Chromium may soon use less memory and start up faster

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Chromium-based web browsers such as Google Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, or the new Microsoft Edge browser, may soon start up faster and use less memory.

One of the effects of Microsoft switching over to the Chromium development camp is that even more engineers work on Chromium.

Recent commits could soon improve the startup of the Chrome web browser and reduce memory usage as well.

Chrome starts up quickly on modern systems but if you tried to run it on an older machine, you may have noticed that startup is delayed. Chromium-based browsers load chrome.dll and chrome_child.dll on startup. It may take more than a second to load these files on slow laptops; a Windows 8.1 laptop with 2-core CPU and HDD read the dll files in 0.48 seconds and 1.13 seconds.


A pre-reading parameter change could drop the loading time significantly. The same laptop would load the two files in less than one second after the changes are made.
On a slow laptop (Windows 8.1, 2-cores, HDD), it takes ~0.48 seconds to pre-read chrome.dll and **~1.13** seconds to pre-read chrome_child.dll. These operations are on the critical path of the startup.
By (a) increasing the priority of the thread that pre-reads images and (b) pre-reading 2MB at a time instead of 1MB, it takes ~0.48 seconds to pre-read chrome.dll and **~0.51** seconds to pre-read chrome_child.dll.


As far as memory usage is concerned, Microsoft engineer Joe Laughlin suggests changes to the in-proc prefetcher that would be beneficial to the browser's CPU usage and memory usage.

Change the in-proc prefetcher to load the code into Image pages and not MapFile pages to save CPU and improve memory usage, and do nothing on OS builds that enable OS PreFetch of larger files. Note this require the PreFetchVirtualMemory API, so we'll still read the file as data/MapFile on Win7.


The commits need to be tested and accepted before they (may) land in Chromium. It seems likely that both will find their way into Chromium and thus also into all Chromium-based browsers at one point in time.

Google Chrome is notorious for its high memory usage and any improvement in that regard should be more than welcome by the community.

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Google Chrome is notorious for its high memory usage and any improvement in that regard should be more than welcome by the community.
Misled reports by media and casual users, in terms of RAM usage is not much different from the competition.

Only know Microsoft Edge to use extremely low RAM.
 

brambedkar59

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Welcome move, wish MS would have joined the Firefox gang and improved upon it.
Misled reports by media and casual users, in terms of RAM usage is not much different from the competition.

Only know Microsoft Edge to use extremely low RAM.
Chrome (or any other chromium browser) actually uses much less memory on my system than the Firefox (and it's derivatives). It's like something turned upside down.
 

DeepWeb

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As a ChromeOS user, Chrome uses all of my RAM. How do I make it stop? Also can we stop being scared of our sacred RAM usage? RAM is supposed to be used. I see people with 16 GB RAM complaining about Chrome. Do people not understand that having a program in your RAM makes it faster? I just don't get the fear of RAM. I have to try my hardest to use more than 50% of my RAM.
 

brambedkar59

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As a ChromeOS user, Chrome uses all of my RAM. How do I make it stop? Also can we stop being scared of our sacred RAM usage? RAM is supposed to be used. I see people with 16 GB RAM complaining about Chrome. Do people not understand that having a program in your RAM makes it faster? I just don't get the fear of RAM. I have to try my hardest to use more than 50% of my RAM.
Only exception for that is when it hangs your system or program crashes (mostly it slows the whole system and Firefox just becomes sluggish with only 2-3 tabs open). Which is exactly what Firefox is doing right now.
It's not even extension related.
 
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TairikuOkami

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Do people not understand that having a program in your RAM makes it faster?
Multitasking. Like playing a game and listening to youtube video as well as browsing (I do it a lot, eg guides) or watching a movie on the second monitor too. I have mine installed in ramdisk, so it is as fast as it can possibly be, the cold start takes 1-2 secs, on my laptop it takes 20-30 secs.
 

