Mavericks memory management is amazing

[Valkyre]

I read all the opinions here with great interest.

However I would like to use an example to see if I understand this properly.

Under Mountain Lion , when using for extended periods of time iphoto, I notice that a huge amoount of inactive memory is created. This memory instead of being freed properly, instead it starts paging and sometimes beachballs make their appearance.

In a similar scenario, under Maverciks, from what I gather, that huge pile of inactive memory is properly freed up so that the system wont start paging and you never lose performance?

 

[pastrychef]

Under Mountain Lion , when using for extended periods of time iphoto, I notice that a huge amoount of inactive memory is created. This memory instead of being freed properly, instead it starts paging and sometimes beachballs make their appearance.

This was the exact problem that hit me on numerous occasions.

In a similar scenario, under Maverciks, from what I gather, that huge pile of inactive memory is properly freed up so that the system wont start paging and you never lose performance?

Yes. At least for me personally, Mavericks has pretty much been able to keep me out of paging.

 

[N19h7m4r3]

Sounds about right, 10.9 is also using a lot of RAM for Cache.

 

[Valkyre]

This was the exact problem that hit me on numerous occasions.



Yes. At least for me personally, Mavericks has pretty much been able to keep me out of paging.

Thanks my friend, that sounds really encouraging, because right now, i have to occasionally use /purge to free up all that memory when using iphoto, so as not to have any beachballs.

Mavericks sounds better and better.

 

[benwiggy]

Memory usage does not equal bad memory management. Mavericks uses as much memory as possible as cache, and when it needs to it just compresses unused memory. What mavericks does far better than ML, is avoiding swap usage and being responsive, and not slowing down like ML when multi-tasking on low ram systems. I have only 4 gigs and I still haven't seen mavericks use swap on my system, but it always uses almost all my ram and stays responsive. This is a good thing, this is how memory should be managed. Unused memory is wasted memory.

Quoted for truth/emphasis.

i suspect these forums are going to see loads of posts saying "OMG! Mavx is using up all my precious memory! How can I purge it?", when no actual problem exists.

 

[Valkyre]

Quoted for truth/emphasis.

i suspect these forums are going to see loads of posts saying "OMG! Mavx is using up all my precious memory! How can I purge it?", when no actual problem exists.

If i dont see any beachballs like in the example i used above, due to poor memory management in ML with all that inactive memory never being freed up, then i dont care at all what is going on and how much ram the OS needs.

All i want is that the performance is consistent, with no beachballs, no paging etc.

It seems Mavericks is doing just that. So I am more than happy to stop purging every once in a while my RAM because iphoto and ML like to just pile up inactive memory without using it.

 

[tadd]

mail.app triggers monstrous memory abuse??

I'm having a related problem. I'm on Mavericks and using the mail app that was included in an update after Mavericks was released.
When I boot and look at the Activity monitor, all is as it should be. Many programs can be started, quit, etc and no problems. When I launch mail.app, even for a short time, swap space usage goes through the roof and the computer freezes within a few minutes. Memory pressure goes red shortly after mail.app is launched. Why does kernel_task take up so much space after mail is launched? Why does it keep going through the roof?
I made a movie of the problem. Here is a screen shot from the end of the movie:

Movie is linked : here http://www.torborg.com/images_for_postings/20131116/mail_app_breaks_memory.mov


Thanks for any input

 

[jita1]

I've noticed that my MBP is remarkably faster with Mavericks. I upgraded to 16GB of RAM when I had Mountain Lion but for some reason, I didn't see a whole lot of improvement over 4GB. I was still using swap. I did at times have a lot of stuff running like Parallels VMs. I agree that the memory management in Mavericks rocks. My MBP screams now.