Is this healthy?

Regarding the activity monitor. Running OS X 10.9.4.

See the image here: imgur: the simple image sharer

Currently running Safari, iTunes and Photoshop CC.

Experiencing quite servere slowness.

I still don't understand Mavericks memory compression. Is everything on the screenshot normal ?

Edit: Since i've posted this my Swaps Used is still rising by 0.3MB every 10 minutes or so - is this okay ?

On the Memory tab, click on the header over the Memory column to sort them by usage and see what is using the most memory. With 16GB, you would not think swap would be much in use, except that Photoshop is going to take a TON for any images you have loaded. All that ability to "undo" requires it to save the previous version, which it stores in memory if it can for quick response. That's my main suspect, but as I said, go look and see.

ClarkeFace said:

Edit: Since i've posted this my Swaps Used is still rising by 0.3MB every 10 minutes or so - is this okay ?

Click to expand...

This is what happens with the swap file…it gets larger & larger over time. Like MacInWin mentioned…I wouldn't think that with 16gig of ram…this would be too much of an issue.

I generally don't get concerned about the size of the swap file until it gets to be about 1.5gig. Using the figures you mentioned above (0.3meg every 10 min.). Doing the math…this means (at the same rate) it would take around 34.7 days for the swap file to get to 1.5gig.

When the swap file gets to this size…I simply simply reboot the computer…and the swap file is back to zero.

So a single reboot every 34.7 days (at the growth rate mentioned) is really not a very big deal.

- Nick

p.s. To clarify…that's 34.7 days of continuous computer use. When the computer is "sleeping"…the swap file does not increase in size. So the actual time between reboots could be much much longer. So for example. If the computer was used 8 hours/day…then 34.7 x 3 = 104.1 days.

Also, when swap starts being used, that means the hard drive is now being used. If you HD is getting close to full (<20% free) then it starts to get fragmented, and reading/writing to it gets slower. Add that to the swap file getting bigger and you have a recipe for slow performance. So, check what's using your memory, check for free space on the HD and see what you can do about it.

Related to MacInWin's post above.

I have seen some heavy fragmentation at 60-65% free space on machines that move a lot of data on and off the drives (my own - but I'm not alone in this either). I've also experienced boot time reductions of several seconds and noticeable difference in app launch times, write times, etc. by defragging those same 60-65% free space drives.

OS X does a great job at keeping files defragmented, but it does absolutely nothing that I can see about keeping your free space defragmented. Highly fragmented free space is going to slow the machine down, particularly writing any large files to the drive as there is not enough contiguous free space to write them in a single location or possibly the only location is at the tail end of the drive which can be 15-20% slower than the front end of the drive. Even related to a sleep image file - realize the sleep image is going to be writing what is stored in RAM to your drive. You have 16GB RAM being used - you're going to have a 16 GB sleep image file and if that sleep image has to be written to 20-30 areas of the drive - your machine is going to be slooowwww.

While I do not recommend defragging for most of those using OS X, for those moving &/or working with large amounts of data on their hard drives - have to recommend you at least get the iDefrag demo and check the free space fragmentation once in awhile.

edit: And I'm not sure any of us know how to read the memory tool in Mavericks and get anything that helps with diagnosing memory issues out of it.

+1 for the mystery that is the memory tool, but it does list the big memory users, sort of, generally speaking. (Is that sufficient weaseling?)

Add another +1 for the mystery memory tool if I may.

Not sure if this will help...but here's some info regarding the "memory pressure" in Mavericks from the ars technica folks (you know they always go into lots of detail).

OS X 10.9 Mavericks: The Ars Technica Review | Ars Technica

From their explanation...Mavericks is supposed to "resist" the growth/size of the swap file (which can lead to performance degradation when it gets too large). We certainly get lots & lots of questions from folks getting "beachballs" using older OS versions (10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8). And the swap file getting too large definitely contributes to this (but much better with Mavericks).

Maybe the way to read the "memory pressure tool" is...to think of the "pressure" as the driving force to use the swap file (which is undesireable). Thus:

- The more "memory pressure" the greater the need to use the swap file.
- The less "memory pressure" the lower the need to use the swap file.

And...if the memory pressure remains high for a long time...this may lead to the swap file getting larger & larger. The larger the swap file gets...the more performance degradation.

One way to reduce the "pressure" would be to have fewer apps open at the same time. Or install additional ram. It works this way with older Mac OS versions as well. The more installed ram...the less the computer relies on the swap file...and the slower the swap file grows (and less performance degradation).

This is the way I'm understanding it.

- Nick

I've not experienced the memory issues with Mavericks that I had with 10.7 & 10.8 and memory limited to 4 GB on my MBA. I've even been able to get rid of the Memory manager I had for use with 10.8 as I've never needed to clear the memory under 10.9.

For those with Onyx, you can go to the Info tab - then Memory and find the old fashioned understandable Used, Wired, Active, Inactive counts and even an option to purge the Inactive memory if you feel the need - which I never have since 10.9.

That same place also provides you an overview of your virtual memory.

I had similar issues with my Mac running Mavericks. However, I had 4GB (iMac, late 2007) so I was often down to 3MB remaining. As you can imagine I had a useless Mac until someone mentioned that there is plenty of bugs in finder. The solution.....downgrade to Mountain Lion. It seemed a bit drastic plus I love all the cool features like Maps, etc. Anyway, I did downgrade! Long story short - I now have 1.3GB of memory free most of the time with the same apps open. The speed of Mountain Lion makes my Mac feel new(ish) again. I just hope Yosemite addresses all the bugs in Mavericks.

Interesting that none of us using Mavericks have experienced this problem.

Loads of people on different forums have experienced this problem.

ZDNET even wrote an article on it recently - http://www.zdnet.com/after-all-this-time-how-can-os-x-mavericks-still-be-this-bad-7000031126/


Sent from my iPhone using Mac Forums

I guess I'm lucky. I've seen zero problems with Finder. I don't do what the author of that article does, which is to force the external drives to mount at root, and I noted that when he stopped doing that Finder worked. He also uses a third party USB display device to drive four monitors and had problems stemming from that third party device. Took it out and the problem went away. I have just two monitors, the internal screen on the MBP and a Thunderbolt monitor. I've never seen flickering on either. Parallels works fine for me, too. SO all of the problems he cited are NOT present on my system. As I said, I guess I'm lucky.

Or maybe Mavericks is ok and his problems are with the way he's not letting it work. Oh, well.

SparkyMac said:

Loads of people on different forums have experienced this problem.

Click to expand...

I apologise if you thought I wrote "nobody else has ever had this problem."

On review, what I actually wrote, "Interesting that none of us using Mavericks have experienced this problem" could be open to misinterpretation. I said "Interesting" as in "I wonder why" and "us" as in "members of this forum." We haven't seen any reports of that particular issue here that I have run across. It was not intended to dismiss or belittle your issue. I recognise that "us" could be misinterpreted so I offer an apology.