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Chrome taking over 2GB-3GB of RAM - eek!

RedTomato

RedTomato

macrumors 601
Original poster
Mar 4, 2005
4,161
444
.. London ..
I have a MacBook with 4GB, and Chrome takes so much RAM it brings my macbook to a juddering swapping halt.

I usually have about 20-30 tabs open which i need for reference, and even with AdBlock and Flashblock, they are taking nearly 3GB of RAM. Just a new blank tab takes over 30MB, a tab with this thread open takes 60MB, a tab open to Ars Technica takes over 220MB.

Quitting Chrome gives me about 2-3GB back. When I reload Chrome, I can watch in Activity Monitor as all 3GB of free memory vanishes within a few seconds.

Any help? I'm running a Macbook 2.2GHZ, 4GB ram, latest Chrome 15.
 
Safari with currently 16 tabs open,
  • ten tabs MR Forums,
  • one tab another forum,
  • two tabs some news site,
  • one tab Autodesk,
  • one tab Apple Trailers,
  • one tab YouTube,
consumes 415 to 455 MB of RAM.

The exact same sites consume about 115 MB of RAM in the latest version of Chrome on Mac OS X 10.6.8.
 
Thanks for your feedback. Now I know there's something up with my setup, and not a general issue with Chrome. I will investigate. Possibly the extensions.

BTW I cannot add more RAM. My Macbook 2.2GHZ from 2007 maxes out at 4GB.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Safari with currently 16 tabs open,
  • ten tabs MR Forums,
  • one tab another forum,
  • two tabs some news site,
  • one tab Autodesk,
  • one tab Apple Trailers,
  • one tab YouTube,
consumes 415 to 455 MB of RAM.

The exact same sites consume about 115 MB of RAM in the latest version of Chrome on Mac OS X 10.6.8.
Click to expand...

windowstomac said:
160mb here with 3 tabs.
Click to expand...

Yeah, because ramming home to the OP that you don't have the issue is gonna solve their problem. :rolleyes:
 
I asked a buddy of mine for any suggestions – he said to run "purge" when you start Chrome. Unfortunately he didn't say where to do that…
 
Mackilroy said:
I asked a buddy of mine for any suggestions – he said to run "purge" when you start Chrome. Unfortunately he didn't say where to do that…
Click to expand...

Terminal, though it requires XCode or the Developer Tools to be installed.

----------
roadbloc said:
Yeah, because ramming home to the OP that you don't have the issue is gonna solve their problem. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

It doesn't solve the problem, but it shows, that it might be just pertinent to his/her setup.
 
You all do realize that when you're counting the memory usage for Chrome, you must also include all of the "Google Chrome Renderer" and "Google Chrome Worker" processes, right?

Chrome (the app itself) only launches to manage all of the tabs, etc... then each tab has its own "app" that displays the content. Its easiest to see this if you display Activity Monitor by "All Processes, Hierarchically":
 

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Good God! Just viewing this one page here....

... is taking up about 185 megabytes of RAM in Chrome! But this is FAR less than most pages - for example, a typical news page for me takes up about 350 megabytes in Chrome.

OK, time for a face off - this MacRumors tab in Safari: just 54 megabytes
... In Firefox ... 175 megabytes

Result:

Safari is definitely the way to go! Honestly, the only reason Safari isn't my primary browser is that it doesn't save web pages in a non-proprietary format, and it doesn't display where a link is pointing before you click on it. (I also haven't found a way to have it always ask you where to save a downloaded file....)

I find Chome is awesomely fast on rendering, but it's dead slow on downloading - orders of magnitude slower than anyone else. And now it's handling of pdfs is a disaster.

Firefox has the best add ons, but is so incredibly slow...

- Jeff
 
jdiamond said:
I find Chome is awesomely fast on rendering, but it's dead slow on downloading - orders of magnitude slower than anyone else. And now it's handling of pdfs is a disaster.

Firefox has the best add ons, but is so incredibly slow...

