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What happens if you close Firefox and Chrome?
What happens if you close Firefox and Chrome?
From similar thread Firefox uses too much memory (RAM) - How to fix | Firefox Help
Chrome is launched when windows start. Even if it's closed it's running on the background, spying everything you do.
Why Is Chrome Using up So Much RAM? (And How to Fix It Right Now)
Do you have to have so many tabs open at once? Perhaps if you get in the habit of closing them you will save yourself some ram. Lots of it.
In addition to Megahertz07, hyperlink regarding Firefox, if you use Firefox Quantum you can tweak about:config to make FF give up RAM when minimized.
To do so:
Enter about:config in your url, confirm you'll be careful.
Copy and paste config.trim_on_minimize into the search bar.
You should now have a blank area.
Right-click in that area & choose> New > Boolean
Enter config.trim_on_minimize > click OK
Click True
Exit about:config
If the user is using 6GB and the graphics chip is using just under 2GB of RAM, then I would think that is good enough reason to upgrade to 12 or 16 GB of RAM.
townsbg - generally yes, but that doesn't seem to be the culprit here. the addon 'the great suspender' does seem to do it's job (like 'auto tab discard' for firefox, only much easier to use). it seems like the main culprit is files per dir. the performance of the laptop really isn't bad, generally. upgrading my ram isn't a big deal to be honest. but going by replies, more ram might not be the solution
I've found a program called XYplorer which can display all files in subdirectories, but one of the problems is I don't want to up/download the same filename twice, saving to the same directory is the only way I know to prevent overwriting the same file (because it give a "filename already exists" box). there's an addon for chrome called "have I downloaded this before", which...sometimes works.
I disagree. Once you run out of memory your computer starts using virtual memory which really means loading some of your running programs and files on your hard drive which has proven to be slower than memory even if you are using an SSD. I'm sure that if you started using less tabs, say only 3-4 at a time you'll gain at least 3-4 gb. On just that section of task manager on your screen shot firefox and chrome are taking up over 5 gb of memory. I'm sure that you will save most of that if you minimize tabs. Why don't you at least try it?
Try the about:config tweak for Firefox, when you minimize to taskbar FF gives up RAM.
I agree with townsbg's RAM description, which is in fact what occurs.
My Mobo has 8gb RAM installed, max permitted. Slot #1 has become inoperative reducing my RAM to 4gb. I cannot run VMWare right now. Programs will load & run, however, they crawl. Task manager shows constant cache (virtual memory) activity and free RAM is close to zero.
I've put in the firefox tweak, will see how it goes
At some point I'll...probably,,try closing some tabs down and see if that affects it. normal running use is 30+ tabs going though (the 'great suspender' means about 2/3 of them are active), apart from the occasional filesave dialogue, performance really isn't that bad (until something else comes up). I don't normally have things like Photoshop running, that might be an extra test