Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?

RasheedHolland · 7 Dec 2024, 17:12

Just when I thought Viv 6.8 was one of the best releases ever, I now see that from out of nowhere, Vivaldi will start to use 100% CPU time and it's the parent process that seems to be doing this, I haven't got a clue why. It doesn't seem to be triggered by any specific website.

I'm not using any new websites or anything, it's the same stuff that I use on Viv 6.1, and it also seems to be happening even without extensions. And it seems to happen after Vivaldi is active in memory for about 24 hours. Did anyone else notice this problem?

This is on Win 10 Home, Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM. It looks like it's some type of problem with resource management, although RAM usage doesn't always go up when these CPU spikes start.

The weird thing is that these CPU spikes may also stop from out of the blue, and it doesn't always result in freezing, although I just saw it did happen with Instagram which is a heavy website. I think in the meantime I will have to switch back to Viv 6.1, major bummer.

urzuse7en · 12 Jul 2024, 18:19

@RasheedHolland I don't see any spikes. Might let Vivaldi stay open for a day to see.

RasheedHolland · 13 Jul 2024, 09:27

@urzuse7en said in Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?:

@RasheedHolland I don't see any spikes. Might let Vivaldi stay open for a day to see.

I think it's best to keep it in memory for at least 2 days and you should of course also open at least 50 tabs (stacked or not).

I monitor CPU usage with a tool like TinyResMeter, which I put on top of my screen, so it's always visible. With the TopCPU column, you can see which process is using the most CPU time.

Vivaldi will often pop up with a usage of 12%, but when you look in Win Task Manager and Vivaldi's own Task Manager, you will see the parent process using 100%, I haven't got a clue what it's doing. Seems to be some type of bug.

https://pesoft.com/trm/us_trm.html

DoctorG · 13 Jul 2024, 09:33

My guess such could be caused by:

Interaction with Vivaldi UI (saw such f.ex. with mouse move over UI)
tabs being refreshed (in Window and other workspaces)
ad/tracker blocker or other extension
extensive graphics interaction
broken GPU acceleration
swapping to disc when low ressources
Vivaldi Mail, Calendar, Feeds

Catweazle · 13 Jul 2024, 09:44

I use a little extension (10,19 KB) which shows me CPU/Memory use in an icon in the Adress bar. Depending of my activity it shows me between 1 and 30% CPU, only if loading a heavy page it goes schortly up to 100%.

DoctorG · 13 Jul 2024, 10:15

@RasheedHolland In the past i had sometimes trouble with uBlockOrigin which could cause such nasty spikes and freezes.

RasheedHolland · 13 Jul 2024, 10:32

@DoctorG said in Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?:

My guess such could be caused by:

Interaction with Vivaldi UI (saw such f.ex. with mouse move over UI)

tabs being refreshed (in Window and other workspaces)

ad/tracker blocker or other extension

extensive graphics interaction

broken GPU acceleration

swapping to disc when low ressources

To clarify, I never saw this behavior with Viv 6.1, 6.4, 6.7, so it's some new bug. Nothing else changed on my machine, well except for certain extensions that may have updated themselves. But the thing is, even when I disable all extensions, I still see the CPU spikes. It doesn't matter which tab (or tabstack) is active. I have also disabled the Memory Saver, so it shouldn't play a role.

RasheedHolland · 13 Jul 2024, 10:34

@DoctorG said in Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?:

@RasheedHolland In the past i had sometimes trouble with uBlock Origin which could cause such nasty spikes and freezes.

I never had problems with uBlock Origin before, and it happens without any extensions active. Or now that I think of it, let's say the CPU spiking starts and then I immediately disable all extensions, then extensions can't play a role any longer, correct?

RasheedHolland · 13 Jul 2024, 10:39

@Catweazle said in Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?:

I use a little extension (10,19 KB) which shows me CPU/Memory use in an icon in the Adress bar. Depending of my activity it shows me between 1 and 30% CPU, only if loading a heavy page it goes schortly up to 100%.

OK cool, didn't know about this handy extension. And yes correct, normally you will only see CPU usage going up (to 100%) when websites are being loaded, this is normal. When websites are active in the background, CPU usage should not be high of course.

But what I see, is that when Vivaldi is active for about 24 hours, it will start acting weirdly. For no good reason CPU usage will go up to 100% for about 2 to 4 minutes (or longer), then it automatically stops, but it might start again at any given time. This is of course bad for battery power usage (on laptops) and fans will need to start spinning because the system heats up.

