Safari uses a lot of RAM after cache cleared

[Nucleophile]

I've been having this issue for a few months now, but figured I'd finally seek an answer on the boards...

Whenever I shut Safari down, clear the cache with CCleaner, and reopen Safari, there is an extreme jump in the amount of RAM that Safari consumes (from a typical 3-4 GB at most to a whopping 12 GB). I understand it going up a little if I'm reopening tabs, as the cache is meant to speed up access times, but a 3-4 fold jump in memory usage?

What may be going on here and is there anything I can do to avoid saving each tab as a bookmark and restarting Safari?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Why do you clear the cache in the first place?

 

[Nucleophile]

I don't do it often, but when I do it's because of wanting to see updated web content that isn't updating, deauthorizing bank sites, etc.

Why do you clear the cache in the first place?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

What Mac OS X and Safari version do you use then? I have never seen so much REAL RAM usage for Safari and I often have 20 to 30 tabs open in two or more windows in either Safari 5 or Safari 6.

 

[Nucleophile]

Oh sorry, versions might help! lol. I'm in OSX 10.8.3 and Safari 6.0.4. It's happened for a few months now though, so the general versions are probably most relevant.

Yeah, that's my major concern - why Safari is using so much RAM overall.

What Mac OS X and Safari version do you use then? I have never seen so much REAL RAM usage for Safari and I often have 20 to 30 tabs open in two or more windows in either Safari 5 or Safari 6.

 

[paulbennett95]

I've been having this issue for a few months now, but figured I'd finally seek an answer on the boards...

Whenever I shut Safari down, clear the cache with CCleaner, and reopen Safari, there is an extreme jump in the amount of RAM that Safari consumes (from a typical 3-4 GB at most to a whopping 12 GB). I understand it going up a little if I'm reopening tabs, as the cache is meant to speed up access times, but a 3-4 fold jump in memory usage?

What may be going on here and is there anything I can do to avoid saving each tab as a bookmark and restarting Safari?

3-4 GIGABYTES OF RAM IS NORMAL USAGE??!?!?!

My MacBook only has 2GB of RAM and it runs Safari fine, even with other things open, am I missing something here?

And it's probably using more RAM because it's storing the web-page content in RAM instead of referring to the cache stored on the hard-drive.
How do you even have 12GB+ of RAM on your computer and not be good enough with computers to know the answer already? What average user needs that much? Oh well, who am I to judge.

 

[Nucleophile]

Everything we know we learned at some point in our lives. I came to these forums to learn why this is happening, not to have my computer savvy ridiculed.

I run a lot of CPU-intensive programs as a scientist, so 16 GB of RAM is quite useful.

If it is doing as you suggest, how is this problem fixed?

Thanks!

3-4 GIGABYTES OF RAM IS NORMAL USAGE??!?!?!

My MacBook only has 2GB of RAM and it runs Safari fine, even with other things open, am I missing something here?

And it's probably using more RAM because it's storing the web-page content in RAM instead of referring to the cache stored on the hard-drive.
How do you even have 12GB+ of RAM on your computer and not be good enough with computers to know the answer already? What average user needs that much? Oh well, who am I to judge.

 

[phoenixsan]

Maybe not related.....

but it is my experience that Safari uses lots of RAM. Windows version, Mac version....maybe only the iOS version is more at ease with resources. Thanks for the procedure to treat the RAM....

 

[paulbennett95]

Everything we know we learned at some point in our lives. I came to these forums to learn why this is happening, not to have my computer savvy ridiculed.

I run a lot of CPU-intensive programs as a scientist, so 16 GB of RAM is quite useful.

If it is doing as you suggest, how is this problem fixed?

Thanks!

I wasn't insulting or ridiculing you, just very inquisitive on how and why Safari could use so much RAM

And I believe what I said is the answer, the pages are being stored in RAM because the cache it usually relies upon isn't there, so instead of using the hard drive to store the pages, it uses RAM (that is the purpose of RAM, to temporarily store information)
Perhaps don't delete the cache next time?