- Jeff
Click to expand...
How bizarre. Safari and Chrome download at the same speed for me – and PDFs have always worked well. What makes it a disaster for you?

crazzyeddie said:
You all do realize that when you're counting the memory usage for Chrome, you must also include all of the "Google Chrome Renderer" and "Google Chrome Worker" processes, right?

Chrome (the app itself) only launches to manage all of the tabs, etc... then each tab has its own "app" that displays the content. Its easiest to see this if you display Activity Monitor by "All Processes, Hierarchically":
Click to expand...
Yep. And I don't have nearly as many render and worker processes as you do.
 
This is because chrome opens each tab as a separate process, this means if tab you are using crashe's you don't loose all your other open tabs. This ia a feature which makes Chrome so popular with avid tab users, over other browsers.:apple:
 
It turned out to be mainly Adblock Plus.

With all extensions on, and about 35 tabs (a different set than in my post above), it was taking over 1.5GB. Memory usage is as given in about:memory, and cross checked for sanity with Activity Monitor.

With all extensions off (Instapaper, Evernote, 1Password, and FlashBlock) except Adblock Plus, after restarting Chrome, it still took about 1.5GB.

With AdBlock off, plus all other extensions disabled, it went down to 800MB after restarting Chrome. That's about right for the tabs I had open.

I tested by enabling all extensions except Adblock, and restarting Chrome. 1.1GB. About right for all these extensions.

Grr Adblock. I will try it with the minimal set of filters and see if that helps. The real reason I use it is blocking Flash helps speed up browsing so much. 30-40 tabs, each with their own Flash ad process doesn't bear thinking about on a 4 year old Macbook.
 
Last edited:
RedTomato said:
It turned out to be mainly Adblock Plus.

With all extensions on, and about 35 tabs (a different set than in my post above), it was taking over 1.5GB. Memory usage is as given in about:memory, and cross checked for sanity with Activity Monitor.

With all extensions off (Instapaper, Evernote, 1Password, and FlashBlock) except Adblock Plus, after restarting Chrome, it still took about 1.5GB.

With AdBlock off, plus all other extensions disabled, it went down to 800MB after restarting Chrome. That's about right for the tabs I had open.

I tested by enabling all extensions except Adblock, and restarting Chrome. 1.1GB. About right for all these extensions.

Grr Adblock. I will try it with the minimal set of filters and see if that helps. The real reason I use it is blocking Flash helps speed up browsing so much. 30-40 tabs, each with their own Flash ad process doesn't bear thinking about on a 4 year old Macbook.
Click to expand...

If you want to Block Flash in Chrome, I suggest you use its integrated "Click to Play" function. You'll get FAR better performance improvements and you don't need to have an extension to do it.

There are instructions on this site explaining how to do it:

http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/2011/04/17/chrome-click-to-play/

FYI this will also work on Windows and Linux Chrome installations.
 
Daveoc64 said:
If you want to Block Flash in Chrome, I suggest you use its integrated "Click to Play" function. You'll get FAR better performance improvements and you don't need to have an extension to do it.

There are instructions on this site explaining how to do it:

http://www.solo-technology.com/blog/2011/04/17/chrome-click-to-play/

FYI this will also work on Windows and Linux Chrome installations.
Click to expand...

That's great! - many thanks for that. I've followed the instructions, and it seems to work fine.

Bonus - I found the plug-ins page, and disabling individual plugins seems to be working now. I was able to disable a bunch of plugins that I don't use any more.
 
Chrome has its own built-in task manager, allows you to see which tabs and which extensions are hogging all that RAM.

PS: youtube video eats a lot of ram!
 
simsaladimbamba said:
The exact same sites consume about 115 MB of RAM in the latest version of Chrome on Mac OS X 10.6.8.
Click to expand...
The latest version of Chrome still supports 10.6.8? I moved off of 10.6.8 on my 2010 Mac Pros two years ago because I thought none of the browsers still supported it, otherwise I would still be rocking Snow Leopard.
 
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