So Which Browser Consumes The Less Memory?

By Scorbing
in Web Browser Discussion & Support

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Veiva

Posted
Posted

Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

But what about other processes needing large amounts of RAM? Using an internet browser is nice when I'm doing some computationally expensive task that takes at least few minutes...

I remember trying to compile WebKit some time ago, at least 2 years ago (so some of this information may not be 100% accurate, I'm recalling it from memory). With "make -j 4," the various gcc/ld instances used 90%+ of available RAM (8 GB) at various stages. Couldn't compile with debug symbols because the final WebKit library would have been over 4 GB, which was an issue with embedded debug symbols in a PE executable. I could have theoretically run 8 parallel instances efficiently, because of hyperthreading, but couldn't in reality because I didn't have enough physical RAM. WebKit, on such a system, takes some hours to compile from nothing.

And then there's people who run many VMs, render 3D graphics, transcode/render video data, and countless other tasks that use a considerable portion of RAM (and, in these cases, for good reason). Running these tasks is generally non-interactive, and yet at the same time, can account for a large portion of resource utilization. I know when I am working on a large C++ codebase, upwards of 20% of the time can be spent simply compiling.

Why, in such a case, should I want a browser like Chrome? A browser is a piece of software that shouldn't demand much resources, when compared to these other tasks...

  • DevTech and adrynalyne
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Grand Master

adrynalyne

Posted
Posted

I feel I have to come to her defence here adrynalyne, I use IE11 as my main browser also, I have no issues with it (probably because I have no add ons or extensions attached to it)I have firefox as a backup, but I honestly don't remember the last time it was launched

My comment wasn't meant to be taken as gospel truth ;)

I'm just not a fan of it.

  • The Evil Overlord
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Grand Master

remixedcat

Posted
Posted

Gross.

I feel I have to come to her defence here adrynalyne, I use IE11 as my main browser also, I have no issues with it (probably because I have no add ons or extensions attached to it)I have firefox as a backup, but I honestly don't remember the last time it was launched

I use IE11 as a secondary and my primary is waterfox. I only use IE when WF doesn't load a site properly, or when the system I happen to be using at the time is too slow for WF/FF/CH

 

 

 

Grand Master

Scorbing

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)

I don't know guys but while I do get what some of you are saying about Chrome and its RAM usage, don't you think that a browser that uses almost 1GB of RAM is a little too much? That is ridiculous and unacceptable. Battlefield 4 is a very complicated graphical game and it uses 1.6 GB of RAM!!!!!!...but that's acceptable considering what the game is and does, but a browser? why is a browser needing so much RAM for? To do what? 

Grand Master

adrynalyne

Posted
Posted

I don't know guys but while I do get what some of you are saying about Chrome and its RAM usage, don't you think that a browser that uses almost 1GB of RAM is a little too much? That is ridiculous and unacceptable. Battlefield 4 is a game and it uses 1.6 GB of RAM!!!!!!, why is a browser needing so much RAM for? To do what? 

Caching and sometimes just wasting. I've been playing with some of the new Chrome ram changes and they are looking good. 2 tabs only had 100mb usage.

Grand Master

LUTZIFER

Posted
Posted

594807-arton2903.jpg?modified_at=1199024

 

I miss that Netscape. Still my favorite browser ever. 4x series. I started with Netscape 3 though. Netscape was awesome.

IE was absolutely useless back then, and I didn't even switch to IE till IE 6.5, which was finally at least usable.

AOL ######ed Netscape up way too much.

Grand Master

DevTech

Posted
Posted

I don't know guys but while I do get what some of you are saying about Chrome and its RAM usage, don't you think that a browser that uses almost 1GB of RAM is a little too much? That is ridiculous and unacceptable. Battlefield 4 is a very complicated graphical game and it uses 1.6 GB of RAM!!!!!!...but that's acceptable considering what the game is and does, but a browser? why is a browser needing so much RAM for? To do what? 

Exactly. It doesn't make sense. It's weird actually.

