xkevinbondx

Q: Why is up to 75% of my RAM immediately used up upon start up?

My MacBook Pro is the 8,1 version, late 2011, 2.4ghz i5 with 4gb of RAM. I recently bought a nice new hard drive, installed Lion and upgraded to Mavericks. I used to be able to handle massive audio projects in Ableton Live 8 with almost no trouble at all. Now on Mavericks it's pretty close to impossible. Not only that, but I have a large amount of free space on my drive, a very minimal amount of apps installed, and nothing booting automatically at startup. My computer is CLEAN. BUT! Immedaitely upon start up if not half of RAM, about 75% of RAM is already chewed up. I have included a screen shot of Activity Monitor. Please help! What can I do short of upgrading to like 16gb of RAM. Why is this the case with Mavericks?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5)

Posted on Jan 24, 2015 12:14 PM

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Q: Why is up to 75% of my RAM immediately used up upon start up?

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  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jan 26, 2015 4:18 PM in response to xkevinbondx
    Level 5 (7,803 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 26, 2015 4:18 PM in response to xkevinbondx

    If you need or want to test RAM…

    Apple Hardware Test can check installed RAM, see if it is OK with the new memory…

    Using Apple Hardware Test - Apple Support

     

    Rember also tests RAM integrity…

    http://www.kelleycomputing.net/rember/

     

    If the OS is booting & stable there is not much to do to make it 'accept the RAM'.

     

    So far we know you think you have RAM issues but all is all we know. It's already been explained that the OS tries to cache data in RAM - it removes data from the cache when other apps require it, there are other indicators besides RAM.

     

    How much disk space do you have free? Too little free effects performance.

     

    Are the logs spewing anything when you have the slowdown? /Applications/Utilities/Console may show issues within 'All messages' or in other log files (it's hard to say which log to look at - focus on the apps that are causing 'wait cursor' or slowness). Copy a handful of log messages around problem times & compare to other times when issues occur. You can post a few lines here, but try not to swamp the forum with many log entries, too much info doesn't help sadly.

     

    There should be logs that indicate when a process crashes or panics - start noting date & times when it restarts on it's own, then look for logs from that time.

     

    Other apps may be using system resources, are there many items set to open on login? Do you have any items installed as kernel extensions & background jobs? How about USB or other devices? Do these have third party drivers etc - are they up to date?

     

    EtreCheck is a simple way to present those details here or use it to get an idea of what is running & installed on the Mac & then check those installed items are up to date & compatible with 10.10.

    http://etresoft.com/etrecheck

    http://roaringapps.com/ will help show what apps other users have found to work on various OS X versions.

     

    It also helps if you can test doing the same tasks another user account - do the issues persist?

    See if you can work inside a safe boot - do the same issues persist. I doubt Ableton will run in safe mode, but you can try - safe mode disables a lot of third party & Apple extensions so it is normal to have poor graphics performance & 'laggyness'.

    OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? - Apple Support

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Jan 26, 2015 4:22 PM in response to xkevinbondx
    Level 9 (51,422 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 26, 2015 4:22 PM in response to xkevinbondx

    xkevinbondx wrote:

     

    My MacBook Pro is the 8,1 version, late 2011, 2.4ghz i5 with 4gb of RAM.

    Only one version of Ableton Live 8 is compatible with Mavericks, and that is not 8.1

     

    You need Live 8.4.2, it is the only version of Live 8 that works correctly on 10.9.

  • by xkevinbondx,

    xkevinbondx xkevinbondx Jan 26, 2015 5:24 PM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 5:24 PM in response to Csound1

    I'm going to update Abletone as soon as I can. However, it works and runs and yada yada, the issue is actually the RAM and CPU usage which doesn't appear to be linked to the unsupported version of Ableton as my laptop has issues even when I'm not using Ablton.

     

    Stedman1: The weird thing is my computer has been restarted and shut down multiple times today. It certainly hasn't been on and running for even close to 9 hours. I don't know why that process reads such a CPU Time.

     

    I'm going to test thing thing out Oglethorpe suggested...

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Jan 26, 2015 5:26 PM in response to xkevinbondx
    Level 9 (51,422 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 26, 2015 5:26 PM in response to xkevinbondx

    I use Ableton,

     

    And contrary to your assertion that your version is compatible, it is not.

     

    But it's up to you. Good luck.

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jan 26, 2015 5:41 PM in response to Csound1
    Level 5 (7,803 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 26, 2015 5:41 PM in response to Csound1

    Isn't the Macbook Pro version 8,1 & Ableton's version is 8.something else?

     

    Get info on the app to see the version, xkevinbondx.

    I think you may have mixed up what version is installed Csound1 with the Mac model identifier, unless you can see what is running on that Mac?

     

    The 9 hours of CPU usage takes into account when the usage is over 100%, multiple threads also have an impact etc.