Threadripper

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If you think your browser is using too much RAM there's going to be one of two problems, or even both:

1. You have too many tabs open
2. You have too little RAM

Maybe we shouldn't blame the browsers? I'm sure if a browser used less RAM but dominated the CPU and GPU people would still whine about it. Some just can't be pleased.
 

brambedkar59

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If you think your browser is using too much RAM there's going to be one of two problems, or even both:

1. You have too many tabs open
2. You have too little RAM

Maybe we shouldn't blame the browsers? I'm sure if a browser used less RAM but dominated the CPU and GPU people would still whine about it. Some just can't be pleased.
I had just 2 tabs open on 8GB system here are the results.
213549

First of all I am not blaming Firefox , cause it's a combination of 3 things:
  • Win 10 v1903 (didn't had this issue on v1809, but that had a lot of issues on gaming so can't go back to it)​
  • Intel graphics (tried 4-5 different versions of drivers including the one Asus had on it's site from 2016 but currently on latest from Intel site. In short driver version had no effect on the end result)​
  • Firefox (Tried Firefox 67 Beta, even tried various Firefox clones like Ice dragon, waterfox still same issue. Also tried resetting Firefox with no effect).​
I am not giving up on Firefox just put in sleep mode until they figure it out.
And no one is whining, so chill.
 

Threadripper

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I had just 2 tabs open on 8GB system here are the results.
View attachment 213549
First of all I am not blaming Firefox , cause it's a combination of 3 things:
  • Windows 10 v1903 (didn't had this issue on v1809, but that had a lot of issues on gaming so can't go back to it)​
  • Intel graphics (tried 4-5 different versions of drivers including the one Asus had on it's site from 2016 but currently on latest from Intel site. In short driver version had no effect on the end result)​
  • Firefox (Tried Firefox 67 Beta, even tried various Firefox clones like Ice dragon, waterfox still same issue. Also tried resetting Firefox with no effect).​
I am not giving up on Firefox just put in sleep mode until they figure it out.
And no one is whining, so chill.
It was intended to be a general statement as some people do whine about this, not specifically anyone here and it definitely wasn't meant to be personal so I'd like to apologize if it came across that way.
 

Vasudev

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I had just 2 tabs open on 8GB system here are the results.
View attachment 213549
First of all I am not blaming Firefox , cause it's a combination of 3 things:
  • Windows 10 v1903 (didn't had this issue on v1809, but that had a lot of issues on gaming so can't go back to it)​
  • Intel graphics (tried 4-5 different versions of drivers including the one Asus had on it's site from 2016 but currently on latest from Intel site. In short driver version had no effect on the end result)​
  • Firefox (Tried Firefox 67 Beta, even tried various Firefox clones like Ice dragon, waterfox still same issue. Also tried resetting Firefox with no effect).​
I am not giving up on Firefox just put in sleep mode until they figure it out.
And no one is whining, so chill.
That's because of nvidia driver POS.
With 11 tabs:
213596


FF about:memory section:
213597


Revert Nvidia driver to 391.25 for Maxwell 2 GPUs(960/970/980) because newer drivers causes stutters and browser corruptions along with high RAM usage like Chromium on latest driver.
 
L

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That's because of nvidia driver POS.
With 11 tabs:
View attachment 213596

FF about:memory section:
View attachment 213597

Revert Nvidia driver to 391.25 for Maxwell 2 GPUs(960/970/980) because newer drivers causes stutters and browser corruptions along with high RAM usage like Chromium on latest driver.
You comparing media tabs with simple tabs.

Open 11 tabs with youtube videos playing in all, and the results will be much different.
 
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brambedkar59

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That's because of nvidia driver POS.
With 11 tabs:
View attachment 213596

FF about:memory section:
View attachment 213597

Revert Nvidia driver to 391.25 for Maxwell 2 GPUs(960/970/980) because newer drivers causes stutters and browser corruptions along with high RAM usage like Chromium on latest driver.
But I am using the Intel iGPU not the Nvidia dGPU (while running Firefox). What's POS?
 

Vasudev

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But I am using the Intel iGPU not the Nvidia dGPU (while running Firefox). What's POS?
POS: Piece of s***.
Its certainly noticeable if you play games in foreground and FF is in background, nvidia dGPU is used. For me, mouse cursor gets stuck briefly and tab crashes itself.
Let me try it out!
 
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