OSX Ram management sucks

[thejadedmonkey]

Guys, guys, GUYS! The OP posted in March of 2008. that's 11 months ago!

and try WMware instead of Parallels, I can use VMWare with Windows 7 and 3gb of RAM in my C2D Macbook Pro and it doesn't slow down.

One area where OS X lacks that people think is RAM management is actually virtual memory swap. Whenever OS X has to write to the HDD for a while, it can bring the computer to its knees.

 

[Gman257]

You can also just run verify disk permissions & it will free up inactive memory.

 

[obgamer]

No, gnasher729, that's not it at all. If I -reduce- the Parallels allocation to 512Gb, performance for *everything* including WinXP improves significantly. The "PC" is happier.

And I suppose it isn't really that things just stop running, become unusable. Why exactly is OS X refusing to let go of 450Gb of *RAM* memory? When faced with live apps that *need* the memory? That's the real issue here for me.

 

[obgamer]

Thanks for the suggestion, Gman257. I was watching ActMon when Verify Perms finished: in that process, Free memory went from single-digit Mb to 470Mb, though not all Inactive was purged. The Inactive went from 460Mb to 230Mb, indicating that >200Mb of active was freed - Wired couldn't have changed. Hmmm...

Anyway, a nice improvement, but it did take 12 minutes (though I could make one, I don't have any small-capacity Unix/BSD volumes, which would no doubt help the turnaround time). I was hoping for something a little quicker and thorough.

 

[jetak]

Good call Gman247. I had similar issues with my MBP. Parallels and Transmission for whatever reason would create a lot of inactive RAM and the RAM would not be usable even after quitting all apps. I then read about repairing disk permissions on another forum and it has seemed to help. We will see for how long though.

 

[InfoSecmgr]

Ok I tracked the problem to transmission. Although my CPU usage all through this has never exceeded 20%, every time I open transmission, all my active ram suddenly turns into inactive, the hard disk starts working really hard, and the system slows down.

transmission -> inactive ram -> HD -> slow down, CPU doesn't budge from 8ish%. I have no idea why!

Ehh...you should have done your research before saying ZOMG MAC OS SUX0R!!!!! Seriously.

 

[superknoppix]

Just enter "purge" into the Terminal and hit enter.

Or use iFree memory, like what I do.

Thats awesome... Now I just need to make a script that will run purge every once in a while...