What is Google's objective?  Ultimately everything Google does has a single purpose. To put your eyeballs in front of an advertisement.

And the person most likely to view and respond to an ad is "Joe Average" so anyone that responds in a Neowin forum or even visits Neowin is NOT Joe Average.  Google is NOT making anything for us. If we find it useful, it's an accident.

A game has to run well on your computer. Photoshop has to run well on your computer. 3DS Max has to run well on your computer. But Joe Average is not running any of those things.

He just has a browser. So it's kind of a law of digital evolution that the single thing Joe Average uses will expand to fill up all available time and space so there will be some tiny extra chance Joe will see One More Ad.

 

Grand Master

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Posted
Posted (edited)

beating a dead horse here....learn to use search. Unused ram is pointless, we all know that, and agree to move along. I suggest you do the same.....although, I remember my hardcore netscape days as well. Just let them R.I.P. and go on with life, please......I don't need more headaches reading these threads over and over again, as a matter of fact, I vote this one closed/resolved just to get it off the island.

Grand Master

adrynalyne

Posted
Posted

beating a dead horse here....learn to use search. Unused ram is pointless, we all know that, and agree to move along. I suggest you do the same.....although, I remember my hardcore netscape days as well. Just let them R.I.P. and go on with life, please......I don't need more headaches reading these threads over and over again, as a matter of fact, I vote this one closed/resolved just to get it off the island.

...read the thread next time.

The whole unused ram chestnut is only relevant if the only app you are running is your browser and you want free ram If you have limited ram, the thread is very relevant especially if you multitask.

 

Grand Master

DevTech

Posted
Posted

...read the thread next time.

The whole unused ram chestnut is only relevant if the only app you are running is your browser and you want free ram If you have limited ram, the thread is very relevant especially if you multitask.

 

I think the issue of bad programming also deserves attention even if you have tons of RAM.

 

Grand Master

adrynalyne

Posted
Posted

I think the issue of bad programming also deserves attention even if you have tons of RAM.

 

Agreed, but at least with more ram, you can cope. I tolerate Chrome because their development tools rock.

Grand Master

DevTech

Posted
Posted

beating a dead horse here....learn to use search. Unused ram is pointless, we all know that, and agree to move along. I suggest you do the same.....although, I remember my hardcore netscape days as well. Just let them R.I.P. and go on with life, please......I don't need more headaches reading these threads over and over again, as a matter of fact, I vote this one closed/resolved just to get it off the island.

 

If you don't like reading about RAM then don't click on a title with the word RAM/Memory etc in it.

Closing a thread because you don't like the topic has got to be the ultimate in subjectivity!

And unused RAM is NOT pointless. It gives you ZERO latency to acquire a large block of RAM such as for example when I do a session restore on 1,000 browser tabs...

 

Grand Master

Noir Angel

Posted
Posted (edited)

Is that why Google has been working to optimize ram usage, because its not a problem? Just because you are not paying attention doesn't mean it's not a real issue.


It doesn't mean that it's a problem, they're just changing the way it handles certain tasks to make it use less. It's mostly the prerendering feature coupled with the ways that the browser restores tab sessions that cause it's high memory use, issues which are design based rather than an inherent problem. All they're doing is setting it up to unload unused tabs from memory, and stop restoring tabs in left to right order when restoring a browsing session. That's not so much an issue with the browser leaking memory, but one of design. I have 3 tabs currently open and my memory usage is at 37%. Even opening 30 odd tabs (all of which were rendered and loaded into memory) only caused my memory usage to jump to 61%. You're being overly dramatic.

I don't know guys but while I do get what some of you are saying about Chrome and its RAM usage, don't you think that a browser that uses almost 1GB of RAM is a little too much? That is ridiculous and unacceptable. Battlefield 4 is a very complicated graphical game and it uses 1.6 GB of RAM!!!!!!...but that's acceptable considering what the game is and does, but a browser? why is a browser needing so much RAM for? To do what? 


BF4 loads a lot of its assets into video ram. Not really a good argument.

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