Solved Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage

dalinar

Vivaldi RAM

usually I have several profiles running.. but I just did a reboot, and only have one running now.

It has 8 workspaces in that profile. 4/2/0/7/1/2/1/2 (# of tabs open in each workspace.. leftmost number is the top workspace, rightmost the bottom)

In Task Manager (Win11) it shows 4.7GB memory usage

Vivaldi (57)

I guess each "Vivaldi" children are not just tabs, because the profile doesn't have that many tabs across all of the workspaces.

So is it possible I have extensions consuming an incredible amount of memory? I don't understand why a single profile, without too many tabs open... and not that many workspaces - is using almost 5 GB of RAM.

It should be noted that my normal workload, where I have several profiles open, and much more tabs in those profiles, and many workspaces... also uses about 4GB of RAM... it never goes about 5GB that I have seen. But right now I have only one, not very demanding, profile open.

Pathduck

@dalinar Would be nice if you could mark this topic as Solved now if you're satisfied your question is answered. No point letting an "Unsolved" topic hanging around forever

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Hadden89

@dalinar everything is a process in chromium. So any single tab in any workspace/profile and any extension within a profile (so if you have the same extension in different active profiles is likely doubled in ram usage).
Plus, any profile has likely its own GPU process and its own UI profile process (ex. browser.html)
Is better to check ram usage within the profiles with Shift+ESC (internal task manager).
This way you should be able to isolate the extension which is consuming too much, if any.

dalinar

@Hadden89 ah with shift esc, the big culprit seems to be 700mb out of 2.7GB total usage "GPU Process", which all seem to be Google Maps tabs (4).. so I guess google maps using a lot of memory

RasheedHolland

I just wonder if there is anything that can be done about Vivaldi's ridiculously high RAM usage?

I have 8GB RAM in my laptop, and with 50+ tabs open Vivaldi will use 3 to 4GB RAM, and when I then close and restart it, all of the tabs are hibernated of course, but within a couple of minutes I'm back to square one, meaning that most of RAM is gone. So my question is, is this a Vivaldi problem or is it related to Chromium? I have never tested Chrome, Opera, Edge or Brave, so I wouldn't know.

dalinar

@RasheedHolland maybe it can help to also use one of the tab hibernating extensions, for more control over hibernation.. just remember to use one that have a native hibernation method. like the Auto Tab Discard extension

Pathduck

@RasheedHolland said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

ridiculously high RAM usage?

Define "ridiculously high".
What's your comparison?
What would a not "ridiculously" high RAM usage be for you?

with 50+ tabs open Vivaldi will use 3 to 4GB RAM,

Sounds about right. Or rather, sounds too low.
If one says a tab process uses 100MB - and that's generously low for some sites - if you have 50 tabs that equals 5GB just there.

And there's the GPU Process, which takes up a lot of RAM, for me usually between 300-500MB depending.
Then each extension takes up RAM.

So my question is, is this a Vivaldi problem or is it related to Chromium?

It's a modern browser problem.

I have never tested Chrome, Opera, Edge or Brave, so I wouldn't know

Why don't you do that, and compare, giving each browser the same for a fair comparison, same extensions, same tabs etc.

And test with Firefox. It uses a different way of allocating memory for tabs, but my guess is the end result will be the same.

Johnips

I know a programmer that got so many complaints about High RAM usage, that he just gave up and altered the code... He tried to explain the wanted effect of high RAM usage, but to no avail.

If you have available RAM, we do want it to be used. What is the use for most free RAM available? We should rather complain about low RAM usage in my opinion.

Pathduck

@Johnips Is his name Mel, by any chance?

https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html

The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer

A recent article devoted to the macho side of programming 
made the bald and unvarnished statement:

Real Programmers write in FORTRAN.

Maybe they do now,
in this decadent era of
Lite beer, hand calculators, and “user-friendly” software
but back in the Good Old Days,
when the term “software” sounded funny
and Real Computers were made out of drums and vacuum tubes,
Real Programmers wrote in machine code.
Not FORTRAN.  Not RATFOR.  Not, even, assembly language.
Machine Code.
Raw, unadorned, inscrutable hexadecimal numbers.
Directly.

