In June I downsized to a mini-ITX AMD Ryzen system from my old 32GB Intel Haswell full tower and I went with 16GB. Now loading Windows normally, it looks like 40% of my RAM used up right there, 50% if I open a single browser tab.
Fucking Electron apps. Gonna need 32GB again if I hope to virtualize anything for my professional development as well.
I won’t use them on a Mac. They are garbage. PC I don’t think I have any.
Slack, Etcher, Visual Studio Code and Atom are Electron-based and on PC. Some of the gaming platform clients (like GOG Galaxy 2.0?) and chat programs are Electron too I suspect are but never dug into it.
Over 1GB of RAM taken if you open a single browser tab?
What?
I mean, yeah, anything Chromium-based (like Electron) is RAM-hungry, but those numbers sound way too extreme to me.
I constantly run about two dozen or more Chrome tabs in two Chrome windows*, in addition to Atom, Slack, Discord (Discord is Electron, too, right?)… in addition to IDEs and whatnot and I don’t think I ever go above 5 or 6 GB.
Sure, that’s on Linux, but cross-platform programs like that should take about the same RAM on any platform.
*I do use The Great Suspender, though, not sure if that saves lots of RAM?
Edit: Looks like it does (I got it mainly for CPU): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-great-suspender/klbibkeccnjlkjkiokjodocebajanakg?hl=en
Yet another reason why Slack is the great satan.
Yeah, I already use The Great Suspender.
Desktop clients for WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal etc. are all Electron too. I’ll have to disable a bunch (more) startup items to see what has the most impact. Can’t afford 32GB RAM (even though it’s half the price of what my 16GB cost earlier this year) now until I land full-time employment again.
For dev work, certainly, you’ll want over 16GB.
On most days when I can browse at work I have to kill my QT3 tab at least once because it’s taking over a gig of memory. Which is an even bigger deal when my laptop only has 8.
Generally speaking memory usage isn’t a bad thing, you want as much crap to load in RAM as possible. Linux has worked that way since the beginning, and both mac and windows are catching up. It only impacts performance when your computer actively swaps.
That said, yes, electron apps are pigs and I find that offensive too, even though it’s never actually caused a problem.
well this is non-negotiable
50% RAM usage for a single browser tab doesn’t sound right. Something else is wrong.
I have 16GB and never have RAM issues, even with loads of tabs open, VMWare running, playing a (not cutting edge) game, etc.
I run out of RAM when raytracing, but that is not something everyone does.
Sadly RAM and solid state prices are due to spike this year. Or maybe it was just SSD.
Just SSD but I built my system with 4TB it SSD so I should be set.
Windows should be able to manage your load for you. You’ll only need to upgrade if you find performance is suffering and your jacked up at 100% memory usage. If you aren’t, I wouldn’t worry about it.
I’m using QuickCPU and Process Lasso Pro and Intelligent Standby List Cleaner as well. Probably don’t need to.
Get rid of all that snake oil bullshit.
Geesh, what browsers are you guys using? I’ve got 36 tabs open right now (Firefox) and it’s using 500ish MB of memory.
Intelligent Standby List Cleaner at least as up Update 6 fixed (sufficiently delayed?) a memory leak issue with Anno 1800 for me. It may have been resolved in the 6.1 update, but at the time it was very useful. I don’t think it was a placebo, because the game racked up a 32GB swap file prior to using it.
You guys live in such a different world! I have 4GB on my laptop and never notice any problems. Storage space and graphical limitations I notice but not ram.
I got it down to 25% usage on clean startup. 30% if I re-enable a couple of essential utilities like voidtools Everything to be running.
Unplugged the Razer Basilisk mouse and plugged back in a Logitech mouse to only run one vendor’s mouse software, disabling the Razer Synapse stuff. Firefox 72.x definitely seems easier on RAM usage than Chrome.