OS X Memory Management

[SupadudeX]

Ok so I understand that OS X is suppose to be "better" at handling memory. It keeps everything in memory for as long as possible so that if you happen to use it again it will be quicker the 2nd time around. I am not so sure I think this memory management is better. I keep getting the spinning beach ball of death on my MBP, typically while using safari (this is probably a big factor because right now safari is taking up 900 MB of RAM).

But anyways I upgraded my MBP for 3 gigs of RAM just to get rid of paging. Yes I use VMware and yes I never restart my MBP. But the real problem is that there is no way that I am using all 3 gigs of RAM just running safari and VMware. Since I have not restarted in awhile all the free ram is now gone and so since OS X thinks it is being "smart" and saving all possible old memory it can, the system keeps paging and slows me down. This memory management just does not make sense to me.

So anyways, this post is half rant, half question. Is there anyway to improve this situation. It doesnt make sense that after all the free RAM has been allocated OS X will just continually page because it doesnt want to release the RAM from its cold bloody hands.

 

[smukkebenne]

This is not entirely an OS X issue. Safari always consumes way too much memory. I restart it pretty often to free memory (i only have 640 MB RAM and Safari uses 300 after 1/2 hours browsing). You could experiment with other browsers... Firefox, Camino etc. and then hopefully they'll fix the memory usage in Safari 3.

 

[zirotti]

Came across this post from Google and thought I would post an update to anyone still curious...

I found this article to be pretty thorough when explaining exactly how OS X manages memory, both physical and virtual.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010613140025184

 

[ltldrummerboy]

I don't really have a problem with Safari taking up too much RAM, but the memory management in general seems a bit inefficient. I have 2GB in my iMac (upgrading soon) and the system slows to a crawl quite often. It seems to have a problem giving up inactive memory.

 

[jgould]

I don't really have a problem with Safari taking up too much RAM, but the memory management in general seems a bit inefficient. I have 2GB in my iMac (upgrading soon) and the system slows to a crawl quite often. It seems to have a problem giving up inactive memory.

I also have 2GB in my MacBook, and I was running Safari the other day and Safari had over 512MB on it's own. I fired up Firefox and opened the same tabs and Firefox used slightly less than 280MB. I think Safari 5 has a memory leak...