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Safari 3.0 still a memory hog?

j-a-x

j-a-x

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Apr 15, 2005
1,579
291
Houston, Texas
I've been running Safari 3.0 for a while now, and I really like how fast it is, and how the new search feature works (better than Firefox), but I just noticed that it uses a lot more memory than the old Safari. Right now, after 2 hours of using Safari, it's taking up 152 MB of real RAM and 400 MB of virtual memory. That is a lot compared to Camino 1.5, and I believe it's more than the old version of Safari ever used. I really want to switch to Safari but I wish Apple would address the memory issues.

I only have 1 gig of RAM here at home so 150 MB seems like too much for a web browser when I could use Camino which uses 40-60 MB max.

UPDATE: Since I started writing this, Safari is using 160 MB of real ram!
 
I don't have a specific count but I've just used it for web browsing. Since Safari doesn't automatically open links in tabs (like Camino) I have had two or three windows at a time but I close them after I finish reading them. Currently I have only one window and one tab. I usually open new links in tabs, read them, and then close those tabs. I do the same thing in Camino and usually keep my memory usage under 100 MB.
 
For me, it seems more under control than it was in the past.

I've had it open for two long periods this afternoon and tonight. Usually after around 3 hours, I'd have to relaunch it...but that hasn't happened yet today. I can't say the memory issue is gone, it's not...but Safari seems to be more considerate at least and I haven't run out of free memory like I used to.
 
maybe i am wrong, but i would focus more on cpu% usage than on ram usage, especially because this is really not a very high level of ram use.
 
Hmm.. maybe memory is being managed more effectively or something, maybe Safari will give up some of it's memory when other apps need it, but as it is I noticed safari using a lot more memory than previous version, at least for me.

Safari is back to about 150 MB.

TheAnswer said:
For me, it seems more under control than it was in the past.

I've had it open for two long periods this afternoon and tonight. Usually after around 3 hours, I'd have to relaunch it...but that hasn't happened yet today. I can't say the memory issue is gone, it's not...but Safari seems to be more considerate at least and I haven't run out of free memory like I used to.
Click to expand...
 
With Safari open and the window closed, Safari 3 takes up 114MB or RAM for me. I have MacBook C2D with 1GB of RAM so I don't notice it bogging down, but I still feel it is excessive.
 
In my experience, that's a lot. At least it's more than Camino and Firefox would ever be using to do the same amount of web browsing.

EDIT: Now using over 170 MB of RAM.

lancestraz said:
Wow!
That's really low. Compared to Safari 2, anyway.

I'm using 365 MB real and 905 MB virtual with three tabs open.
Click to expand...
 
So I tried doing some memory intensive tasks in other apps, and it seems like that caused Safari to back down a bit on memory usage. not much but it went from 180 MB to 140 MB after messing around with photoshop. I guess if Safari's memory usage is intelligent and as long as Safari likes to share with other apps, maybe the memory thing is a non issue. I guess I have to just wait and see!
 
j-a-x said:
It sure seems like it. but why is nobody else having a problem? Now, it's up to 180 MB.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's that people aren't having the problem, it's just for some of us it's such an improvement over Safari 2's memory issues.

As I posted above, Safari 2 would slowly leak memory over 2-4 hours until there was none of my 1.25GB left and my machine started crunching the hard disk for memory...and this sometimes would be with only Safari open. Now, Safari seems to at least leave me a quarter of my memory free after being open for 5-6 hours straight.
 
Well I'm glad to know it's an improvement. It was hard for me to tell since it was using a lot of memory and I hadn't used Safari 2 for about a year due to the previous memory issues. I thought safari 3 was just as bad, but if it's working great for you that's a good sign. I guess I'll keep playing with it and see how it goes.
 
I know it's a beta, that's why I want to discuss this potential bug so it can be reported to Apple before Leopard is released. It seems like they would catch it themselves but you never know. They didn't catch the finder window column resize cursor bug in Tiger (still!)
 
i want to take back in part what i said regarding it not being a memory hog. It is overall not to bad, but when more than 2-3 tabs are open it really starts eating up memory. I had 6 tabs open and activity monitor had it eating up ram and using 81% cpu.
 
It doesn't seem to matter to me how many tabs are open. Closing tabs does not free up memory, opening tabs does not take up more memory, it just takes a lot of memory in general...
 
This is the kind of thing that I enjoy not talking about using a Mac. Does Safari 3.0 work well? Is it fast? Then who cares what amount of RAM that it's taking up! Focusing on those numbers is akin to worrying about defragging, the number of spyware things your spyware program found, etc....
If your Mac is working well, and it's fast and good.. who cares about the numbers?
 
Safari seems to be pretty damn fast, but I know when my Mac starts relying too much on virtual memory the whole system slows down. At least it's running well for now. I've got my fingers crossed.
 
Safari 3 is still a memory hog. I have my normal 7 tabs open and Safari is using 326MB of RAM, and with FireFox this was usually around 150MB.
 
At one point I had like 15 tabs open. I then reduced them down to 1.

Real RAM: 550 MB
Virtual: 1.6 GB
 
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