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This OS is a RAM guzzler
- Thread starter poematik13
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I agree in general with that, but Mavericks and now Yosemite seem to optimize for a use-case where a few applications are used frequently. I use a wide variety of apps (some memory-hungry, some not), and on Mavericks its memory management didn't let go of RAM from backgrounded/killed apps fast enough and has led to memory pressure issues when there was no reason to. I haven't spent enough time with Yosemite yet to know if this is still an issue.
That's not normal at all. Maybe a reinstall?
I've only got 4 GB and Yosemite runs just as smooth as Mavericks.
See, it's not so much that 7+ GB of RAM are actively being used but rather past processes's data being stored. The OS determines the likelihood of this previous data to be used again by the CPU. Like I said before, it's a waste of time for the CPU to perform a page swap just to "free up" the RAM for the sake of freeing up space. The Memory Pressure graph is a great indicator of the actual RAM being actively used. In my case when I look at all my processes running, I'm actively using about +/- 700 MB but I'm using 7.1 GB of RAM. This is mainly kernel tasks, which is completely normal (I'm not running many applications).
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Open the terminal, type in vm_stat and paste the output here. I've had one beach ball so far, when I typed in my password for iCloud. That happened after the first login on a Mac Pro with 6 cores and 32 GBs of memory.
But, it's still worth checking to see if there is a memory leak and fixing whatever is causing it (if possible).
It's running smooth - mostly - just with a lot more 'reported' RAM use. Just curious why the big difference. Hoping to avoid a reinstall, just cos I can't spare the time right now more than anything else
I agree, swapping for the sake of freeing up space is pointless but if all I've got open are a few Safari tabs and a finder window or two, I'm not sure I should be seeing at least 8-16GB of virtual memory and 100's of MB of swap file being used. As for RAM pressure, I put in another thread (I think) that it's usually low green, but does creep up into mid levels and has, at least twice, gone red. Never had that under Mavericks. Even under heavy load (multiple Safari tabs, Finder windows, Handbrake and FTP) it barely noticed it. Now I'm getting slow downs just clicking the menu bar sometimes.
I'll try that when I get in from work.
Amen! This should be a stickied, one post thread, that's locked, with one sentence about how this works. I was so hoping this was over after months of those threads when Mavericks came out.
vm_stat output at roughly the same time the image at the bottom of this post was taken:
PHP:
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free: 397188.
Pages active: 882673.
Pages inactive: 159994.
Pages speculative: 426591.
Pages throttled: 0.
Pages wired down: 229648.
Pages purgeable: 32854.
"Translation faults": 3737007.
Pages copy-on-write: 307484.
Pages zero filled: 2031481.
Pages reactivated: 43.
Pages purged: 0.
File-backed pages: 709514.
Anonymous pages: 759744.
Pages stored in compressor: 0.
Pages occupied by compressor: 0.
Decompressions: 0.
Compressions: 0.
Pageins: 505787.
Pageouts: 0.
Swapins: 0.
Swapouts: 0.If there's a difference between what 10.9 was reporting and 10.10 is reporting, and people are noticing lag issues then it's a legitimate question to be asking. As I said, Mavericks would report barely 3GB of RAM "used" under 'normal' load most of the time. For that to jump to 7+GB with Yosemite there has been a change. System as I write is reporting 6.88GB 'used' (6.89 now and has crept up from 6.86 in the last 5 minutes with nothing else opened and just shot up to 7.15 for no apparent reason). If there's no impact on performance I don't care what it's doing, but if performance is taking a hit I like to know why.
Here's mine, 5 minutes after a reboot. Safari open, two tabs, and Activity Monitor. I will admit to pressure being absolutely fine but the usage reported by 10.10 is much much higher than it was in 10.9 - and higher than a lot of other people's too. Odd question: what drive you running? Mine's a fusion and I'm wondering if, with the speed of the SSD, the OS is allowing more use of physical RAM because swap is not expensive in terms of performance.
(By the time I've finished typing this post, used is now at 7.5GB without any further windows having been opened.)
believe me i'm the first to complain if memory management affects system performance. early point releases of the otherwise awesome snow leopard were a ram-disaster with adobe after effects.
but i'm also in agreement that ram usage isn't the best indicator of this. i'd say don't stress over what is going on under the hood unless you're noticing actual slowdowns. i know i'll be putting my yosemite machine through the paces at work this week; we'll see how it goes!
but i'm also in agreement that ram usage isn't the best indicator of this. i'd say don't stress over what is going on under the hood unless you're noticing actual slowdowns. i know i'll be putting my yosemite machine through the paces at work this week; we'll see how it goes!
Pageouts = 0 = wonderful. It is what you want and the memory management is running just perfectly and beautifully. Any slows down, issues, glitches, whatever has nothing to do with your memory.
Good! The OS is rebuilding caches that you have destroyed by the reboot, which is what you want to have a "snappy experience".
Here is an old post that explains what translation faults are, if you are interested. Even though it's old, it's relevant
http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/126475/what-are-translation-faults/
Normally when you reboot, you are actually making the computer run slower for while because you have cleared caches. typing sudo purge in terminal will do the pretty much the same thing, but it's completely pointless, so unless you have a real reason to use it, then it's best to stay away and allow the system to do what it needs to with memory. The people who designed this are actually pretty smart.
