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Why does Google Chrome make my rMBA 15 run so much hotter than Safari?

S

Saviorrisen

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 8, 2012
25
0
Safari will keep my computer between 45-50c even with HD video on Youtube. Google Chrome will range from 50-65c.

I've also noticed when you resize the browser like I often do as a web designer to check the different break points, Chrome is laggy while Safari is smooth. They're both webkit browsers, so I can't quite put my finger on it. Is it because flash is integrated into Chrome?

Does anyone know why this is?
 
Saviorrisen said:
Safari will keep my computer between 45-50c even with HD video on Youtube. Google Chrome will range from 50-65c.

I've also noticed when you resize the browser like I often do as a web designer to check the different break points, Chrome is laggy while Safari is smooth. They're both webkit browsers, so I can't quite put my finger on it. Is it because flash is integrated into Chrome?

Does anyone know why this is?
Click to expand...

I don't know, but it's annoying because I hate Safari.
 
May be cause safari has app nap and chrome uses hell lot of resources so its wise to go for safari with no adobe flash but a flash content plugin in extensions which uses less power and resources extending battery life....
 
Chrome isn't very well optimizing OS X. Also if you have a dGPU Chrome will use it way more than it needs to.
 
Chrome uses software (CPU) decoding when playing back videos. Safari uses hardware (GPU) decoding.

Also it is much more optimized (it comes from Apple and runs on an Apple OS, what do you expect!!!) on OS X. Just run SunSpider and check the score for each browser. Also scrolling (on retina) is way faster on Safari than the latest Chroma.
 
Chrome is a drain on resources.

I use it a lot for it's integrated translation feature (I live in China but don't read the language so need it for online shopping etc) and for that it is great, but it is amazing how much it uses in terms of RAM and processing power. When using it on my Windows machine you can easily have more than 1 GB of RAM eaten up by it simply by having a couple of tabs open. I recall reading somewhere that in Chrome each tab is run like a separate program (which is good when one tab crashed the rest stays 'alive'), hence the high resource requirement. Therefore the machine runs hot and the battery gets drained. I wish any other browser had the translation so well integrated. Not a huge fan of Safari myself either.
 
Chrome is a resource hog, pure and simple. In a way asking why, is a bit immaterial because it is, what it is. Until google fixes it, and I don't think they will It will suck the life out of a MBP.
 
Saviorrisen said:
Safari will keep my computer between 45-50c even with HD video on Youtube. Google Chrome will range from 50-65c.

I've also noticed when you resize the browser like I often do as a web designer to check the different break points, Chrome is laggy while Safari is smooth. They're both webkit browsers, so I can't quite put my finger on it. Is it because flash is integrated into Chrome?

Does anyone know why this is?
Click to expand...

Chrome should die, Other than the fans, it takes more than triple the ram that safari does.
 
Intelligent said:
Chrome should die, Other than the fans, it takes more than triple the ram that safari does.
Click to expand...

As I web developer, I must tell you to never say Chrome should die. :p I has faults, but it's the best browser out there and it's slowly pulling the web out of the hole IE dug.
 
simon48 said:
As I web developer, I must tell you to never say Chrome should die. :p I has faults, but it's the best browser out there and it's slowly pulling the web out of the hole IE dug.
Click to expand...

Exactly. They are pushing web standards forward. I love Chrome and the extensions it offers. What I don't like about it though is how it drinks resources.
 
priitv8 said:
I know I may sound stupid, but I must ask this!
What's to love in Chrome?
Apart from tearing one's life naked in front of Google Inc?
Click to expand...

It's fast, secure, it has silent background updates, it's one of the most modern browsers out there (and Google is really good at keeping it that way), tons of great extensions, integration with your Google account and cross-platform just to name a few reasons.

And it helps make awesome pages like the NYT interactive olympics possible. Of course you can do this with most other modern browsers, but without Chrome I'm sure it would've taken a lot longer for them to feel comfortable putting this out.
 
I tried Chrome and hated it. Hard drive and CPU activity were way up. Looked like either Google or the NSA were looking at everything on my computer.

