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I was wondering if anyone else had encountered this? I've been noticing of late that Opera 7.21 on my machine (WinXP, 512Mb RAM, PIII 996MHz) has been getting quite resource intensive, often taking up to 50Mb of RAM.
Anyone else seen this?
But that's not bad though... IE takes 14M in addition to everything that is already running as part of the system... which brings IE's total to about 120Mb
I upgraded to 7.23 and it seems to be fluctuating less, just sitting at about 50Mb.
I wouldn't worry about it unless it's causing a problem. RAM is there to be used, not horded.
IE takes 14M in addition to everything that is already running as part of the system... which brings IE's total to about 120Mb
Oh I see. So you load Opera without loading the operating system at all. Care to explain exactly how you did that?
Measuring with a utility called MemMAX:
- Opening a blank page with IE6 always gives me a different result (looking at free physical memory), but memory usage was always between 6 and 10 MB.
- Doing the same with Opera7 it was between 10 and 30 MB! (The adware version though).
- Mozilla around 15 MB.
Measuring memory usage in Windows seems to be a very tricky thing though. Literally anything you do, just opening a menu, clicking the start button, will have an influence on memory usage. Which is only normal I would think, unless you expect an operating system not to use any memory at all.
Oh I see. So you load Opera without loading the operating system at all. Care to explain exactly how you did that?
What I mean is -- when you open IE it seems to leave a lot smaller footprint than it actually does. Why is that? Because Windows only reports the non-system files.
So, when IE loads, it opens the browser (which takes up about 6-10Mb ... plus a few other required files, bringing it to a total of about 12-15Mb)... The browser then opens a ton of other files in the background. But, since these are run as system files Windows purposefully does not report that ;)
So...
Windows + IE ~=? + 85-120Mb
Windows + Opera ~=? + 30-50Mb
85-120Mb
First, that was not what MemMAX is reporting, though I guess you are going to say it isn't measuring accurately.
Second, I tested this on a machine with only 128 MB of ram. If those numbers were true, nothing would be able to run anymore.
Third, it seems to me you are adding memory usage of the operating system.
Also: be using windows for a while and available memory will have shrunken to almost zero. This does not mean the applications in use actually need that kind of memory (to be operational). Windows takes what it can get. Open up some other application and memory will be freed for that application. Least, that's how it all appears to me.
IE takes up about 15MB PER open window on my computer. Mozilla Firebird takes up 34MB, but that's including three windows open, one of which currently has five tabs open in it, all on separate windows. Opening up all of the same things in internet explorer takes about 105MB of memory.
So, if you have a lot of windows open, it saves a lot of memory to use a tabbed browser! (at least Firebird)
Test it out yourself! Tell me if I'm wrong :)
-Tobyn
One thing that nobody mentioned...IE takes up about 15MB PER open window on my computer. Mozilla Firebird takes up 34MB, but that's including three windows open, one of which currently has five tabs open in it, all on separate windows. Opening up all of the same things in internet explorer takes about 105MB of memory.
Wow! I hadn't noticed that. My not-very-controlled experiment: open up an IE window for the each of the exact 4 pages currently open in Firefox in different tabs, and open 4 identical tabs in Opera 7.23; report memory usages:
Firefox Total: 42020k
Opera Total: 37268k
IE Total: 65460k
[!]
Not as dramatic a case as yours, but IE still comes out looking like kind of a hog...
-B
Second, I tested this on a machine with only 128 MB of ram. If those numbers were true, nothing would be able to run anymore.
This isn't correct, all that happens is that Operating system starts using the page file a lot more, storing what should be in ram on the harddrive, that's why windows can actually run on with 32 mB ram, run very badly, but run.
That's true,
But I would have noticed the paging (by hard drive noise it creates) and I don't.
And as you said, everything would run at snails pace, and it don't.
And again, it's not what this utility reports as memory usage.
Didn't bother testing other stuff. Imo it's all pretty pointless. Having 10 toolbars installed will probably increase memory usage. The same I guess for other types of browser plugins, so it's going to be different for every person. Also, opening something for the second time (after closing it the first time) will use less memory as windows keeps certain stuff loaded in case you use it again shortly thereafter. Lot's of reasons imaginable why results will be different for different persons. Testing conditions are always different.
