Chrome 45 brings better RAM management, faster performance

[Scorpus]

One of the most talked about issues regarding Google Chrome is its memory consumption, with the popular browser often taking more than its fair share of RAM just to display a few webpages. In the latest version of Chrome, Google is finally attempting to rectify this issue and make the browser more efficient to use across a wide range of devices.

In Chrome 45, Google has implemented a new garbage collection system that attempts to clean up unused memory in idle tabs. This new system reduces RAM usage by around 10% on average, but Google saw even greater reductions (up to 25%) in complex web apps such as Gmail.

Google also wants to make opening Chrome a much faster experience, and they're achieving this by prioritizing the restoration of your most recently viewed tabs after you launch the browser. Only users who have set their browser to "continue where you left off" will see these improvements, but it should make the process of returning to browsing much faster.

If your computer doesn't have enough memory available to restore all of your tabs, Chrome will now pause the restoration process for some of the least used tabs, allowing users to click-to-restore them when they actually want to access them at a later date.

This new version of Chrome also brings Google's improved Flash management system that pauses any flash content not critical to the webpage, such as Flash ads or unnecessary animations. Google will enable this setting by default for all users over the next few weeks, and the change should translate into up to 15% better battery life.

Chrome 45 is now available to download for desktop users, and those with automatic updates enabled should find themselves already running the updated web browser.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/62000-chrome-45-brings-better-ram-management-faster-performance.html

 

[VitalyT]

The issue here is much wider, and it roots more from scalability problems of the V8 while being the core engine for the NodeJS platform, popularity of which is ever growing.

Ironically, that part is on the other size of the problem, while relevant to the same memory management, V8 engine is lacking proper memory handling while trying to use larger memory. Just as the NodeJS process starts approaching 1GB of memory usage, the garbage collection is no longer efficient.

So far it has been impossible to profile V8 for larger memory usage. Hopefully something has been done in that area.

 

[Puiu]

They indeed made changes. They finally fixed the 64 bit version on windows 10.
But now we have another bug with one of their changes
"Enable Slimming Paint by default in Chromium and Blink"
This feature is buggy. For me it destroys the menu in the wordpress administrator.

 

[Jad Chaar]

Switched from Chrome to Safari (Chrome user since day 1) because of the RAM and battery issues. Switching back to Chrome today because it seems like they are actually trying to fix it! Great to see!

 

[DaveBG]

Too little too late. Switched to Firefox and did not look back.

 

[SuperVeloce]

Great news for tablets and such. Not a deciding factor on desktop/laptops as ram is cheap in this day and age.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

It's nice to see but it was never an issue for me, I seldom have more than 2 or 3 tabs open at one time.

 

[veLa]

Too bad Chrome 45 constantly crashes with Comodo.