Johnips

@Pathduck Done a little machine coding and assembler myself. I remember we used to debate "Move" 8 or 16 bits og "long words"... Those were the days. The guy I'm thinking of is "Merlin" he makes custom code for Asus routers. And even Asus takes his code onboard. He is a guy from the Commodore era, Amiga +++. Funny. I will always debate high rame usage as potenial something good, rather than bad. The high ram usage comes with usage, not bad code?..

Pathduck

@Johnips said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

The guy I'm thinking of is "Merlin" he makes custom code for Asus routers. And even Asus takes his code onboard. He is a guy from the Commodore era, Amiga +++

Yeah, I know about the Asuswrt project as I have an Asus router myself, but never taken the plunge installing it, as my (now aging router) just works fine for my needs.

Some of those guys who grew up with programming on the Commodore 64/Amiga were real machine code gurus, especially when they were involved in the demo-scene. They were forced to by the limitations of the machines and made stunning works of art, far surpassing anything made by professional coders at the time. And they still keep going, there are still demos made for C64 and Amiga to this day, and they look even better with all the stuff they've learned over the decades since

It makes sense that someone coming out of that scene would also be great working on embedded device code, as they are also very limited in terms of memory and processing.

Ah, if I only had gotten an interest in the programming instead of just playing games and watching the demos those guys made

Pathduck

@Johnips said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

Funny. I will always debate high rame usage as potenial something good, rather than bad. The high ram usage comes with usage, not bad code?..

Could be bad code, but rarely is. When people see a browser process taking up a lot of memory they start going on about "memory leaks" - but these are just not the same thing. Just because a process uses a lot of memory does not it's got a "leak".

What's important to remember about Vivaldi is that is uses Chromium and the Blink rendering engine. Vivaldi developers do not touch Blink code, or only extremely rarely. This is exactly the same engine that runs in Edge, Brave, Opera and countless other "Chromium clones".

And there are very good reasons modern browsers use a lot of memory.
Users expect speed above all else and developers do everything to deliver on that. So we have:

In-memory cache.
Back/Forward cache, often a dozen or so pages deep.
Uncompressed bitmaps of images in cache - a 50kB jpg can easily take up 1.5MB as a bitmap in memory.
Compiled Javascript runtime code in memory - some sites load gigantic JS frameworks into the browser, just to have access to a couple of useful functions - developer laziness.
All the parsing and rendering models (DOM) needed to make a webpage actually show as a webpage and not just a bunch of HTML tags.
All the code needed to call stuff in other utility processes (Network, Storage, Audio/Video drivers, GPU etc)
The native process code itself as each tab is a process, including the full stack of native OS libraries loaded into the process.

Here's a great article from a Mozilla dev about the problems of measuring memory usage across different browsers. TLDR; It's complicated but could give some insight into browser memory use even for non-techies:
https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2012/07/09/how-to-compare-the-memory-efficiency-of-web-browsers/

Pathduck

@dalinar Would be nice if you could mark this topic as Solved now if you're satisfied your question is answered. No point letting an "Unsolved" topic hanging around forever

To mark a topic as solved:

Edit the first post by clicking the menu icon: ⋮
Click the dropdown on the Submit button and select the option Ask As Question:
Submit the post again
Select the menu icon ⋮ of the post that resolves the question.
Select the option Mark This Post As The Correct Answer:

Thank you for making it easier for others to find a good solution

Johnips

@Pathduck thank you for this in-dept answer.

RasheedHolland

@Pathduck said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

Define "ridiculously high".
What's your comparison?
What would a not "ridiculously" high RAM usage be for you?

I meant in comparison with older browsers, that weren't multiprocess, think of Opera 12. Of course once I buy a new laptop with 16GB it won't be a problem, but it's no fun anymore with 8GB, because obviously I also run other apps besides Vivaldi. And Windows 10 is a complete joke, it uses way more RAM than Win 8.1, because of all of the services running in the background.

