What's up with browsers using so much ram now?

[deadken]

A long time ago, I used to recommend people using WinXP have at least 512mb of ram for simple use (web browsing, etc) and 1024mb if you were going to be doing a few things at once.

Recently I grabbed an older P4 2.66, WinXP, 512mb HP laptop to take with me while I was out of town. I couldn't believe how sluggish it was just browsing the web! I know it used be okay for basic use, but now I'm considering replacing it (which would be a shame since I rarely ever use it) or upgrading the ram. I found 2x512 sticks for about $15 shipped, but I'm wondering if 1GB of ram would even be enough for the latest browsers.

Any opinions?

 

[denis280]

everything got better.s (stronger faster)flash player.direct x and more.it is very hard to play video on youtube with a p4.but that's nothing try with a celeron.lol

 

[Carson Dyle]

Keep looking. You should be able to find 2GB of used laptop RAM for $15 or less. Look in the For Sale forum here. Just make sure you get the right type of modules.

 

[soccerballtux]

seriously +1

 

[Noya21]

Especially when you have ADD like me and Firefox has 8 windows open with hundreds of tabs...usually runs about a gig of memory.

 

[mikeymikec]

Dear OP, imagine what it would have been like if in ~2002 you tried to take a thirteen-year-old PC on the Internet.

Btw, I would double-check that the laptop can officially handle 2GB RAM, it just seems unlikely to me.

I have a P3 1.2GHz laptop with 768MB RAM (though these days it has been superseded by my phone), I use(d) Firefox on it with AdBlockPlus and the FlashBlock extension (before FF had that functionality added with the 'ask to activate' option. It made necessary browsing tolerable as long as one made allowances for its age.

 

[Deders]

I have to think with the amount of memory used, programmers must be just being lazy. I look at Firefox in the task manager and wonder why it's over 1GB for a few pages of HTML, especially after ads have been blocked.

It's harder to track Chrome as it has multiple processes but you are right, in this day and age 1GB is not enough to do anything with. 1.5 is just about doable but it may run into problems later down the line.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Half the web has advertising video now. It's annoying how much RAM I see Chrome using just to deliver ads.

 

[Cerb]

Half the web has advertising video now. It's annoying how much RAM I see Chrome using just to deliver ads.

So, don't. Use add-ons.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Flash is part of it, but sandboxing browsers added a lot of bloat. Unfortunately, it's almost necessary for security.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

Heh.

Such a long time ago that I considered 2GB of ram to be plenty...

 

[John Connor]

Flash is part of it, but sandboxing browsers added a lot of bloat. Unfortunately, it's almost necessary for security.

Using Sandboxie now. 335 MB

 

[tidy]

.

 

[mikeymikec]

I'm more concerned about VRAM usage. I was in battlelog the other day, and saw almost 1GB populated before I even launched the game. Part of that was Aero, but the rest was firefox.

Eh?

Does Battlelog have a 3D interface or something? I have a 1080p screen, Sunbird, Thunderbird, Firefox and a couple of minor apps open and according to Process Explorer, GPU dedicated memory usage is ~71MB (GPU 'system memory' is ~19MB).

 

[cytg111]

+1

I am using ~7-8G of browser memory right now, most of it chrome. I am guessing most of it is just cache and the fact that each tab is is running in its own process. I got a 32G total so there is to ways I can look at that, one being that it is a lot of ram for simple browsing and the other being that given the ram is there, if at all useful (ie. cache), it is a good thing it is being used.