Mavericks and RAM

[attila]

Massive memory problems

MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM with external monitor.

My Kernel Task isn't that big according to standards, but my virtual memory is gigantic, iStat (widget) says I have 50MB RAM left, system slows down and fans are running at max occasionally. Didn't notice this before Mavericks.

RAM seems to rise when I attach my to USB drives, but doesn't sink when I detach them, so it could be coincidense. I often run two browser, as I'm a web dev, but don't have to run Photoshop for the RAM to implode. I have Flux 23, not 21. Any theories, guys? Attatching screenshot.

Actually almost 4.6GB is huge for kernel task on an 8gb machine. Should be more like 1-2GB.

I figured as such...

Edit: After a reboot things look better. Still have a theory about large USB drives connected. I'll do some more testing...

 

[w0lf]

Actually almost 4.6GB is huge for kernel task on an 8gb machine. Should be more like 1-2GB.

 

[cal6n]

MacBook Pro, 8GB RAM with external monitor.

My Kernel Task isn't that big according to standards, but my virtual memory is gigantic, iStat (widget) says I have 50MB RAM left, system slows down and fans are running at max occasionally. Didn't notice this before Mavericks.

RAM seems to rise when I attach my to USB drives, but doesn't sink when I detach them, so it could be coincidense. I often run two browser, as I'm a web dev, but don't have to run Photoshop for the RAM to implode. I have Flux 23, not 21. Any theories, guys? Attatching screenshot.

Image



I figured as such...

Edit: After a reboot things look better. Still have a theory about large USB drives connected. I'll do some more testing...

I've found that quitting Safari prior to sleeping my Mac has eliminated this kind of RAM abuse. Mavericks reopens my session when I next restart the browser. In your case, I'd probably include Chrome in this too.

I know it's a workaround rather than a fix but it seems to work for me.

 

[attila]

I've found that quitting Safari prior to sleeping my Mac has eliminated this kind of RAM abuse. Mavericks reopens my session when I next restart the browser. In your case, I'd probably include Chrome in this too.

I know it's a workaround rather than a fix but it seems to work for me.

I see, thank you!

So are you saying that sleep mode does strange things to RAM and/or Safari?

 

[cal6n]

I see, thank you!

So are you saying that sleep mode does strange things to RAM and/or Safari?

I don't know except by observation. I have a Mac Pro with 32 GB and I use MenuMeters to display my RAM usage, among other things. I noticed that the usage grew day by day but I wasn't concerned until I saw this:

Since it was Safari that had paused itself, it seemed logical that it might be the cause of the snowballing RAM use. Since adopting the strategy of quitting the app each night before sleeping the computer, RAM usage hasn't ever got out of hand again.

 

[Felasco]

Regarding unexpected RAM usage, since I've installed Mavericks I've realised a big decrease in performance, which is quite annoying using simple tasks.

Pretty much the same here. I'm not qualified to know if what I'm experiencing is a RAM issue, but it began immediately upon installing Mavericks.

As example, if I double click my hard drive icon, the window opens immediately as normal, but it can take 15-20 seconds for contents of hard drive to display in window. Oops, did I install System 6 by mistake?

Same for System Preferences window.

However, this seems to happen mostly when I am opening them for the first time after login. Once I've opened these windows a time or two, they are once again display contents promptly.

 

[talmy]

However, this seems to happen mostly when I am opening them for the first time after login. Once I've opened these windows a time or two, they are once again display contents promptly.

When you first display a folder Finder has to grab can size the icon as well as get the information about every item in the folder, so folders, especially those with lots of items (like /Applications) can take a long time to populate. However this information is cached so it only has to calculate it once after login.

My takeaway from this is never to shut down the computer but always sleep it, but then I haven't been having sleep issues.

 

[cal6n]

Pretty much the same here. I'm not qualified to know if what I'm experiencing is a RAM issue, but it began immediately upon installing Mavericks.

As example, if I double click my hard drive icon, the window opens immediately as normal, but it can take 15-20 seconds for contents of hard drive to display in window. Oops, did I install System 6 by mistake?

Same for System Preferences window.

However, this seems to happen mostly when I am opening them for the first time after login. Once I've opened these windows a time or two, they are once again display contents promptly.

If your Mac only has 2 GB of RAM, as suggested in your sig, I'd seriously advise installing some more.

I know that Apple list the minimum requirement as 2 GB but that's not really adequate in my view. 4 GB of RAM will likely solve your problem.

 

[Felasco]

I know that Apple list the minimum requirement as 2 GB but that's not really adequate in my view. 4 GB of RAM will likely solve your problem.

Thank you, I suspect you're probably right.

Just for the sake of argument, we might question whether it's _my_ problem.

The question would seem to be, does Mavericks merit the expense and bother of installing more RAM? Or, should it really require more RAM just to open a Finder window, a process which has been pretty snappy since like, System 7?

Everybody will have to answer this for themselves of course.

In my case, I'm upgrading from 10.6.8 specifically for text dictation. I can see why dictation might require more RAM, and I need it bad enough that I'll likely pay the bill. And, dictation does seem to work remarkably well, much better than the last time I tried it ten years ago.

Other than that, Mavericks so far seems like most OS updates, some new fancy pants stuff I'll never use, and a bucket full of new bugs. As example, I can't get Mail to work now, a rather significant bug.

The price of Mavericks is a welcome new development of course. Other than that, it continues a longstanding pattern from Apple, rushing stuff out the door before it's ready, thus further diluting Apple's brand as a quality alternative to Windows.

My request to Apple would be that they slow down, finish stuff before they release it, and stop using their customers as a free labor quality control department.

 

[attila]

Now my kernel task is almost 4 GB again, the fans are running at 50% and memory pressure in Activity Monitor is in the yellow zone.

I haven't run any big apps but Xcode, and no more than one browser at the time.

I did, however, forget to close Safari before sleep. I suppose that is my next experiment. Will reboot computer first.

 

[cal6n]

I tried leaving Safari open while asleep to see if things have improved under 10.9.2 but the RAM use tripled over three days (or rather nights).

Oh, well. Back to the workaround, I guess.