Google speeds up Chrome, but its RAM appetite stays about the same

[Cal Jeffrey]

Editor's take: In my experience, Chrome has been a decent browser. However, I have long complained about its abuse of my RAM supply. So I'm always optimistic when Google says it has patched it to work faster or more efficiently, but I'm usually left disappointed. So, I always take such news with a grain of salt.

Google recently announced that Chrome is now "faster than ever," achieving its highest score yet on the Speedometer 3.0 benchmark. The search giant claims that the browser's speed has improved by about 10 percent since August 2024.

Google estimates this could save users millions of hours annually waiting for web applications to load or respond. The gains come from a series of optimizations, including improved memory layouts, more efficient string processing with new hashing algorithms, and refinements to Chrome's Blink rendering engine that enhance CSS styling and font rendering.

While these improvements sound promising, they come with a long-standing criticism of Chrome: its reputation as a notorious memory hog.

Despite Google's efforts to reduce resource usage, many users still report high RAM consumption, especially when navigating multiple tabs or using extensions. A Reddit thread, known for unfiltered user feedback, highlights this frustration.

After Google's speed boost last year, one Redditor noted that a single Chrome tab was still consuming up to six gigabytes of RAM, leading to sluggish performance or system slowdowns. These anecdotal accounts suggest Chrome's speed gains don't always translate to better RAM efficiency.

In response, Google has introduced features like Memory Saver and Energy Saver to tame Chrome's appetite for system resources. Designed to cut RAM usage and extend battery life – especially on laptops – these tools mark steps in the right direction. However, TechRadar points out that they don't fully fix the problem.

Many users still find that Chrome strains devices with limited memory, fueling concerns about its ongoing impact on performance and battery drain.

The challenge for Google – and all modern browser developers, really – is striking the right balance between speed and efficiency. As web applications grow more complex, browsers must work harder to deliver quick responsiveness without overwhelming system resources.

While Chrome's latest update improves speed, it highlights the delicate task of balancing boosted performance with resource management, and that act doesn't always tip in the user's favor.

As a result, some users have started exploring other options. Users seeking a lighter browser often prefer alternatives such as Mozilla Firefox and Brave. Known for their lower memory footprints and more aggressive resource management, these browsers can significantly improve performance on devices with limited RAM.

Beyond resource efficiency, both Firefox and Brave emphasize privacy features and customization options that appeal to users seeking more control over their browsing experience. For many, these benefits make switching away from Chrome a practical choice.

In the end, Google's claims of a faster Chrome come with a caveat: speed is only part of the equation. Memory use remains a significant concern for many users. While Chrome's lead in market share is unlikely to falter anytime soon, the real challenge is delivering meaningful performance gains without compromising system efficiency.

Permalink to story:

Google speeds up Chrome, but its RAM appetite stays about the same

 

[WhiteLeaff]

Naver Whale and Edge are so much faster.

 

[scavengerspc]

I have one tab open in Edge right now and its usage is hovering around 800 MB.
Is Chrome really that much worse?

 

[Kirby1]

I stopped using chrome a long time ago now. Edge is better. Google is a monopoly and people need to move away from all of their products as much as possible.

 

[tmcclelland47]

I have one tab open in Edge right now and its usage is hovering around 800 MB.
Is Chrome really that much worse?

In my experience not really. Chrome and Edge usually tend to hover roughly the same level (usually a slight lead to Edge) and then Firefox almost always ends up doubling the usage of Chrome/Edge, with largely the same extension loadout. For me it actually has FEWER extensions because FF has built-in page screenshot support and doesn't autoplay YT videos in new tabs.

 

[Kirby1]

BTW, edge canary supports extensions on mobile. You have to enable developer options, but it's possible to add any extension like Ublock. I am running edge with ublock from mobile rn.

 

[Hassanabi]

Maybe Google should start fixing YouTube. Performance issues for loads of people with CPU fans ramping up for no apparent reason while watching videos or livestreams.

Livestreams sometimes having tabs crash in both Chrome/Firefox on completely different hardware/software. Happens on AMD/Intel/Apple CPU's and AMD/Intel/Nvidia GPU's on Windows/Linux/Apple.

This might also occur with very long videos, livestreams are typically more noticeable as you keep those open for longer period of times.

 

[MonicaPython2]

I still prefer Brave browser

 

[captaincranky]

@Cal Jeffrey Well Mr. Jeffrey, Firefox is just as bad at handling memory, if not worse. FF doesn't return memory to being available after a tab is closed. Anyway., I'm persevering with an old i3-530 rig with 8 GB of RAM for the web. I'll be browsing aimlessly and all of a sudden, the browser will lock up. I keep the task manager open all the time, and when this happens I just hit the "performance" tab. And whaddya know, there's, "zero bytes free". The "restart" function gets pretty much at least one call a day. So, after the reboot, and upon restarting FF, free memory is up to somewhere between 30 & 40%..! To postpone this inevitability, I relegate random searches to private windows. (Like when I have to verify that my spellchecker is dead wrong and that annoying red underline is unwarranted).

