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Chances are, if you use Google Chrome, you have noticed just how much RAM the browser tends to eat up. Well, Google's development team is also aware of this and is now working on a fix, which will hopefully make Chrome use up fewer resources.
Currently Chrome creates a new process for each tab and instance of the browser opened. This can make the browser sluggish on some machines and a battery life nightmare for mobile users. Speaking during a Reddit AMA session late last week, a Chrome for Android engineer said: “We are actively working on reducing battery usage and we are looking into when Chrome is in the foreground and in the background.”
“Since its inception Chrome has been focusing on security and performance of the web across all supported platforms. Performance sometimes has come at the cost of resource usage, but given the importance of the mobile platform this is one of the top things we are looking into.”
While mobile is a big focus, Google has not forgotten about desktop users. On the desktop side, Google is currently trying to fight memory leaks: “We are profiling Chrome to improve our start-up speed and proactively fighting memory bloat and memory leaks. For example, this year the first gesture latency and mean input latency has decreased steadily.”
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KitGuru Says: Google does tend to eat up as much RAM as you can throw at it. Have any of you guys had any problems with Chrome RAM usage?
Via: The Inqurier
Man, chrome is my nightmare, so 2 months ago i moved to firefox. And yesterday i moved again to chrome, just because firefox is worst in design, reponse and RAM usage… Its sad…
Bloody nightmare as a resource hog. And that is with just one tab open!
install 32gb of ram.. problem solved 😛
I’ve had 16Gb in my system for around 3 years and it’s fine for the most part. My missus’ PC has 6Gb, dunno why, and hers runs like sh*t.
hungry bastard
Is it really that bad? resource hog? really…. you must be using max 4gb ram. I use 8gb and have no issue.
It is quite problematic, sometimes it can eat up 3-4gb of ram alone when i am browsing extensively,
currently i got 7 tabs on, 3 of them are youtube, face book and other sites.
Work PC, no choice on RAM.
That just treats they symptom and does nothing to cure the problem.
“Given the importance of the mobile platform”
So… if you weren’t studying the mobile market… you’d never have bothered optimizing resource usage?
See people, this… THIS RIGHT HERE… is what we call the “Ubisoft mentality”.
If a gamer (or user) wants to run the game (program) better, they’ll just toss a bigger graphics card (beefier system) at it. That’s the stupid part. You should be striving for minimal resource usage AS WELL AS being secure and modular.
There’s no excuse for unoptimization. None. I don’t have to be a dev to call that out. It’s rampant all over in games and it’s been rampant all over in browsers for the last few years as well. I remember when Firefox started its update trend where it started changing version numbers like t shirts. I remember back with 3.06 on my old laptop that had 6GB of RAM and a desktop i7 in it. I could have had as many tabs/etc open as I wanted. But then firefox started needing more and more resources with each update, and it wasn’t performing any better. So I switched to chrome. And now chrome AND firefox are both resource-mongering beasts.
At least browsers like Palemoon and Cyberfox are available to “trim the fat” from firefox, but flash is screwed up on them, and for those reasons I need to use chrome where the issues don’t exist. I would use IE, because it is (surprisingly) the least resource-intensive browser on the market, but it has this habit of not loading pages for me, and forgetting my settings every time I close it, or some other crap. So I can’t use it either.
It would be real nice if ya’ll kill the overly massive resource usage from the CPU and the GPUs with chrome. That’d be nice. Y’know, along with killing the RAM it requires.
Oh, and get rid of its caching problem too. Every webpage you visit in your session seems to get saved in some form until you close the browser. I could be using 8GB of RAM, close chrome and go down to 2GB usage, then re-open it and I’m back up to 5… what happened to that extra 3GB of RAM chrome was using before I closed it?
Chrome destroys 4gb ultrabooks, convertables, and other machines where the RAM is soldered in. I get loads of out of memory errors from Windows thanks to Chrome. Edge works quite a bit better, though I miss some of the perks of Chrome.
It should be fixed. Use a ton of RAM if there is a ton, otherwise, don’t be a pig!