@Pathduck said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

Sounds about right. Or rather, sounds too low.
If one says a tab process uses 100MB - and that's generously low for some sites - if you have 50 tabs that equals 5GB just there.

It also depends on what type of website you visit, some or heavier than others. But lately it's starting to get on my nerves a bit that I constantly need to monitor RAM usage. And I rather not use tab hibernation extensions. The built-in feature of Vivaldi, doesn't seem to work correctly. And it's also a waste of power usage if you once again need to load websites, not good for laptops.

Of course, my browsing style also plays a role, I open websites and then load multiple articles of these websites in the background and then I stack them, for later reading. So I often end up with 70+ tabs. When RAM usage gets bad, especially if Vivaldi runs in memory for a couple of days, you have no choice but to close and restart it, but it seems that RAM usage will once again go up even more quickly, even if many of the tabstacks are still in hibernation.

@Pathduck said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

Why don't you do that, and compare, giving each browser the same for a fair comparison, same extensions, same tabs etc.

It's too much time to test this, and I wouldn't be surprised if other browsers also have this problem. But I wonder if there is anything that could be done in Vivaldi to improve this, or is it a Chromium problem? But then again, since Vivaldi runs on top, it should be able to optimize Chromium, no?

Pathduck

@RasheedHolland said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

I meant in comparison with older browsers, that weren't multiprocess, think of Opera 12.

That's ... not really all that relevant any more is it?

It's too much time to test this,

Then maybe you should not make claims about Vivaldi's "ridiculous" memory usage, as compared to other modern browsers.

But I wonder if there is anything that could be done in Vivaldi to improve this, or is it a Chromium problem?

You keep going in circles
It's an all modern browsers problem.

But then again, since Vivaldi runs on top, it should be able to optimize Chromium, no?

If you have not realized yet, Vivaldi is just a User Interface on top of Chromium. The UI is what makes Vivaldi great.

All the stuff like memory handling, I/O, networking, rendering, audio+video playback, is handled by Chromium.

My only suggestions for you are:

Stop hoarding tabs, use Bookmarks or Reading List instead
Adapt your browsing habits to your system's limitations
Restart your browser once a day, it is good for it
Reboot your system once a day, it is good for it

RasheedHolland

@Pathduck said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

@RasheedHolland said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

That's ... not really all that relevant any more is it? Then maybe you should not make claims about Vivaldi's "ridiculous" memory usage, as compared to other modern browsers.

Yes correct, perhaps I should do some testing. But like I said, I do think RAM usage of modern browsers in general (including Vivaldi) is ridiculous, compared to old skool browsers.

If you have not realized yet, Vivaldi is just a User Interface on top of Chromium. The UI is what makes Vivaldi great. All the stuff like memory handling, I/O, networking, rendering, audio+video playback, is handled by Chromium.

Yes I know, but from what I understood is that Chromium's performance can still be optimized, think of Thorium which claims to be a lot faster than other Chromium browsers.

Also, I sometimes feel like Vivaldi isn't handling RAM usage in a normal way. I just saw that from out of the blue, RAM usage went to 300MB (I don't know which website caused this), and then all of a sudden the Memory Compression process kicked in, and RAM usage went to 3.5GB, and none of the tabs were hibernated.

So how come that Vivaldi can all of a sudden use less RAM with the same amount of tabs open? Is this some kind of memory leak? Also, I was shocked to see how much RAM YouTube is using, if you open one tab, it might use 500MB, so crappy designed websites also play a role.

https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-memory-compression-guide/

My only suggestions for you are:

Stop hoarding tabs, use Bookmarks or Reading List instead

Adapt your browsing habits to your system's limitations

Restart your browser once a day, it is good for it

Reboot your system once a day, it is good for it

Like I said, restarting the browser once a day won't help. Also, it did gave me an idea, perhaps background tabs can start hibernated? The reading list is no option for me, I don't use the sidebar, and I'm not going to keep using the right-click context menu.