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Yosemite clearly has issues with memory management. I've got issues on 2 of our machines (2013 rMBP and iMac) with Mail. Just composing an email with zero attachments, I can get about 3 sentences in before ram and cpu are pegged, forcing me to force quit Mail.
If I just leave Mail running in the background, it's fine and stays within normal usage numbers, but composing emails is now impossible. I've moved to unibox now, just so I can keep working. I prefer the tight integration with OSX that Apple's native Mail has, so hopefully they'll figure out what's wrong and fix it soon.
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free: 1458946.
Pages active: 2023866.
Pages inactive: 55063.
Pages speculative: 82097.
Pages throttled: 0.
Pages wired down: 426367.
Pages purgeable: 557917.
"Translation faults": 138960097.
Pages copy-on-write: 1583024.
Pages zero filled: 104869824.
Pages reactivated: 3509319.
Pages purged: 1652505.
File-backed pages: 209344.
Anonymous pages: 1951682.
Pages stored in compressor: 560361.
Pages occupied by compressor: 146002.
Decompressions: 6265966.
Compressions: 16155052.
Pageins: 3148930.
Pageouts: 104928.
Swapins: 1612668.
Swapouts: 1835524.
If I just leave Mail running in the background, it's fine and stays within normal usage numbers, but composing emails is now impossible. I've moved to unibox now, just so I can keep working. I prefer the tight integration with OSX that Apple's native Mail has, so hopefully they'll figure out what's wrong and fix it soon.
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free: 1458946.
Pages active: 2023866.
Pages inactive: 55063.
Pages speculative: 82097.
Pages throttled: 0.
Pages wired down: 426367.
Pages purgeable: 557917.
"Translation faults": 138960097.
Pages copy-on-write: 1583024.
Pages zero filled: 104869824.
Pages reactivated: 3509319.
Pages purged: 1652505.
File-backed pages: 209344.
Anonymous pages: 1951682.
Pages stored in compressor: 560361.
Pages occupied by compressor: 146002.
Decompressions: 6265966.
Compressions: 16155052.
Pageins: 3148930.
Pageouts: 104928.
Swapins: 1612668.
Swapouts: 1835524.
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It's impossible to diagnose your issue with the information you've provided, but I can assure you that I am able to compose emails with more than 3 sentences perfectly fine on all my Macs with Yosemite. Some of the figures there do show a bit of "Memory Pressure", but I would love to know what the computer is doing/has been doing.
All 31 GB used!!!! OMG!!!
Code:
Pages free: 4615.
Pages active: 1344594.
Pages inactive: 1750604.
Pages speculative: 4158929.
Pages throttled: 0.
Pages wired down: 1127345.
Pages purgeable: 17357.
"Translation faults": 10775050.
Pages copy-on-write: 290985.
Pages zero filled: 3965297.
Pages reactivated: 3411.
Pages purged: 265.
File-backed pages: 6008532.
Anonymous pages: 1245595.
Pages stored in compressor: 0.
Pages occupied by compressor: 0.
Decompressions: 0.
Compressions: 0.
Pageins: 8841912.
Pageouts: 26.
Swapins: 0.
Swapouts: 0
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I understand that the issue I'm seeing is not widespread, but I also know I'm not alone as the bug report I posted was merged with another. Apple has been trying to diagnose what's going on and I've sent them several system files, specifically when the Mail pegs both ram and cpu. I only have 16gb's of ram, but have seen it hit 52gb's, at which point the system requests I force quit Mail.
It's got something to do with iCloud and accounts, as that has been where Apple seems to be focused. Even after removing all my email accounts, then setting them up fresh, I'm getting some system irregularities, where the accounts duplicate themselves, even though I've only entered them once. It's very strange and something I've experienced for the past month or so (on DP betas and DP GM's).
Quite odd. Perhaps the fact that I am not using my iCloud account for email explains why I cannot recreate this.
You're right, in terms of performance, the CPU doesn't consider paging so much as an intensive process but rather a waste of time. It will sit there all day and constantly swapping pages in and out without even noticing a performance hit. With a SSD this process is certainly faster, no question, but regardless of that fact when it comes to the CPU it's all about CPU utilization. CPU utilization goes down anytime the CPU has to wait (and a waiting CPU is a useless CPU). Even though page swapping is a relatively fast task, especially with Flash based memory, it still adds up in time considering the big picture for the CPU. For each interrupt the CPU encounters it will always take the current process and place it on L cache levels (differs by CPU) and then the MMU will take care of the rest for RAM translation. Long story short, the CPU doesn't want to be bothered by swapping pages because it considers it a waste of time (many I/O interrupts), especially when it's not necessary.
It wasn't a 'reboot' for the sake of it. I just happened to turn the machine off when I went to work last night. Own fault, aimed for 'sleep', hit 'Shut Down' and just decided to follow through at the prompt.
As I say, I have no issue with it using it all IF there's no performance hit, but when I'm getting spinning beachballs just by clicking a menubar icon and the memory pressure is up high, dipping into the red with hardly anything running I do count that as a performance hit.
Next time you're seeing beachballs and memory pressure high, then take a screenshot of vm_stat and activity monitor of the memory tab, sorted by memory tab. Beachballs are often not caused by memory.
Will do, and I accept that memory may not be the only cause, but since the pressure was red with nothing (outside what would be considered light use) running, there is probably a contribution.
Right, back to work I go
Right, back to work I go
