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Safari using 350(!!!) Megs of memory ... Is this right?

eVolcre

eVolcre

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 7, 2003
1,979
587
Subject header says it all. I just checked activity monitor and Safari is using 350 megs!!!

I don't even have anything crazy going on. Two windows open. No tabs in either. But it says I have '12 threads' open. Somethign isn't adding up here.

Do widgets count as safari threads?

eV
 
On my PB, Safari is using 130 MB of RAM and 500 MB of Virtual Memory with 9 threads. I only have 1 window open. Your system seems on par with mine. If is bothers you that much, close Safari and re-open it. Or better yet, restart the system.
 
grapes911 said:
On my PB, Safari is using 130 MB of RAM and 500 MB of Virtual Memory with 9 threads. I only have 1 window open. Your system seems on par with mine. If is bothers you that much, close Safari and re-open it. Or better yet, restart the system.
Click to expand...


It doesn't really bother me. This bad boy has 2 gigs of RAM. :) I was just surprised. No wonder my 12" G4 was slow. It had a max capacity of 640 Megs. If Safari was eating up half of that it didn't leave a whole lot for other processes.

eV
 
Safari has to store the whole contents of the web-sites your viewing in your RAM. That adds up real quick.
Right now, with one Safari window open, viewing MacRumors, Im using 70mb of RAM. :cool:
 
That's pretty common though I've never seen it go higher than that, but then again I don't check all the time.

When the numbers got that high on my G4 Safari would quit. I try to quit out of Safari every so often just to clear that memory. Firefox had that problem too, but I haven't used it in a while.
 
If you're hitting sites that make extensive use of embedded java applets, memory can/will swell pretty quick.
 
dmw007 said:
Well I was referring to R-A-M as in random access memory, but Safari may very well love you too! :D :)
Click to expand...

And I LOVE Safari.

Awwwwww ... we wuv each other. :p :p (yeah it's late and i'm slap happy)

eV
 
eVolcre said:
Subject header says it all. I just checked activity monitor and Safari is using 350 megs!!!

I don't even have anything crazy going on. Two windows open. No tabs in either. But it says I have '12 threads' open. Somethign isn't adding up here.

Do widgets count as safari threads?

eV
Click to expand...
You don't specify what kind of memory are those 350 megs.

If it's physical RAM, you do have a problem. If it's Virtual Memory, you don't. OS X is designed to give as much memory as possible to any open program. If that extra allocated memory is needed by the system, it will be reallocated so that the program under discussion uses less VM so that other programs benefit from system memory, too.

This has been a common question by PC users, who find programs use more memory on the Mac that in the PC.
 
if it helps ya any, i think azureus on my intel mac at last count had 50+ threads, took up about 200mb physical memory and 800mb vram. ooohhh boy :)
Ditto to Safari, except it doesn't have quite as many threads :)
 
eVolcre said:
And I LOVE Safari.

Awwwwww ... we wuv each other. :p :p (yeah it's late and i'm slap happy)

eV
Click to expand...

I hate to tell you this, but I think that I saw Safari cheating on you with Firefox! :eek: ;) :) Ok, I will settle down now....
 
dmw007 said:
I hate to tell you this, but I think that I saw Safari cheating on you with Firefox! :eek: ;) :) Ok, I will settle down now....
Click to expand...
:mad: :mad: :mad:

If you change the O in Firefox to U that might explain why Safari cheated. :eek:


LOL :D :D
 
janey said:
if it helps ya any, i think azureus on my intel mac at last count had 50+ threads, took up about 200mb physical memory and 800mb vram. ooohhh boy :)
Ditto to Safari, except it doesn't have quite as many threads :)
Click to expand...


How do you figure out what kind of memory its using?
 
In Activity Monitor, there'll be two columns for memory. One is labelled Real Memory and, as the name suggests, represents the proportion of the 2GB of RAM that a process/app is taking up.

The other is labelled Virtual Memory and is ultimately more complicated. Basically, OSX assigns a proportion of your hard drive to Virtual Memory pretty much to take the load off the actual RAM. Virtual RAM figures are always much higher than Real Memory figures. For Safari, 350MB of Virtual RAM isn't very out-of-the-ordinary. :)

This guide by Apple may be helpful too. :)
 
Is there a better alternative for a web browser in terms of ram usage? Running Safari on less than 1 gig is not much fun :(
 
Revisting this thread I just took a look at my Safari usage. I haven't closed it in over 24 hours.

Real Memory = 482.54 MB
Virtual Memory = 2.98 GB!!
Threads = 12

Insane. Probably going to crash soon, that's what happens when it eats too much.
 
Safari hogs all the RAM on my iBook too. I just quit and restart it every once in awhile and try not to leave it open if I'm not going to be using it.
 
it is pretty well known that Safari is a RAM hog and leaving it open will result in more and more memory being used by it. It gets really bad if the site has Flash on it.

It got so bad that I don't even bother with Safari anymore. Camino all the way. I can leave it open for days without performance suffering.
 
Foxglove9 said:
Revisting this thread I just took a look at my Safari usage. I haven't closed it in over 24 hours.

Real Memory = 482.54 MB
Virtual Memory = 2.98 GB!!
Threads = 12

Insane. Probably going to crash soon, that's what happens when it eats too much.
Click to expand...

Real Memory = 97.51 MB
Virtual Memory = 316.29 MB
Threads = 8

This is using a WebKit nightly from a few nights ago on a TiBook 667 (Gigabit Ethernet) with 512MB of RAM and the only other apps are Dashboard (no widgets) and iTunes w/o Smart Playlists. WebKit's been running for about 3 days straight now.

Maybe worth a try?
 
eVolcre said:
It doesn't really bother me. This bad boy has 2 gigs of RAM. :) I was just surprised. No wonder my 12" G4 was slow. It had a max capacity of 640 Megs. If Safari was eating up half of that it didn't leave a whole lot for other processes.

eV
Click to expand...
I really don't understand why some people do this. I have never opened activity monitor, or heat monitors for that matter since so many people here seem to do it, unless I actually have a problem.
 
It's fun to do. I have my heat monitor widget in my dashboard and I check it sometimes just out of curiousity. I've only had this computer about 2 weeks so give it a while and it'll get old quickly.

Activity monitor is good to check sometimes. I only open it when my mac is acting sluggish so I want to see what's up. In my G4 sometimes it would come to a crawl and beach ball every second so I'd check the Activity Monitor and see that 99% of my system was being used up even with no apps open, usually meant a restart to kick it back into place. Very handy for other reasons too.

Max on Macs said:
I really don't understand why some people do this. I have never opened activity monitor, or heat monitors for that matter since so many people here seem to do it, unless I actually have a problem.
Click to expand...
 
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