageouts, but I do have the curor beachballing now and then, scrolling stops for a few seconds now and then, and the iMac wont sleep on its own. Certain animations are jerky, DU never says the partition with its freindly green writing unless in recovery mode as it used to in Mountain Lion, and that that animation of DU opening is so jerky is laughable. My external drives don't switch off and I have more system errors than I have ever seen in a single OS X release. ML basically never had any and 10.8 for me.

This is on a clean install as well. Since Snow Leopard I have had Lion, Mountain Lion and now Mavericks, this incarnation is some of the most buggy code I have encountered on a point release. I am gutted my Mac is acting like this, It feels like Mavericks is still away off from being release code for this machine and several other iMacs as well I look after. This OS is very buggy.

"I posted a colorful explanation of my problems and they deleted my post......which proves they know it has major problems...."

No, it just proves you're a major idiot.

😁😁😁

+5 (I have 5 Macs running Mavericks flawlessly also)

petermac,

I'm not sure why you seem to take this issue so personally, but there does not seem to be any question that many of us upgraded from 10.8 to 10.9 and saw substantial degradation in performance. I followed some early instructions from this thread about removing apps, but I'm pretty sure they have nothing to do with the slower performance of 10.9 since nothing changed.

Every task takes much longer on my Mac Pro (2008) with 8 GB. When I open iPhoto, after the opening window displays it takes about 30 seconds before it responds to any mouse movement (under 10.8 there was perhaps a 3-4 second delay). The same holds true for Word and Excel and iMovie. OS 10.9 seems to perform a lot of disc thrashing before an app will begin operating. It also takes about twice as long as it did with 10.8 to open an app. Safari is quite a bit slower than under 10.8.

When you've been running 10.7 for over a year, and then 10.8 for a year, it's easy to see the slowness of 10.9. If some app is causing 10.9 to run much slower than older OS versions, then it's 10.9's problem... not the computer's.

Joe Seidler wrote:

petermac,

I'm not sure why you seem to take this issue so personally, but there does not seem to be any question that many of us upgraded from 10.8 to 10.9 and saw substantial degradation in performance.

Yes, so many of you!! Out of te many millions already running Mavericks flawlessly. Have a look closer to home. Have a read up on these forums. Happens to a few people after every upgrade.

Pete

Funny how no one at APPLE is stepping up and saying anything about the issue. Maybe because they know they dropped the ball on this but that should give them a reason to fix this problem.

Have you let Apple know? Posting here won't get through to them. This is a user to user forum. Millions have downloaded Mavericks, only a few here in these user forums are having any issues and many have discovered that it is either third part app problems or hardware issues.

Cheers

Pete

That's a cute straw man you've got there.

Apple has pretty much never said anything about anything.

Funny how some people post complaints while providing no information whatsoever that could help others solve their problems.