Not releasing memory?

OS X Mavericks has changed the way memory is handled. It will use quite a bit now for better responsiveness. After reading the forums, it's not unusual to see RAM pretty close to maxed out.

I have Safari, Twitter, Skype, Chrome, and Activity Monitor open and I'm at 11.1GB/16GB RAM used.

Are you suffering performance-wise?

 

I think it's great that it's trying to use all the RAM available. What's the point in putting 32GB into an iMac if it's only going to use 8-16? Use it all and don't show me no beachballs!

 

Do you actually have a problem? Apart from "memory being used"?

As said, 10.9 uses memory in a COMPLETELY different way. Throw away your pointless "Memory Clean" apps. They are needed even less now than they ever were before (which wasn't much).

If you are not experiencing performance issues, then you have no problem. Go back to your work.

 

In the app store I downloaded "memory clean" aznd works great. I was at 5gb out of 8gb. The after a cleaning I went down to 3.5gb. So I never have to worry about memory again.

But after restarting I showed 3gb of ram used. And "memory clean" said I was using 2gb of ram" How can there be so much difference. After a cleaning it showed pretty close to the same in both "memory clean" and "activity monitor". But before cleaning its always 1 higher than thew other. Doesn't make sense. One has to be wrong.

 

This bears repeating. Delete all "memory clean" apps. They are useless, at best. Mavericks aggressively caches data, and you are defeating that by forcing a purge.

Unless you are getting errors or having performance issues, don't worry about your memory. If you want to look in Activity Monitor, then focus on the "Swap Used" number. If that is zero or low, Mavericks is fine.

John

 

Totally agree!

 

Well its not caching anything. Because I had 5b of ram and after a cleaning I went down to 3.5gb. So the memory cleaner is working now.

It was the same in snow leopard. My mini from 2006 (I ebayed it in 2012) was only 2gb of ram max capable. Not enough so it would beach ball all the time. Even only a few program open and 2 or 3 safari tabs would see the rainbow beach ball all the time. Like barely after half an hour. So osx has never been good with memory.

 

Parallels on Mavericks

Which version of Parallels?

Related/retrospective

I usually say, purge should be used only as part of a diagnostic routine ("… to approximate initial boot conditions with a cold disk buffer cache for performance analysis …"), or words to that effect.

However, if (a not yet known version of) Parallels on Mavericks is not making optimal use of memory … go ahead, as an exception, try it.

 

10.0.2, had to upgrade going to mavericks. Parallels it's self is fine as once it does start then it has enough memory.

Safari on the other hand hangs with the beach ball / pin wheel runs for ages if I sometimes open a new tab, or pick a new page.