Firefox is pretty sluggish to use. Even though Chrome eats lots of RAM, its pretty responsive and fast browser.
i do remember when chrome used even more back in the day but this is nothing for 16GB 🙂
4 tabs open, nuff said >.<
Same, been going back and forth, is it really that hard to make a functioning browser.
that extra 3 gb was a memory leak
Ah yes, good ol’ Chrome with just 4 tabs open http://puu.sh/hRNLX/7b8d89be76.png
Isn’t that kind of what I said
I figured…
you’re viewing it the wrong way, try to right click that icon and select “Go to details”
Maybe the problem is people expecting browsers to use 150mb ram in this day and age.
Sure it uses a lot more that we would want but that is the price we must pay for stability, security and features.
Even after they revamp the mem usage i don’t expect a drastic reduction. Maybe 15% if we’re lucky.
look at chrome’s task manager, it will show what is using those resources, it might be extensions, also the task manager allows you to kill off tabs and processes you don’t need or ones that are not responding.
I’ve been waiting for this.
When i first launch FF it works quite well but after some time it gets very sluggish and unresponsive at times.
Given the fact that chrome eats up memory when each tab is a process itself it does move along quite well as @spp85:disqus mentioned.
To have this adjusted would make it that much more responsive.
chrome is a nightmare on android agreed.
and fIREF0X is a nightmare on desktop
internet explorer still the best in performance worst in security
yup…a lot of RAM
Chrome functions quite fine, I have zero problems with chrome’s ram usage because I know the more ram it uses, the less I am waiting, I have even gone as far as to put chrome’s cache on a ramdisk. That being said I installed an unnecessary 32gb of ram in my machine exactly for this type of application. I use chrome because it is fast and secure, if I wanted a browser that used minimal resources I’d probably use Opera. It’s just a matter of what you’d like to do with your browser and resources you’re willing to use to do it.
8gb is plenty, I think most of the complaints are coming from a netbook experience with around 2gb, who would have to be careful with ram/cpu resource allocation.
I wouldn’t consider speed a problem. But that’s just me.
I certainly don’t disagree with you because in this day and age of cheap ram there is no reason that most folks should not be having 8gb at least and that should make this ram issue a non issue.
I did think of using a ramdisk like you said, maybe i will but mostly i noticed other issues from just regular browsing or to do with extensions causing me to switch every now and then.
I have sometimes 150+ tabs and I have 16 gigs of ram and chrome eats like 10 gigs
Who cares about ram? On mobile devices chrome uses more CPU than any other browser. I had a surface pro 3 and that thing made a ton of noise when you ran a 1080p youtube video on chrome. Firefox? Not a sound. Same experience with a macbook pro.
I feel quite the opposite. Switched to Chrome after using Firefox for years. As much as I like Chrome, I sure miss those scrolling tabs, because I tend to have so many open that it becomes impossible to recognise which is which because in Chrome they get so small they no longer show favicons. Firefox instead starts “scrolling” the tabs when they become too small to be practical. Furthermore I much preferred the square tabs but ironically enough there isn’t much choice now (lol.). I switched to Chrome because Firefox started crashing a lot more often in the last few updates. It isn’t actually that much slower, however, a problem with Firefox is that if one tab freezes, the entire program does, because it’s a single process. In Chrome a single tab is a single process (unless you turn that option off, in which case you’ll likely run into the same issue). And for me, Firefox really doesn’t use much RAM, compared to Chrome. As someone who only has 6GB, this should be a big deal, but meh. I tend to close my browser when I use other truly RAM-intensive programs.
Facebook makes Firefox crashes like crazy here…
The crashes are something they should really look into. For me they started at about version 32.0, and simply made me switch to Chrome. I personally rarely use facebook, though, so it’s not just that website.
I would be inclined to say Firefox is not sluggish at all? Only thing that ever has given me issues is 3rd party browser extensions (flash/silverlight) the browser itself starts quick and loads my pages equally as fast. Chrome however the constant ram eating is a problem. Firefox does have one issue that i have noticed, its super high cpu usage, though this should be a pretty non issue, as it usually only peaks for a few seconds.
