mavericks compressed memory in 4gb air

[aleni]

does it really help a lot? in my country, there is no option to order the custom air with 8gb, and importing it is not helping either since the price will be so expensive.

 

[alphaod]

It runs fine without compressed memory for most applications.

 

[aleni]

Great thanks for the headup

 

[FreeWoRLD83]

I confirm it is fine without compressed memory on ML already. By the way, (out of subject) I used Mavericks GM version, clean install for a week and I had less battery life than what I have on ML so I went back to ML and I think I will not upgrade (yet)

 

[Enrico Pallazzo]

I wouldn't say that it helps a lot but it's a helpful thing to have. I don't know much about the new memory manager (so I can't tell you how big the actual savings are) but the most I've seen compressed was in the 100-200mb range according to Activity Monitor. I don't know if 200mb is the compressed size or whether it's the savings or what. It's a 2gb Macbook Air (2011 model) so it's possibly also something of worst case scenario. I made myself a quick Hackintosh on a 6gb test machine and I've yet to see anything be compressed on that one.

Memory usage does seem to be up compared to previous versions though. Apple Maps alone swallowed over a gigabyte when I looked and a cold boot to desktop uses in the 1.7gb range. You'll be fine with 4gb but my own Air is kinda pushing it.