I was looking for ways to speed up my MacBook, which led me to the following question which is more OS X related.
Scenario
Say I'm using a lot of apps at the same time, along with a few browsers like Safari and Chrome with a lot of tabs. At this point everything gets noticeably slower. It especially takes a while to switch between apps. Need to wait a bit every time before I can actually do something again. Opening new tabs/sites takes a long time, lots of spinning beach balls in Safari.
Memory/CPU usage
Screenshot from my Activity Monitor for a situation like that:
From what I could find on Google it's best to keep the Page outs as low as possible, and about 5-10% max relative to the Page ins. As you can see it's now at 25% which can't be good. *
Not much going on with the CPU. Safari is, with many tabs open, using up about 12-14% CPU. The rest of the apps are all at ~0,0 to 3,0% max.
Question
Now the problem. When I close most of the applications and go back to a browser with a few tabs and 4-5 other apps, the memory usage still stays the same for a long time. Things get faster, but not much. Still a lot of Page outs, and all the memory stays in use. Does anyone know why this is?
Isn't there a way to tell OS X to "flush" or "rebuild" all the reserved memory? Because when I do a reboot and start e.g. 5 apps, they seem to take up way less memory than when I start 20 apps, close 15 and have those 5 apps open.
* I ordered more RAM, but in the end I'll keep ending up having the same "problem", albeit after using a few more apps
Scenario
Say I'm using a lot of apps at the same time, along with a few browsers like Safari and Chrome with a lot of tabs. At this point everything gets noticeably slower. It especially takes a while to switch between apps. Need to wait a bit every time before I can actually do something again. Opening new tabs/sites takes a long time, lots of spinning beach balls in Safari.
Memory/CPU usage
Screenshot from my Activity Monitor for a situation like that:
From what I could find on Google it's best to keep the Page outs as low as possible, and about 5-10% max relative to the Page ins. As you can see it's now at 25% which can't be good. *
Not much going on with the CPU. Safari is, with many tabs open, using up about 12-14% CPU. The rest of the apps are all at ~0,0 to 3,0% max.
Question
Now the problem. When I close most of the applications and go back to a browser with a few tabs and 4-5 other apps, the memory usage still stays the same for a long time. Things get faster, but not much. Still a lot of Page outs, and all the memory stays in use. Does anyone know why this is?
Isn't there a way to tell OS X to "flush" or "rebuild" all the reserved memory? Because when I do a reboot and start e.g. 5 apps, they seem to take up way less memory than when I start 20 apps, close 15 and have those 5 apps open.
* I ordered more RAM, but in the end I'll keep ending up having the same "problem", albeit after using a few more apps
Last edited: