Internet clients each take up 100+ MB RAM

[CivCube]

I'm using Windows 7 with a multi-core computer. This problem has been inching up over the past few months. Sometimes the connection would get really slow but I would simply restart the adaptor. This week has hit the stupid point. Any online client (Firefox, Chrome, Steam) will hit 100,000k in the Task Manager within seconds. Not sure what's going on...are wireless connections generally this hard on computers?

 

[Turner]

Firefox is using 470mb of Ram. I have five tabs open. Yahoo mail, Gmail, personal web page, this page, and a recipe for beer cheese spread.

It happens.

 

[CivCube]

So it's pretty normal, then? Each of these programs usually start at 60 MB and climb up to 100 MB within about five minutes.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Funny enough, earlier today I was working on my site. I had about 5 tabs open, editing pages (at least two of them very long) and the memory usage was less than 25 MB.

But right now, with one tab open, the memory usage is ~147 MB.

I don't understand it either. Maybe all those graphics on the screen take up memory.

 

[mdwh]

The clients you list are large complex programs, that require RAM for all sorts of things, not just the online connection. If you wanted to test if there was really some kind of problem there, download something like Pop Tray ( http://www.poptray.org/ ) - this lightweight email checker is using under 2MB at the moment (Windows 7 Starter).

I doubt the RAM usage is anything to do with whatever wireless slowness problems you are seeing.

 

[Boundless]

I am also having this problem. I thought I had a virus so got my windows re-installed. I am getting the same problems

 

[Zelig]

It's not really a problem, browsers are meant to take a pretty good chunk of memory.

In any case, if your memory isn't getting used, it's going to waste.

 

[Mise]

Well I have 4 GB of RAM and all I use are Chrome, Windows Media Player, x-chat and Steam. Chrome uses 330 MB of RAM, which is less than 1/10th of available memory. I don't really see the problem.

 

[Samez]

My Opera uses 250 M with 8 tabs open so I would guess it's pretty normal but as already mentioned with 4 gigs of ram it shouldn't be a big problem.

 

[Boundless]

Well my laptop with only 2GB Ram soon gets a bit sluggish if I am running iTunes and Firefox

 

[CivCube]

Installing a new driver for the wireless card did it. I am humbled.

 

[Mise]

@Boundless: Try Chrome. I find it faster on my 4 year old laptop.

 

[Zelig]

Well my laptop with only 2GB Ram soon gets a bit sluggish if I am running iTunes and Firefox

I dunno how people use Mac OS with under 4GB ram, I struggle to keep it under 4GB with just a couple office apps and a web browser open.

@Boundless: Try Chrome. I find it faster on my 4 year old laptop.

Speed and low memory usage aren't correlated unless you're actually out of memory.

 

[civ_king]

I dunno how people use Mac OS with under 4GB ram, I struggle to keep it under 4GB with just a couple office apps and a web browser open.



Speed and low memory usage aren't correlated unless you're actually out of memory.

Depends on the OS version and software you're using.

 

[Zelig]

Depends on the OS version and software you're using.

What part of my post are you responding to?

 

[Boundless]

My laptop is Vista btw...

 

[Souron]

Yeah that's about what I get. Chrome has one advantage, which is that it will actually return memory to the OS when you close a tab. This is the reason I use chrome, especially for things that I need to keep a window open for a long time.

 

[Maniacal]

I have 20+ tabs open in Opera and it is using almost 1 gigabyte of RAM. Chrome with Stargate SG1 playing on Netflix is at 175 MBs, 44MBs, 33MBs and 8MBs of RAM (because for some reason Chrome always needs 4 processes running), FireFox with 3 tabs is at 170MBs, and IE8 (have to use it to view the lessons for a class, even though they were clearly made in power point) uses 48MBs.

I do find Chrome to be the fastest, except it often will (for seemingly no reason) take up to a minute to startup/finish loading). Opera is only slower because I keep a lot of tabs in it.

 

[Mise]

Chrome uses separate processes for each tab. You can find better statistics in the browser itself (I forget where, tools or something).

 

[classical_hero]

You just need to go into tools and then you will see task manager and it will tell you the memory usage for Chrome.