Processes fast up until 1GB of RAM usage, then slow

this 1 little weird. i've been searching answers while haven't had luck.

have macbook pro 8gb of ram , snow leopard.

i've noticed applications slow when surpass 1gb of ram usage, regardless of how total ram available. notice firefox. fast, page stutter when scroll. i'll @ "real mem" in activity monitor, , it'll within few mb of 1gb.

i'm convinced not entirely firefox thing, though, it's noticeable there. see virtualbox , various java processes have more 1gb allocated jvm.

oddly, causes cpu spike, not disk usage spike i'd expect virtual memory churn.

thoughts? there memory parameter can set? has else seen this?

 

memory usage seems coincidence. real issue @ least firefox stutter cpu usage - have seen if have multiple tabs in ff consuming cpu or there app taking cpu (vm etc) ff stutter.

haven't found solution apart limiting cpu usage running less cpu hogs @ once.

 

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