Memory leak in Google Chrome

As a developer it is very common for me to have 2-3 different IDE's open, 10-15 google chrome windows which can hold up to 200 open tabs (I know I get out of hand some times), Photoshop, couple twitter bots for promo, and a few other programs but my system still runs fast and smooth.

I have an i7 processor with 12gb ram.

Now with all my usual stuff running my Physical memory is usually running around 50-60% however over the course of the day or much less even, I will gradually grow to 98%

The highest Memory usage processes will be from Google Chrome, if I sort in the task manager by highest memory usage and end the 1 highest process which will be a google chrome one, my memory usage will jump back down to about 60%. Also by ending that 1 process, all my Chrome windows will remain open and in use, so it doesn't affect me at all by ending that process.

Based on this research I am assuming that that 1 runaway process is likely the Adobe Flash as I also can say that it gets up to the 98% much faster when I am using flash items like video or music player. But even without using any of them it will still climb up to that high number eventually.

Has anyone else experienced similar results?

JasonDavis

Posted 2012-04-09T13:18:44.287

Reputation: 4 852

Can you see which specific page or extension is causing that http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16102/monitor-and-control-memory-usage-in-google-chrome/ ?

– HackToHell – 2012-04-09T13:21:05.687

@HackToHell ok I can confirm that it is the Shockwave Flash hogging the memory – JasonDavis – 2012-04-09T14:06:07.510

This is not unusual for Flash, which is known for having high performance requirements. I've had over 300 tabs open in Chrome on an iMac with 8GB RAM and it's perfectly stable as long as Flash is disabled. To be fair, it may happen with any third-party plugin / extension, but my personal experience is that Flash is a CPU (and memory) hog. – None – 2012-04-09T16:48:36.590

Answers

I did have that problem for awhile some time ago. For me the problem was mostly with video and 90% of the streaming video on the net is from YouTube. I found that by using the HTML 5 player this is no longer a problem. It has a few other advantages as well, here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/html5/

krowe

Posted 2012-04-09T13:18:44.287

Reputation: 5 031

Thanks for that link, that is awesome, now if only Hulu would do the same – JasonDavis – 2012-07-10T08:24:36.417

I too experience constant memory growth (always, no matter which tabs I use) in Chromium on Linux. Eventually, Chromium entirely fills up both my memory and my swap to the point my computer becomes unresponsive. I have to press ctrl+shift+Q and wait a few minutes for Chromium to eventually exit before everything can return to normal.

No such problem in Firefox at the moment.

trusktr

Posted 2012-04-09T13:18:44.287

Reputation: 1 521

Adobe flash is buggy even if Google Chrome has internal version of flash.
Chrome's memory usage is not what it is in Windows task manager

I hope this answers your question.

Dzung Nguyen

Posted 2012-04-09T13:18:44.287

Reputation: 1 351