    I have some processes with 53+ hours when I last rebooted 1.5 days ago.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Jan 26, 2015 5:55 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 9 (51,422 points)
    Desktops
    Jan 26, 2015 5:55 PM in response to Drew Reece

    The OP states that he uses Ableton Live 8.1 on Mavericks. The correct version is 8.4.2.

     

    Which part are you having trouble with?

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jan 26, 2015 6:07 PM in response to Csound1
    Level 5 (7,803 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 26, 2015 6:07 PM in response to Csound1

    Csound1 wrote:

     

    The OP states that he uses Ableton Live 8.1 on Mavericks. The correct version is 8.4.2.

     

    Which part are you having trouble with?

    ^^^ This is what I'm having trouble with ^^^

     

    What the OP said was…

    xkevinbondx wrote:

    My MacBook Pro is the 8,1 version, late 2011, 2.4ghz i5 with 4gb of RAM.

     

    8,1 is the Macbook Pro model identifier.

    Now can you please point to where the OP states Ableton 8.1 is installed? Search the entire page - you are the only one posting about Ableton 8.1.

  • by xkevinbondx,

    xkevinbondx xkevinbondx Jan 26, 2015 6:28 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 6:28 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Hey guys. So, the MacBook Pro I run is the 8,1 version. The version of Ableton happens to actually be 8.2.something. I checked it myself and 8.4.2 is the only version of Ableton compatible with my Mac. HOWEVER, it's really not presented me with an incompatibility issues yet. And anyway, that's not my issue. The issue I'm dealing with is either bad RAM, some misallocation of RAM resource somewhere on my Mac, or some other issue. Just for the record, it doesn't have anything to do with Ableton. Recording and processing audio in Ableton just happens to be my way of gauging how healthy my system is. Before my Mavericks upgrade and before trying RAM upgrades I was able to run, sometimes, up to 130 tracks of audio all with some degree of effects processing applied to them, AND record at the same time. Occasionally I'd have to make a mix of the more massive projects to continue recording. But usually not. However now I am experiencing god awful latency issues and my OS seems to be devouring my RAM and CPU. Therefore, my laptop gets glitchy, is very verrrrry slow to boot up (never had a slow boot up even when my hard drive was full), and the spinning color wheel thing when all I do is attempt to open a panel in the System Preferences app. And another strange thing is like the App icons are invisible, or when I take a screenshot they don't appear my desktop until the next reboot. WTH is happening to my Mac! Whyyyyyyy!! Help?

     

    And now just to get it out there, here is a detailed snapshot description of my system:

     

    MacBook Pro 8,1

    500 GB hard drive, recently formatted and updated fresh to Mavericks from Lion, with currently 320 GB free space...

    Screen Shot 2015-01-26 at 9.26.13 PM.png

  • by stedman1,

    stedman1 stedman1 Jan 26, 2015 6:31 PM in response to xkevinbondx
    Level 9 (74,273 points)
    Apple Watch
    Jan 26, 2015 6:31 PM in response to xkevinbondx

    Does Activity Monitor still show the same ridiculously high CPU usage after the restart?

  • by xkevinbondx,

    xkevinbondx xkevinbondx Jan 26, 2015 6:36 PM in response to stedman1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 6:36 PM in response to stedman1

    Stedman1, so that kind of thing happened after I was testing out the limits of my new RAM. Opened a few desktops. Opened iTunes, Ableton, Safari. Really doesn't seem like an intense operation. And then I can't remember what else but then she started bugging! I'm going to try that again and I'll report back.

     

    If it's not one thing it's another...

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jan 26, 2015 6:51 PM in response to xkevinbondx
    Level 5 (7,803 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 26, 2015 6:51 PM in response to xkevinbondx

    Did you try OGELTHORPE's suggestion about the icon services agent cache folder? That may address the icons.

    The screenshot is pretty & all but we could see more if you post an EtreCheck report or some logs

  • by xkevinbondx,

    xkevinbondx xkevinbondx Jan 26, 2015 7:11 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 7:11 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Drew, would you advise me as to which logs would help? Also maybe how to retrieve them?

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jan 26, 2015 7:29 PM in response to xkevinbondx
    Level 5 (7,803 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 26, 2015 7:29 PM in response to xkevinbondx

    Scroll up 1/2 the page.

     

    Drew Reece wrote:

    Jan 27, 2015 12:18

    If you need or want to test RAM…

    info about logs

    info about EtreCheck

     

  • by xkevinbondx,

    xkevinbondx xkevinbondx Jan 26, 2015 7:35 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 26, 2015 7:35 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Thank you! I've got some school work to crank out. I'm going to run these tests tomorrow and update. I appreciate so much the help!

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Jan 26, 2015 7:39 PM in response to xkevinbondx
    Level 5 (7,803 points)
    Notebooks
    Jan 26, 2015 7:39 PM in response to xkevinbondx

    Yup school comes first

     

    Good luck & take your time with it.

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