# Mac RAM Question: Lots of Inactive (blue), but still unresponsive



## Selwin (Sep 11, 2012)

As soon as my Free Memory is used up and I have a pile of Inactive memory, my Mac Pro becomes less responsive. It speeds up again if I close some programs, but if I start another one and the Free memory is out again, I notice another performance drop.
Like I said, at that point, I have lots of Inactive Memory. But apparently the OS doesn't use it, or the process of redistributing that memory takes time or whatever I don't know.

Is this normal, should I wait a couple of seconds before I can continue to work? Or is there something I could do to troubleshoot?

Thanks.


----------



## Hal P Anderson (Sep 11, 2012)

I don't know much about Macs, but Google found this:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4119960?start=0&tstart=0

The second post has links to several resources.

Hal


----------



## LouieSherwin (Sep 14, 2012)

Thanks Hal for the reference. The answer had several links and the first one was not working but I was able to find the original article. It clearly explains the different categories reported in Activity Monitor. I did not really understand the difference between inactive and free before.

Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used

The bottom line is that for running new and existing applications both inactive and free RAM are available. When starting an application that was previously running if it's inactive RAM is still intact it will start more quickly, however, if it's inactive RAM has been over written by a running application it will take longer to load and start since it must be reloaded from your hard drive. 

If you start seeing a high number for page out bytes/sec then you are out of usable RAM for the applications currently running. Your whole system will start to go slow. Quit one or more applications until the page out rate drops. If an application needs more of your inactive/free RAM than is you have then the only solution is to add more RAM to your system.

Early releases of LR3 had problems with memory leaks in the export and other modules. This would fill all available RAM and drag your system to a crawl until the export finished or you force quit LR. This was completely solved in the later releases and I have not heard of memory leak problems in LR4.

-louie


----------



## MarkNicholas (Sep 15, 2012)

Aha. That may explain a strange phenomenon that I used to experience with my old 1GB RAM PC laplop with LR3. Often I would fire up LR and part way through it would hang although It allowed me to immediately close it down. Tried again immediatley afterwards and it fired up with no problems. It never needed a third go. It always worked on the second attempt. It was almost as if there wasnt enough umph on the first go!


----------



## Selwin (Oct 6, 2013)

Apparently this topic escaped my attention. Meanwhile I upgraded from 12GB to 16GB RAM and haven't had many problems since. I use LR4.4 and CS6 together and I only get significant Page-Outs after extended day sessions. I'm also not really bothered by slow LR4 performance in the Develop module. And I have the entry level Mac Pro (Quad Core). I reckon 32GB of RAM would be absolutely plenty for my usage. If OWC has any cheap RAM offerings in the next year I might leap on 4 8GB modules (32GB), although 3 12GB modules (36GB) might be better using the chip set. I must say that going from 12GB (so 3 modules) to 16GB (4 modules) has not decreased speed.


----------



## camner (Dec 30, 2013)

Selwin,

It's a truism that "you can't have too much memory."  This is particularly true if you keep lots of programs open and also if you keep lots of tabs open in your browser(s).  Both Chrome and Safari are (in)famous for sucking up lots of RAM when many tabs and windows are open.  I have a 2010 Mac Pro and right now I'm using about 19GB of active RAM (I use MenuMeters to put a memory usage indicator in the menu bar), and I all I have open is a bunch of browser windows open, LR, my email program, Word, and Excel.

One way to get a good handle on whether you are maxing out your current memory is to open Activity Monitor.  If you're running an OS X version BELOW 10.9 (Mavericks), this screenshot is a good example of what I'm talking about:


Notice the "Page Outs".  If that number is greater than 0, that means that at some point you've maxed out your memory and the OS has written out part of the contents of RAM to your disk drive.  Obviously, when that has to get retrieved, it is slow as molasses!

If you're not running Mavericks, you might consider upgrading.  OS 10.9 has a new feature called "memory compression."  This new feature allows inactive memory to be compressed, thus reducing the likelihood of having to swap memory out to disk.  For a memory limited machine, this will help a lot.