I know a lot of people have been talking about chromes high ram usage but ive never had a problem with it, I have 9 tabs open and im not even over 70mb of ram usage…
Well no shit that’s 148 too many.
Firefox, whilst it is a good browser, does lack in some areas that Chrome excels in. Although the default smooth scrolling is a nice touch to Firefox, there are a few things that let it down.
My main problem is the fact its window UI is a little broken. I find after putting a machine to sleep mode, then rebooting, Firefox’s main window (the outside bit with the close button and such on) glitches out and will not let you click any of the buttons. The same problem is present in Thunderbird (the email client made by Mozilla).
Overall though, it’s often more sluggish than Chrome, and after a reboot from sleep mode, it just doesn’t ever want to work
You could try Waterfox, it’s a build of Firefox optimized for 64-bit.
Each extension, tab, and certain web elements (Flash for example) gets its own process. Better security, takes advantage of multi-core systems properly, etc. Usually when people are complaining about it using a ton of RAM they’ve got 150 tabs open and a couple dozen extensions.
people still care about RAM usage?
Chrome was touted as a lightweight browser. Changed from Firefox to Chrome and I love it except for the insane resources used. My AVG pops up quite often with a warning about resources used. I don’t use too many tabs at once but reddit recommends The Great Suspender which will autosleep your unused tabs and reactivate when you are back on that tab.
I use Chrome because Firefox doesn’t play 4K or 60fps videos well :/
Also FF lags when i watch Twitch
Install “The great suspender” extension for chrome.
Mozilla’s been working on a from-the-ground-up rewrite of its layout/rendering engine which it’s dubbed “Servo”, and it’s already significantly faster than current Firefox: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgzNDA.
Yeah, I’d say they have a memory leak issue in Windows. BIG TIME.
I had three tabs open and my hard drive was churning like crazy, but nothing was moving. It locked up, but I was able to bring up Task Manager and got the attached screenshot.
Chrome was using about 3gb of my memory on an older Win 7 laptop that only has 4gb RAM.
I can’t really browse the web and use this on battery, my laptop has to be plugged in if I’m on the web. Otherwise, my battery lasts about a third as long as it should.
with that screen open, close chrome and watch memory %. If you’ve got 8gb ram, that will drop 15-18%.
For me, if I’ve had chrome open for longer than :05, it’ll be 20-25% drop.
Chrome uses a lot of memory.
Nope. But I have 16GB of ram so I dont really count
Never! I only have 103 right now. I upped ram to 32 gigs, so I can browse in peace and just not care how much gets used.
16 wasn’t enough, so I doubled it to 32. Finally, I can leave 100+ tabs open, and still have it functional.
It does use a bit of resources but I love the access to all the services that I use on a regular basis, the syncing of bookmarks to my phone/Chromebook, and it’s speed on Linux.
Like hell I’m going to put $300 worth of RAM in my PC because Google’s engineers can’t stop memory leaks.
That’s not really the point is it? Just because having 8GB ignores the issue, that doesn’t mean the issue isn’t there. Point is, it’s just a browser, and it shouldn’t be using the amount of ram that it does.
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Ah right that makes sense, thanks for replying – how would you make it so a tab does’nt store in the RAM anyway out of interest? 😛
Why are people just showing their Windows task manager instead of the Chrome task manager. Clearly Chrome using >2GB of RAM is not intended, check to see if a tab/extension is causing a memory leak. I have never ever had >1GB of memory used by all of chrome processes.
If you want a slim, light browser – stop putting all that extra crap on chrome and just use it OOB
When I moved to Netscape navigator I never looked back!
When I moved to Netscape navigator I never looked back!
Leaving chrome idling in the system tray maintains a half dozen instantiations of chrome. Maybe that’s good maybe it’s bad but FF can use up to 300Mb opening a single blank page.
Yeah, I have 16Gb of RAM on my main gaming rig, and 8 in the 3 other machines I have. I honestly have little to no issues.
