Safari on iMac slows down, not enough ram?

When the machine is lagging:
Open Activity Monitor, select the "Memory" tab and check the "Page Outs" value. If it's higher than a few megabytes, a RAM upgrade would be the way to go.

 

Your paging over a gig but still have over a gig free of real RAM, meaning I think there's probably a conflict with any one of the programs and Safari which are causing either Safari or the programs (or some key speed-related component of the OS) to constantly page to the HDD.


You have plenty of RAM, you have over a GIG FREE! Looks like a software bug or something like that.

 

Your Paging is fine, you don’t have to worry about the size of Page in. If there are lots of Page out that is when you should start to worry as it means the imac is using the hard disk as memory.

More RAM never hurts, but have you tried any other browsers on the same sites to see if they also lag?

P.S. It looks like you are running out hard drive space with less than 100GB left.

 

Memory is cheap these days. Based on numbers, I would upgrade from existing 4 GB to 8 GB as well. Especially since upgrade to 4 GBs is less than a tank of gas (in a typical North American car). Or, a night out with one's special friend. If you plan to keep your iMac for some time, upgrading RAM is a good idea - even if it doesn't solve the Root Cause of the problem.

Using Print Screen, do show us the other Print Screens of Activity Monitor (when your machine is "lagged down"). For example: CPU, Disk Activity, Disk Usage and Network. We need to see the other Activity Menu screens to see if a stuck process is chewing up to much CPU or perhaps a full disk is chewing up swap file write ability. For the full RCA (Root Cause Analysis) of your unique 24" iMac system, we need to see the many other Activity Monitor screens (while under LAG) as well....

thanks.

 

I think because you have to delete the plist alone means its not that the machine's running out of memory - more memory is always good to get, BUT, I'd bet 99% that its gonna make no difference.


I can't think of any other reason than there's a bug or a conflict with the two bigger apps your running and Safari, or any combination of software (be it Mac OS, the kernel, Finder, IDK).

But if you have free RAM, then its a software bug somewhere.

 

Your screen prints of Activity Monitor are looking good....

A few months back, I remember reading about an iMac encountering weird / lagged behavior as well. For them, they:

1 - Reset SMC Control settings.
See: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964

2 - Rest PRAM settings.
See: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

3 - Reapplied Disk Permissions.
See contents of: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/durepairfns.html

4 - Repaired their HD.
See contents of: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/durepairfns.html

This worked for them. Hopefully, these reset tasks work for your iMac as well....

Good luck....

 

I have 16GB of RAM on my iMac and my machine has paged in 1.16GB of data. I have over 10GB of RAM free most of the time. OSX will page in data as it sees fit - whether there is free RAM or not.

My guess is that there is some rouge I/O going on. I noticed sometimes FireFox I/O will shoot through the roof and cause extreme disk access. This causes my system to lag for a couple of minutes while FireFox does it thing.

Perhaps some crazy app is doing the same thing on the OPs computer.

OP, you can check your disk I/O by running iotop via terminal, but you'll need to be logged in as superuser (sudo su -).

 

Like I said earlier, I really, really don't think its the RAM.


If the iMac even just had **29MB's free**, there would next to lag, as users have posted that being the case (no lag with hardly any memory left) I think given their pictures posted but no mention of such happening (lag), then you shouldn't be seeing any lag with nearly a whole gig free.

If the reset procedures don't work, then have you tried Googling the issue in the same sentence as the unheard of (for me anyways), specifically-classed software you're using? Probably a software conflict.

If the plist needs to be emptied yet you still have free RAM, then it isn't that you have too little RAM...Id bet my $2,500 drum kit on it (or at least hypothetically )

 

As an example...I have 19mbs of RAM free....literally, I kid you not, I have mass Safari tabs open and only 3GBs of RAM, and Safari is as snappy as ever.


So again, I'm next to positive its not RAM. By FAR.

But, more RAM can never hurt...

 

As a suggestion, perform "clean power off / on", then use FireFox instead. If your system does NOT lag with Firefox, then odds are, the lag is from Safari. If you feel Safari is the problem, disable all ADD-ONs within Safari. Each day, re-enable 1 Add-On. Then, try it for a full day. If the enabled add-on lags your system, then you found the problem.

Good luck....

.

 

Moving from Safari to Firefox is unlikely to solve the problem.

Moving from Safari to Chrome makes all things possible. Dream bigger.

 

Wow, I didn't know Google uses forum bots for advertising.

 

As much as i love Apple, I have to agree with Roy here. Give Google Chrome browser a try, much snappier on my old geezer of a Mac mini with 4GB of RAM.

I doubt insufficient RAM is the issue here, your page outs seem really low. Mine's 3GB+ at the end of the day with Chrome at 40 tabs in 2 windows, Safari with 20 over tabs open and boatloads of other programs running at the same time.

 

The thing is: If you want to check for a possible browser bug, the first thing I would try is using a completely different browser which is not, in any way, related to the browser you're having problems with.
Therefore, the logical choice would be to try Firefox and Opera first.

I'm not saying Chrome is a bad browser.

 

Glad to see it's working out, but you can really never have enough RAM, and unless money's really needed I think it'd be a good idea to just keep it.

That's what would do, never know when it may come in handy, right?