Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Lower virtual memory?
- Thread starter nariza7
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It's best to not mess with how Mavericks is managing the memory. If the pressure is green (which it is) then the virtual memory isn't the reason for the sluggish performance.
Ah i see. I'm just confused as to why video playback lags for vlc player, mplayerx, and even youtube. I assumed that it has to do with memory usage since the videos normally start lagging when the memory usage is high or virtual memory numbers go beyond 8gb. I was hoping to lower virtual memory and test if it was the cause since I have no idea what else couldve been causing the audio and video to desync. Rebooting computer doesn't fix the issue and I dont have applesupport.
Your belief is wrong.
Virtual memory is _always_ at least as much as physical memory. Your 8GB MBA cannot have less than 8GB virtual memory.
What counts is "wired memory" and "application memory" on the right hand side. That's memory that is really used. There is also "File cache", but that is the OS remembering data stored on your hard drive, and that memory can be thrown away immediately without any delay.
Would be more interesting to hear details about the video that you are playing. Some videos are harder for the computer to play than others. And a new OS or "clean install" is unlikely to help.
Youtube streams video from the internet. Speed depends on the speed of the server and the speed of your internet connection. Plus the fact that flash video is notoriously inefficient.
I hate flash video so much. A lot of times for me on my 2013 MBA w/8 GB RAM and i7 YouTube videos fail to load. It's not any better on my iPad Air.
iPad's don't have Flash on them. If it isn't any better on an iOS device, then you likely have a slower internet connection or some other common problem between the two.
I do have a slower internet connection (7 Mbps) but videos work well on other sites like traileraddict.com and dailymotion.com). It's pretty much just YouTube where videos often fail to load at all and I cannot figure how to fix it.
Ooh, whats a healthy stat for wired memory and application memory then? I play anime episodes at 720p or watch random youtube videos that arent out of the ordinary. Normally when I start my mac air, it would play fine with like 8gb virtual and maybe 4-6 memory used. Then when I turn on parallels, it gets to 7.99 or something for memory used, and itd start lagging. After turning off parallels, itd still lag after a few min of playback with 7.99gb or so "memory use".
Memory clean (supposedly an app that ppl dont like since mavericks should handle memory well already), would lower the memory use, but increase the virtual memory to over 8gb. Thats when the video always lags when I start, unpause, etc.
Unless I need an adobe update, idk why the youtube vid would get offsync.
Ill try to pay more attention to the wired memory and application memory next time.