Does Firefox have automatic add-on and plugin updating yet? Chrome is safer, but requires The Great Suspender and Lazy Tabs to be usable.
Why the hell do people have this many tabs open? If I have more than 5 I feel cramped and stressed… I could see 10 or maybe even 20… but 100!?!?!
I run Firefox 38 on a ten year old PC running Linux Mint, I don’t consider it sluggish in the least. I do resent having to use silverlight-emulation, but I still get to watch Netflix just fine, everything else is HTML5 capable.
I used Chrome previously and found it simply bogged older system’s RAM down too much if you had a few tabs open; on top of that, I have since decided to avoid using Google and Google services as much as humanly possible.
In linux i also prefer Firefox…
Got lots of ram. This definitely does not bother me 😛
please fix damn ram
Chrome isn’t usually the problem. The problems are usually Shockwave Flash and Javascript. Both leak memory like crazy.
Firefox is still in the stone ages. There are still some websites it refuses to open. Also they always have problems with Flash player and the plugin crashes
I’ve only had 1 memory leak since I went to Chrome that I remember, but I wasn’t able to determine what the cause was after a reset fixed it. I do, however, notice that it creates a new process for each tab and starts to add up; though I have more then enough RAM for it (ty Corsair).
These fixes will be welcome.
My computer has 16GB RAM and an 8 core i7. My phone has 3GB RAM. Maybe it’s just my specs but Chrome has never lagged for me.
I start at reddit, scroll down through three or four pages, and open every single link that looks interesting in a new tab. Then I slowly read through them all, and leave the ones that look interesting open for later. Repeat, and it quickly builds up. Chrome typically averages 10-15 gigs at any one time, what with 20 or so youtube tabs open, netflix usually sitting in the background, and numerous other sites, all open at once. With 32 gigs, I simply don’t care. I open tabs till I can’t read the title, open another window and keep going. Dual 4k screens means I have plenty of screen real-estate too. So no claustrophobia.
Many developers & coders know that both Firefox, Chrom* & all their derivatives are failing, feature-wise, compared to Opera 12.x.
But Opera 12.x is so slow & unreliable with modern demands. So I still am looking to replace it. That the perfect web browser has yet to arrive.
PERFECT:
protection from malware, but still allow scripts, etc to run;
downloads if needed, even YouTube;
macros to include form-filling, etc; save MHT files quickly & reliably;
fast but low memory use;
re-load settings/ add-ons/ bookmarks into new browser creations;
recover from crashes of all kinds; display optimizes to size-color, as user requires at the time;
wide range of powerful, flexible, diverse add-ons;
use in the common operating systems easily (Windows, Apple, Linux, Android); …
There are many extinct, dead & dying software species. Below are listed some living (not yet dead) web browsers.
In alphabetical order, with new versions every week, portable versions omitted. Some are 32 or 64 bit only, others are both. Left out the Firefox-based browsers, which are as diverse as the Chromiums listed below. Errors will exist, because of this planet’s undocumented “information explosions”.
CHROMIUM-based:
Celensoft Super Web 16.8.0
Chrome 43.0.2357.65
Chromium 45.0.2408.0
Citrio 42.0.2311.257
Coolnovo2.0.9.20
Coowon_install_1.6.8.0
Crupd2015r03
Dooble Web Browser 1.52
Iridiumbrowser-41.2.0
Orbitum 39.0.2171.141
Oryon C 0.1
Qtweb Internet Browser 3.8.5
Slimboat 1.1.54
Slimjet 4.0.5.0
Spark Browser 33.8.9999.6066
Superbird-setup
Theworld_en_3.5.0.3
Torchsetup-r3-n-bc
Woogamble Browser 28.0.2.4
Yandex Browser 15.4
CHROMIUM-based, but “safe”:
Chromodo 36.7.0.8
Comodo Chromodo Browser v42.1 RC
Comodo Dragon
Epic 39.0.2171.99
Srware Iron 42.0.2250.1
Whitehat Aviator 35.0.1916.144
CHROMIUM-based, but multiple bases:
7 Star Browser 1.40.3.310
360browser7.5.2.110
Avant Browser Ultimate 2015 Build 10
Baidu Spark Browser 40.16.1000.126
Lunascape 696_ml11_gl
Polarity Installer 3.3.1
Tungsten203
UCBrowser_V5.0.1104.0_(Build15051817)
To some extent you are right. I found Chrome is slow on very dated systems and firefox had an advantage there. But on anything recent generation PCs it’s noticeably faster than firefox to me atleast.