Catweazle · 13 Jul 2024, 10:56

@RasheedHolland, in Windows is normal if you use the sistem for more than 24 h without reboots, depending of the settings and handling of temporary files, which are accumulative. It's an OS issue, not one from Vivaldi.
Test it with the Windows hibernate and index services desactivated.

RasheedHolland · 13 Jul 2024, 11:17

@Catweazle said in Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?:

@RasheedHolland, in Windows is normal if you use the sistem for more than 24 h without reboots, depending of the settings and handling of temporary files, which are accumulative. It's an OS issue, not one from Vivaldi. Test it with the Windows hibernate and index services desactivated.

I think you're misunderstanding, there is nothing normal about this issue, and it isn't caused by Windows. The problem is within Vivaldi itself.

Like I said, it's a new issue that I have never seen before in Vivaldi. Just like the ''performance degradation'' problem was also new in Vivaldi 6.2, and wasn't fixed until 6.8, so the last version that worked without any noticable problems on my system was Viv 6.1, and 6.8 would be almost perfect since it's quite snappy, but then this problem popped up, so I'm quite frustrated.

Catweazle · 13 Jul 2024, 12:21

@RasheedHolland, well, anyway I can't reproduce this error, I never experimented performance flaws in Vivaldi, even not having the OS working for more than 24 h. As you can see in my signature, I don't have even an powerfull gaming PC, but only an cheap laptop with somewhat more than 6GB RAM free.
The reason can only be in the settings and/or extensions you use.

urzuse7en · 13 Jul 2024, 20:49

After more than a day I still see no spikes apart from the usual and my Vivaldi is still functional so I don't know what's the issue. Process Lasso do balances Vivaldi on my end though.

RasheedHolland · 14 Jul 2024, 10:24

@Catweazle said in Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?:

@RasheedHolland, well, anyway I can't reproduce this error, I never experimented performance flaws in Vivaldi, even not having the OS working for more than 24 h. As you can see in my signature, I don't have even an powerfull gaming PC, but only an cheap laptop with somewhat more than 6GB RAM free. The reason can only be in the settings and/or extensions you use.

It might als depend on how you use the browser, I open 50+ tabs, and leave Vivaldi in memory for at least 5 days before restarting. But the thing is, I don't see the problem with Viv 6.1 with the exact same extensions. And I mostly use the same websites (about 25 different ones) every day. So there is something wrong with Viv 6.8 on my system, that's for sure.

RasheedHolland · 14 Jul 2024, 10:28

@urzuse7en said in Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?:

After more than a day I still see no spikes apart from the usual and my Vivaldi is still functional so I don't know what's the issue. Process Lasso do balances Vivaldi on my end though.

OK thanks for checking. I assume you also opened at least 50 tabs and left them all open in the background? And how many extensions are you using? Although I doubt extensions play any role, since I use the exact same ones in Viv 6.1, which doesn't have these weird CPU spikes.

Also, I'm not a fan of Process Lasso, I remember many years ago, Opera 12 had this huge crash and I lost some data, I still believe Process Lasso was the cause, so be careful. Perhaps you can also test, without Process Lassso? Because it's possible that Process Lasso is suppressing the spikes.

RasheedHolland · 8 Dec 2024, 16:10

BTW, this is the bug report: VB-108672

Will keep you guys posted. If this CPU spiking bug is not fixed, I will have to keep using Vivaldi 6.1, which I'm happy to do, but it's kinda sad.

DoctorG · 12 Aug 2024, 16:15

Broken news feeds (Atom, RSS) can cause such overload in rare cases.

RasheedHolland · 13 Aug 2024, 12:06

@DoctorG said in Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?:

Broken news feeds (Atom, RSS) can cause such overload in rare cases.

What do you mean with this, is this something I can turn off in Vivaldi? I don't use RSS feeds.

DoctorG · 13 Aug 2024, 12:09

@RasheedHolland said in Weird CPU spikes in Vivaldi 6.8?:

I don't use RSS feeds.

If you do not use Vivaldi Mail and Vivaldi Feeds, that is not the cause of your PC's performance issues.

DoctorG · 13 Aug 2024, 12:15

@RasheedHolland Since older Vivaldi much more files are stored and changed in profile, i guess.
Would be interesting if data is swapped to disc, the Windows Defender kicks in to scan, at the time when CPU usage runs up.