I'm sure you likely know all of what I'm about to post results in me having, "a remarkable grasp the obvious". But for perhaps a noob passing through, it might help.

A 32 bit OS borders on completely worthless. I could get maybe a half dozen tabs with FF before the fatal crash.

8 GB of RAM is the bare minimum for the modern web.
A separate video card is absolutely indispensable. It doesn't have to be heavy hitter. In fact, something like a GT-1030 2 GB is just enough but still plenty. As long as you separate the VRAM from the system RAM, you're gold. >>> This is likely what's causing the memory trials and travails with some laptops, their nasty IGPs. <<<

So many shopping sites have active content even when you're not on the tab. Take Newegg as an example, which has a separate script running for every function. I used to use a scrip blocking extension, "NoScript". Well, a page would load OK, but if you wanted to read reviews or specs, OKing another script for each function was required.

For better or worse, Opera (which is more or less Chrome anyway). is my favorite browser. With it, (At least in my experience), you can have a lot more tabs open than in FF, on the same machine. I only went back to FF because Opera has a built in ad blocker, and I got tired of having my ballz broke by YouTube about it. I've never succumbed to actual Chrome, and its ubiquitous siren's nagging.

For all the bad press they get the, (free) larger "erotic art" sites have a lot less garbage running on their pages than Newegg, or the other biggies. Of course I would never do this myself, but when I let "my friend" borrow my even older C2D E-7300 box, he claimed he could get well over 200 tabs open on a page without incident. In fact the tab markers were so close together, you needed reading glasses to tell them apart. (Gosh, I hope that old schoolyard tale about certain activities causing the need for glasses isn't true). Oh well, I'm 76 so I guess that I've had pretty decent run, all things considered..

Well, it's 8:00 AM here and I can feel my Saturday night coming to a close. Since I've sworn off church for about 65 years, I'll turn in and spare y'all any further ranting and biddest thee adieu.

Cheers.

Epilogue: FWIW, after an out of RAM reboot, I reopened FF with all the tabs and windows still open from the last session, but no surfing, I'm only reading 4.3 GB of RAM in use. Go figure.

 

[Cal Jeffrey]

I'm sure you likely know all of what I'm about to post results in me having, "a remarkable grasp the obvious". But for perhaps a noob passing through, it might help.

Thanks. It seems no browser is perfect, and mileage varies per user. And in that vein, I'll tell you my browser story in case it's good info for others.

I'm on Mac and primarily use Safari. I've always liked it from day one--that was back when you could still get a good 27-inch iMac for around $1,000. A 24-inch (which is all they sell now) with the same specs (aside from the M processor) goes for at least $1,700, but I digress.

Now, a lot of what I'm about to say is just theory based on observations because Apple has never acknowledged the issue AFAIK. Not long after the launch of the M1, I started having this issue where a process called kernal_task started hogging all my CPU cycles. At first, it was happening just occasionally, but it got progressively worse. Since there was virtually nothing on the internet about the problem, I basically used the same workaround as you--restarting my Mac (I was on a 2016 Intel MacBook by then). I was only having to restart maybe once per week, though, so it was only mildly annoying.

I finally figured out (through process of elimination) that it was somehow linked to Safari. So it went from restarting the OS to just restarting the browser when it happened. However, as time went on, the issue got progressively worse. Soon, I was restarting Safari a few times a week, then daily, then multiple times per day--and still no good information on the internet about what was going on, and still no official acknowledgment from Apple, even though I was not the only one experiencing the bug. It was extremely annoying because the longer I waited to restart Safari, the more kernel_task would ramp up its power-grab, even to the point that it became unresponsive, and other apps like Discord and my word processor would start lagging and eventually lock up too. It was very disruptive when I was in the middle of a workflow because I would sometimes lose progress on an edit or a story because the content management system's save button wouldn't register without a browser reset.

My working theory on the cause (since Apple won't come clean) is that 'round about the time that Apple transitioned to the M-series, it also stopped giving a sh-- about Intel Mac optimizations. It was so busy optimizing macOS for the M-series that older machines got the shaft. This idea is totally based on the timing of when the problem reared its head and how it progressively got worse as time passed from the M1 launch.

More recently, the problem has mostly subsided. I have not had to restart Safari for a few weeks now, seemingly indicating Apple quietly fixed the issue. I still keep the activity monitor open to monitor things. Kenel_task does still seem to take the lead most of the time in CPU usage, but so far it has stopped spiralling out of control like it was (fingers crossed).

 

[magoid]

I'm under the impression that a lot of those memory issues are related to browser extensions people use. I while back I had those problems in FF and a extension was the culprit. But yeah, FF is not better than Chrome nowadays in terms of memory consumption.

Also, I never had those Chrome memory problems, probably because I run it very lean, with one or two extensions only.

But the operating system and some apps can also have memory overflow problems. For example, I had one in a clipboard manager that simply reached gigabytes of memory after a couple hours.