Is that what you genuinely believe? Im not a browser programmer so i cant say whether its unrealistic expectations, but when you look at the processes running and see 8 or more ram intensive children. well that wreaks of problems in the code to me.
did you misread my comment or something?
I do believe that, yes. Mind you that some of the processes are plugins like Java and Flash so those can take up more ram than just one handling less intensive tasks.
Bill Gates once said that 640 KB would be more than enough for all our needs. Maybe we should get back to DOS.
only Firefox is real …
I regularly run into huge memory leaks in Chrome, and have to kill and restart certain tabs in order to get the RAM usage back to anywhere near reasonable.
We are installnig the plugins, well, i don’t know, to fucking use them?
Liar.
I like the Chrome browser, but the memory usage is fscking ridiculous.
I have a slightly older computer at work, if I open 4 or more tabs in Chrome the computer will grind to a halt, and I gotta wait perhaps a few minutes for it to swap everything out then I can close the tabs. 150MB for a tab, that’s just way way way too much.
Personally I strongly dislike “virtual memory” in the sense of swapping to disk. I’d much rather get a (non-fatal) “out of memory” error than have the computer grind to a halt, which is what happens when a virtual memory computer goes a bit over its RAM. I don’t want to click a different window that I haven’t used for a while and have to wait for 3 minutes while the computer loads it from disk again and tries to figure out what to swap out. If we didn’t use swap, programmers (looking at you, Google) would be more careful not to waste memory.
Computers are not all that much more functional than they were in to 1990s, or even the 1980s, for regular office tasks such as wordprocessing and spreadsheets – and those computers although technically slower were actually more responsive in many cases because they did NOT grind to a halt due to swapping.
Any Chrome update will not save from memory leaking issue. Only third partty solution will. Among them are OneTab, Tab Suspender, Tabr and etc. Tabr, along with memory usage reducing feature provides a better User Experience https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabr-visual-tab-viewer-an/bmkiddcbjejcplgggpoakjbfdiiiggfa
I’ve recently discouraged people from using Google chrome. For the very reason that its a HOG. Until they actually come up with a great idea and FIX it, I wont continue to use it either. So tired of slow games, and my RAM being eaten up for no reason.
Looking at consumed memory now – they tottally failed.
I really like Chrome, but it is still a RAM pig. I can’t run it all day. I must restart my machine, not just the browser, because it frags up my RAM too much… and I have 16GB of REAL RAM, but it eventually renders it slower than a block of cheese through an 80 year old.
Other browsers have had this problem, and FF fixed it for a while many years ago by having it purge and release RAM, the same way that some other pigs did once they figured out how to do it, like Pagemaker, Illustrator, etc.
I must say, Opera is the slickest and fastest browser out there, and it has a light touch on RAM, but it won’t render pages quite as expected sometimes. Chrome is better at that and doesn’t have the grotesque mis-rendering that MS Internet Exploder has of images.
Their new Edge browser, sure, it’s fast, they claim it has accurate rendering, but it handles no extensions that I know of yet. I absolutely refuse to get online with a naked browser sans extensions that I use.
Seeing as how I’ve only used IE when forced by work over the last nearly 20 years, I’m not champing at the bit to go Edge.
Google: You guys really need to step it up. If I have trouble with this using 16GB of RAM, I can’t even imagine what it must be like on a puny 2-3GB that comes with most laptops out of the box!
FIX IT!
how to fix stop being cheap and buy new ram lawd -_- as cheap as ram is u all need a job or stop being cheap… I just got 2 sticks of ddr4 ram stick for $60