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New to MBP -- Browser

saberahul

saberahul

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Nov 6, 2008
3,651
120
USA
I got my MBP 2 days ago and am absolutely loving it but am curious about Safaris performance. Under Activity Monitor, Safari is using about 500-700MB of RAM. I have re-started my laptop and have done the quite and re-open of Safari as well but it goes back to about 500MB or higher.
Is this normal? Would you suggest a better browser to use?

Thanks.
 
saberahul said:
I got my MBP 2 days ago and am absolutely loving it but am curious about Safaris performance. Under Activity Monitor, Safari is using about 500-700MB of RAM. I have re-started my laptop and have done the quite and re-open of Safari as well but it goes back to about 500MB or higher.
Is this normal? Would you suggest a better browser to use?.
Click to expand...
Yes, it's normal. Nothing to worry about.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
You have 4GB of RAM, why not use it? Or do you run other RAM intensive applications besides Safari, that need the RAM?
Anyway, how many tabs have you open? And my Safari is using 924MB of RAM right now, though I have closed twenty tabs or so before opening this post.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the replies. I have 4 tabs open but even with 4GB of RAM I am running out. AutoDesk Design is using about 200MB and AutoCAD itself uses around half a GB. Out of all the processes, Safari is using the most. With Safari open, I have about 6~7MB free. With Safari closed, I jump to around 1GB free at times or 500-600MB generally.
 
saberahul said:
Thanks for the replies. I have 4 tabs open but even with 4GB of RAM I am running out. AutoDesk Design is using about 200MB and AutoCAD itself uses around half a GB. Out of all the processes, Safari is using the most. With Safari open, I have about 6~7MB free. With Safari closed, I jump to around 1GB free at times or 500-600MB generally.
Click to expand...
Free memory isn't the whole story:
Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
 
simsaladimbamba said:
You have 4GB of RAM, why not use it? Or do you run other RAM intensive applications besides Safari, that need the RAM?
Anyway, how many tabs have you open? And my Safari is using 924MB of RAM right now, though I have closed twenty tabs or so before opening this post.

Click to expand...

I keep seeing on this forum, people with 20+ tabs open, I have NO idea how people have that many, i really dont
 
saberahul said:
Ya I saw that before from your helpful guide. My pageouts are at 60MB. So I guess I am fine. Right?
Which browser do you personally prefer? I want to use Chrome but cannot figure out if it supports keychain or not. Any idea?
Thanks a bunch.
Click to expand...
It's not just page outs.... both free and inactive RAM are available to running apps. I prefer Safari. I have it customized the way I want and I've never had performance issues with it.
JR1993 said:
I keep seeing on this forum, people with 20+ tabs open, I have NO idea how people have that many, i really dont
Click to expand...
Just one example of why some may do this is viewing online photo albums. Rather than scroll through a slide show, waiting for each photo to load, you can go through a thumbnail gallery using Command-click to open selected photos in new tabs, then scroll through the tabs to view them. I've had 70+ Safari tabs open at a time, with no performance problems.
 
JR1993 said:
I keep seeing on this forum, people with 20+ tabs open, I have NO idea how people have that many, i really dont
Click to expand...

There is a lot to read about, for instance news, when I am browsing BBC, I open every story that interests me in a new tab to read later, and I do the same with my MR subscriptions. That can add up. I once had four or five windows each with 10+ tabs. If the Mac can and I don't forget, why not use such feature.
 
I can get Safari to suck 2gigs easy, with several windows of dozens of tabs each. After the mac has been put to sleep/awake cycles a few times it starts to get sluggish. I have now found Firefox managed memory a little better (with flash turned off). It will be interesting to see how Lion improves Safari.
 
Safari is probably the most RAM consuming browser on Mac OS X. But RAM use doesn't really strike a hit on battery... fortunately, Safari doesn't force your MBP to use the dedicated nvidia graphic chip as all others do and you ultimately save some battery there.

It's normal, and most of the time you'll still have loads of RAM left.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
There is a lot to read about, for instance news, when I am browsing BBC, I open every story that interests me in a new tab to read later, and I do the same with my MR subscriptions. That can add up. I once had four or five windows each with 10+ tabs. If the Mac can and I don't forget, why not use such feature.
Click to expand...

Oh right ok. I usually just click through. And everything I usually view is on my favourites bar, so I dont really need them all at once. Maybe my ways will change when I get my mac in the summer...... :)
 
arcite said:
I can get Safari to suck 2gigs easy, with several windows of dozens of tabs each. After the mac has been put to sleep/awake cycles a few times it starts to get sluggish. I have now found Firefox managed memory a little better (with flash turned off). It will be interesting to see how Lion improves Safari.
Click to expand...

Yes, it will be interesting to see how Safari works in Lion. I hope its got the same snappy feeling that Google Chrome does.
 
So you find Chrome to be snappier than Safari currently? Also, Chrome also uses the whatever it is called chip that drains your battery that Safari doesn't?
 
saberahul said:
So you find Chrome to be snappier than Safari currently? Also, Chrome also uses the whatever it is called chip that drains your battery that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...

I recently purchased a 13" MBP myself, and at first I used Safari because it was preinstalled. After a day or two I got tired of Safari and its grayness and the lack of good extensions and installed Chrome. It's faster. And about battery life, they seem to use the same amount of battery when doing the same tasks. Chrome has flash preinstalled however.
 
Flash on Chrome uses more CPU than on safari, that's a fact, so I think I can safely say that it depletes more battery life.
>>> For me it's Safari+Click2Flash.
 
Chrome

Ya the issue of chrome enabling the discrete graphics right on startup made me stick with safari. Also Opera enables discrete graphics more appropriately.
 
saberahul said:
So you find Chrome to be snappier than Safari currently? Also, Chrome also uses the whatever it is called chip that drains your battery that Safari doesn't?
Click to expand...

I haven't heared about that, but yes I do think that it is snappier at the moment. Im excited to see what Safari for Lion brings. Don't get me wrong , Safari is still an awesome browser.
 
How does Firefox handle discreet graphics? I installed chrome after being a huge firefox fan on Windows (Might as well try new things) and while I like it it certainly has some quirks.
 
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