Pathduck

@RasheedHolland said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

But like I said, I do think RAM usage of modern browsers in general (including Vivaldi) is ridiculous, compared to old skool browsers.

Yes, and I'd agree, but it's a pointless discussion. There's no point going "I want browsers to behave like Opera was in 2004 and be optimized for low-spec systems" because that's never going to happen.

think of Thorium which claims to be a lot faster than other Chromium browsers.

"Claims"...

Also, I sometimes feel like Vivaldi isn't handling RAM usage in a normal way.

"Feel"...

So how come that Vivaldi can all of a sudden use less RAM with the same amount of tabs open?

Less RAM? Modern applications do regular garbage collection. So memory use will fluctuate. Which you would've understood if you'd read the Mozilla blog I posted earlier.

Also, I was shocked to see how much RAM YouTube is using, if you open one tab, it might use 500MB, so crappy designed websites also play a role.

Yes, YT is a very heavy web "app". And that's what most users want, they want features and fancy stuff, not HTML looking like it was from 2005.

Also, it did gave me an idea, perhaps background tabs can start hibernated?

Yes, it's called "Lazy Load Restored Tabs" and it's the default setting for startup.

dalinar

@RasheedHolland I feel like the #1 thing that can be implemented to reduce Vivaldi RAM usage is to have an option to automatically hibernate all workspaces that are not in use for more than a certain # of minutes (e.g. last access 10+ minutes ago, hibernate the workspace)

with Workspaces, they are great because you can leave them open with a bunch of tabs for days or weeks. And some do get hibernated eventually but there is no "whole workspace" hibernation AFAIK which seems like it would be a logical thing to do.

RasheedHolland

@Pathduck said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

Yes, and I'd agree, but it's a pointless discussion. There's no point going "I want browsers to behave like Opera was in 2004 and be optimized for low-spec systems" because that's never going to happen.

It's not a pointless discussion. Fact of the matter is that RAM usage of modern browsers is out of control, so something should be done about it in my opinion. And I wouldn't call 8GB RAM low specs.

"Feel"...

I already explained why it feels or looks like this, see beneath.

Less RAM? Modern applications do regular garbage collection. So memory use will fluctuate. Which you would've understood if you'd read the Mozilla blog I posted earlier.

That was quite an old post, and I know memory will fluctuate, but you would expect to see RAM being released as soon as you close tabs, but that's not what I'm seeing. So it feels/looks like Vivaldi is not always handling RAM in the correct way. But I will of course first need to compare it with other Chromium browsers.

Yes, YT is a very heavy web "app". And that's what most users want, they want features and fancy stuff, not HTML looking like it was from 2005.

Yes it's ridiculous, I even saw that one YouTube tab was using 1GB, I think RAM usage goes up when you keep scrolling down. This has to be one of the worst designed websites ever.

Yes, it's called "Lazy Load Restored Tabs" and it's the default setting for startup.

Yes, but what I meant is that what if middle-click would open the background tabs in a hibernated mode? That would solve my problem. I guess it's time to make a request. And it would also be cool if the built-in ''Memory Saver'' feature would actually work.

RasheedHolland

@dalinar said in Trying to understand Vivaldi RAM usage:

@RasheedHolland I feel like the #1 thing that can be implemented to reduce Vivaldi RAM usage is to have an option to automatically hibernate all workspaces that are not in use for more than a certain # of minutes (e.g. last access 10+ minutes ago, hibernate the workspace)

Well, there already seems to be a ''Memory Saver'' feature, but it doesn't seem to do anything, and it's based on the built-in Chromium feature, so it's not developed by Vivaldi. Also, I don't want to see my workspaces being hibernated, but it depends on how you're using the browser.

I do use the ''Hibernate Tab Stacks'' feature sometimes, problem is that it often doesn't seem to free up much RAM. The only thing that helps is the built-in Memory Compression feature in Windows, but because Vivaldi is so resource hungry, RAM usage will go up in no time.

https://woshub.com/memory-compression-process-high-usage-windows-10/