In Mavericks, the Activity Monitor memory screen has been changed (see below):

Here one should look at the "Swap used" number.  If that is more than 0, that means at some point you've maxed out your available RAM.   The "Memory Pressure" graph is also useful.  If you see than with a color other than green, that, too, means that you've maxed out RAM.

Here's a screenshot of a situation where the memory pressure graph is starting to rise and the swap file is beginning to be used (which slows down performance).



Summary:  Get more RAM if you can, and either way, consider upgrading to Mavericks to take advantage of memory compression.

Hope this helps!


----------



## Selwin (Dec 30, 2013)

Hi Camner,

Thanks for contributing to this rather ancient topic of mine. I've always been aware of the need to look for significant Page Outs and I don't notice them as much now with 16GB as I did with 12GB. I optimised my installations of SL on the Mac Pro and ML on my ancient Macbook 2008 2.0GHz so that all Mail, downloading, iTunes and all other tiny apps are on the Macbook, while only Lightroom and Photoshop are on the Mac Pro. So basically my Mac Pro is a Photo Processing only machine. That is why I can work extended sessions without running out of RAM, even with my 16GB, being on the lowish end of the Adobe bliss spectrum.

Well not quite, as time passed I installed quite some other programs, especially where I needed the processing power like video conversion tools. But I don't open them during typical photo sessions.

So I am reluctant to upgrade at this time. When checking prices on Macsales (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Mac-Pro-Memory#1333-memory) the best would obviously be 3x16GB (currently 669,99 USD) but 4x8GB would be quite nice as well (currently 394,99USD). The problem is I would like to have more memory just for the thought of having enough, but with my current 16GB I can't justify it.

One thing that is clearly helping is to shut down the machine at night and start from scratch the next morning. This is also very much recommended from an environmentally savvy pov as the Mac Pro is consuming massive amounts of energy. On days when I only need to work on remote servers (using Citrix) I connect my 30" screen to my Macbook and work on that, it will save lots of energy.

There will always be a moment of upgrade (although I would like to stick to this machine for at least another 3 years) and if I can hold out that long using 16GB, I will.

I am currently upgrading to ML in phases (new ML installation along side an ever operational SL). I'm slowly working on completing the software on the ML partition that I have on the SL partition. Currently using evaluation copies of LR5 and CS6 until I'm confident to switch to ML completely. I'll have to check the memory management of ML: is it better or worse than on SL? Did you notice any changes when you upgraded from SL to ML?

Thanks!


----------



## camner (Dec 30, 2013)

Gee, I didn't think of October 2013 as "ancient" 

I'm not a true OS X expert, but I didn't notice a change in memory management between SL and ML, and as far as I know, Apple didn't claim that there was one.  I think the real "upgrade" to memory management occurred between ML and Mavericks, when memory compression was introduced.

I put my Mac Pro to sleep every night (in fact, every time I stop using it for a bit) and have it tied into a "smart power strip" that notices that the mac pro is asleep and cuts the power to the monitor, speakers, and even the ethernet switch to which the Mac Pro is connected.  When asleep the Mac Pro draws very little power, and power up time is a lot faster than rebooting and waiting for all my apps to reopen.

I purchased my 2010 Mac Pro used from CPTRONICS via eBay (http://stores.ebay.com/cptronics).  This guy deals in used electronic stuff.  He was also very helpful with post sale questions.  At the time he was offering 16GB memory sticks for the 2010 for $125, so I bought 3 of them.  I was planning on just getting two, but the price was two good to pass up.  If you're willing to take a chance this way (no lifetime warranty the way OWC does) you could email him through eBay and see if he would have any memory for your machine.  I've been running his RAM for over a year with no problems.  If you're interested and he doesn't ship internationally I'd be happy to send it to you.


----------



## Selwin (Dec 31, 2013)

Thank you for your attention and for your offer. I'll consider it


----------

