Are all web browsers a memory hog?

willhub · 21 Feb 2018 at 22:28

The reason I'm asking this, Edge browser is using 2GB of ram for 19 tabs, I'm sure I used to use Opera with 30 tabs on a machine with 4gig of ram no problem this seems a bit excessive no?

Rroff · 21 Feb 2018 at 22:32

A lot of modern browsers seem to use a lot of memory - in some cases it is slightly excusable in that (usually optional but generally enabled by default) they are increasingly using a threaded model whereby the browser uses multiple separate processes to separate sites out as much as possible for performance and resilience against sites becoming busy or crashing the browser, etc. which necessitates some duplication of resources.

AthlonXP1800 · 22 Feb 2018 at 05:05

Yes I noticed all browsers tabs used twice memory on 32GB RAM compared to 16GB RAM, opened 1 tab of this thread used 50MB on Edge, 70MB on Firefox Nightly and 110MB on Chrome. I preferred Edge because on task manager all tabs are labelled that are much easier to identify how much memory it used, but both Firefox and Chrome tabs are not labelled so I have to end each tasks to find the right trigger. Many times I visited sites like The Sun paper, CNN etc that has too many adverts and videos caused the tab memory shot up to 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 6GB and 8GB then I noticed high memory usage in task manager and went to find Edge tab and refreshed tab caused memory dropped to normal level between 250MB to 500MB for big sites.

Sometime I had 60 or 70 tabs on Edge or 100 tabs on Chrome used 95% of 32GB RAM.

Armageus · 22 Feb 2018 at 05:17

Browser manufacturers are in cahoots with ram manufacturers
/Tinfoil

As alluded to above, partly is due to tabs running in their own thread (mainly as a security feature now), but also the web has evolved over the years, with websites being increasingly more complex, having more adverts and richer media.

bledd · 22 Feb 2018 at 11:17

They keep 'back pages' in memory, as long as it's not increasing when you're not doing anything (a leak), then, it's doing what it's meant to.

Stelly · 22 Feb 2018 at 11:19

They make their browsers seem faster by caching images, style sheets and other things, they are supposed to use intelligent caching... but you know.... software and intelligent dont always happens.

Stelly

jpaul · 22 Feb 2018 at 11:32

Rroff said:
which necessitates some duplication of resources.

all the common libraries are shared, so duplication is minimal.

AthlonXP1800 said:
I preferred Edge because on task manager all tabs are labelled that are much easier to identify how much memory it used, but both Firefox and Chrome tabs are not

you have about:memory in ff, some of the working set and virtual memory for common libraries are shared between tabs too.

AthlonXP1800 said:
The Sun paper, CNN etc that has too many adverts and videos caused the tab memory

I can't imagine browsing without a script/add blocker. (it's an arms war on some sites eg forbes where they have anti-add-blocker tech though)

Randomface74 · 22 Feb 2018 at 11:39

Defo install ad blockers in every browser that supports it.

You want your browsers to be faster right? Well using your RAM is one way they do it.

You could use IE11, which uses less RAM but is also slower.

However... if you're paging anyway, maybe you're already taking a performance hit.

ic1male · 22 Feb 2018 at 12:24

@AthlonXP1800 Press Shift + ESC in Chrome to display its own task manager.

No-one's mentioned Vivaldi yet. I don't use it as Chrome is fine for me but as it's the newest kid on the block it might have a different approach to system resources? Someone should try it.

willhub · 22 Feb 2018 at 15:31

Does using an adblocker lower memory usage?

Glanza · 22 Feb 2018 at 15:49

Do modern browsers not look at how much ram your machine has and work off that? Similar to what Windows pagefile does.

hyperseven · 22 Feb 2018 at 16:51

Unused memory is wasted memory

Randomface74 · 22 Feb 2018 at 17:16

Glanza said:
Do modern browsers not look at how much ram your machine has and work off that? Similar to what Windows pagefile does.

As a software developer, I wouldn't do this, because it would create variants of my software which I would have to test, maintain, support - costly in the long run.

willhub said:
Does using an adblocker lower memory usage?

Never measured it, but it should - not loading all the ads 'n all. Usually you can infer this from general performance, adblock on = faster = probably uses less memory.

Rroff · 22 Feb 2018 at 17:20

jpaul said:
all the common libraries are shared, so duplication is minimal.

I've never dug into it but from incidental observation when debugging other processes, etc. there seems to be a fair amount of duplicated resources in some cases as much as a 100-200MB per process.

jpaul · 22 Feb 2018 at 18:22

Rroff said:
I've never dug into it but from incidental observation when debugging other processes, etc. there seems to be a fair amount of duplicated resources in some cases as much as a 100-200MB per process.

maybe I badly explained - below two chrome tabs, headline figures for space 1.1Gb/783MB, of which only 84MB/78MB are unique data structures/stack, the rest are shareable with other processes so do not use up additional memory

bonus question - what's up with BBC Iplayer App, was going to open a thread,but they obliged me to update to 2.3.5 and now it has five processes and memory use
up there with chrome (when will memory prices drop)