The second I removed it, all went quite again. No Google products for me.
 
simon48 said:
And it helps make awesome pages like the NYT interactive olympics possible. Of course you can do this with most other modern browsers, but without Chrome I'm sure it would've taken a lot longer for them to feel comfortable putting this out.
Click to expand...

Page works fine in Safari. Don't see how Chrome was involved at all besides sponsorship.
 
simon48 said:
As I web developer, I must tell you to never say Chrome should die. :p I has faults, but it's the best browser out there and it's slowly pulling the web out of the hole IE dug.
Click to expand...

As a web developer I disagree. In my opinion it is almost as bad as IE6, and it just got worse after they forked webkit.
 
goMac said:
Page works fine in Safari. Don't see how Chrome was involved at all besides sponsorship.
Click to expand...

I didn't know (and don't think) Chrome sponsored the page. That's why I said:

simon48 said:
Of course you can do this with most other modern browsers, but without Chrome I'm sure it would've taken a lot longer for them to feel comfortable putting this out.
Click to expand...

In the past few years Chrome has pushed the web forward significantly and due to being very modern and having a large marketshare I'm sure that helped the NYT feel comfortable about putting out a site like this which wouldn't work well on older browsers (like IE8). Without Chrome the marketshare of browsers which could support these types of pages would be much lower right now.

iamfredrik said:
As a web developer I disagree. In my opinion it is almost as bad as IE6, and it just got worse after they forked webkit.
Click to expand...

Oh, my God! Why? You're going to need to explain this one.

You're telling me you would rather have IE6 right now instead of Chrome!?
 
TonyYYZ said:
Exactly. They are pushing web standards forward. I love Chrome and the extensions it offers. What I don't like about it though is how it drinks resources.
Click to expand...

This. It does suck up resources, but I just never got used to Safari after I switched from Windows (which taught me to be wary of built-in browsers... Looking at you, IE...). I used Firefox until about three years ago. I also like not having to have any Adobe plugins downloaded between Chrome's built-in Flash and Preview. I also use gmail for both personal and school, and integration with Mail on OS X isn't great. Adblock is also awesome (yes it's on Safari now, but it wasn't until recently).

I do use Safari on my iPhone since you can't change the default anyway, and iOS plays even less nicely with Google than OS X. I like Apple hardware with Google services lol. Then my soul isn't completely sold to one company. I also hold onto MS Office.
 
ct2k7 said:
As a web developer, I'm scared of Chrome becoming the next IE6.
Click to expand...

Why? They show zero signs of doing so. IE6 sucked the day it came out, it had no easy upgrade path, tons of bugs and it was insecure. Chrome has silent background updates on by default (this is huge), it's secure, it's modern, it was modern the day it came out, it not riddled with bugs and it gets constantly updated (we're on v33 instead of IE6 v1).
 
simon48 said:
You're telling me you would rather have IE6 right now instead of Chrome!?
Click to expand...

It's a pain in the ass to get some things that work just fine in other browsers to work in chrome. With IE6 you could at least use browser hacks to get it to work, but with chrome there doesn't seem to be a simple way to target only chrome. If you fix it in chrome it breaks in other webkit browsers.
 
iamfredrik said:
It's a pain in the ass to get some things that work just fine in other browsers to work in chrome. With IE6 you could at least use browser hacks to get it to work, but with chrome there doesn't seem to be a simple way to target only chrome. If you fix it in chrome it breaks in other webkit browsers.
Click to expand...

That almost never happens. Got some examples? It's really simple to target Chrome, just use JS.
 
ryannel2003 said:
I've been using Chrome for 4 years and have loved it. Not a Safari fan.
Click to expand...

I too have had excellent results with Chrome.

My 15" retina MBP runs it without any problems. It's been my browser of choice for several years. It's very fast and the plethora of extensions and apps make it far more useful than Safari for my heavy usage.

I use Chrome across all my iOS and Android devices as well. It's been very reliable on all my Apple computers, iPads and various Smartphones.
 
simon48 said:
That almost never happens. Got some examples? It's really simple to target Chrome, just use JS.
Click to expand...

Well that just sucks having to use javascript.

Examples? Well here's one off the top of my head. If you have a few regions with background images and set their background-attachment to fixed, you'll be lucky if it displays any images.
 
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