diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index dfa38521f5..a18cccd59b 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -3,7 +3,8 @@
  * remove the remaining vestiges of the unfinished DatacenterShardStrategy 
    (replaced by NetworkTopologyStrategy in 0.7)
  * handle zero-length (or missing) rows during HH paging (CASSANDRA-1432)
- * add CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=80 to default JVM options
+ * add CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=75 and UseCMSInitiatingOccupancyOnly
+   to default JVM options
  * decrease jvm heap for cassandra-cli (CASSANDRA-1446)
  * document DoConsistencyChecksBoolean option to disable Read Repair
 
diff --git a/bin/cassandra.in.sh b/bin/cassandra.in.sh
index 5b3b36e444..73e6cb20f7 100644
--- a/bin/cassandra.in.sh
+++ b/bin/cassandra.in.sh
@@ -46,7 +46,8 @@ JVM_OPTS=" \
         -XX:+CMSParallelRemarkEnabled \
         -XX:SurvivorRatio=8 \
         -XX:MaxTenuringThreshold=1 \
-        -XX:CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=80 \
+        -XX:CMSInitiatingOccupancyFraction=75 \
+        -XX:+UseCMSInitiatingOccupancyOnly \
         -XX:+HeapDumpOnOutOfMemoryError \
         -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=8080 \
         -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \