CPU and memory consumption: clearly an Opera problem

By now it is clear that the high memory consumption and intermittent program freezes are a serious problem that affects many Opera users and, if not addressed properly, may still kill this wonderful browser. It is about time Opera provides an answers and/or a fix for this.

My situation: brand new i7 machine with 8 GB RAM, 64-bit Windows 7, same problems as the old machine. Sometimes Opera even prevents me from using other applications. While writing this, I have 10 tabs open, Opera is taking up 640 MB and consuming 10% of my CPU resources, with occasional peaks and 3-second freezes. All plugins are disabled and so are JavaScript and sounds. Typing is really sluggish.

I have been dealing with this for one week now and I have tried everything that I could think of or that was suggested to me, to no avail. I even disabled Windows Aero plus a few other services. Before someone asks: no, it's not a virus. The machine is lightning fast. Only Opera is slow - so much so that after being a loyal user for approximately a decade I am being forced to shift to Chrome to get things done.

Wake up, you guys at Opera! This may kill your browser! Just search around and you will see this is a widespread problem.

+1, problem since Opera 10.52 (just typing this message took a while since Opera froze while typing-in "opera" and "10."

+1 Will this be fixed by 11.60 final? It should be consider as critical bug because it render Opera unusable.

Originally posted by aleph99:

Wake up, you guys at Opera!

The same old nonsense we have seen in a hundred similar threads.

Just insults and vague claims of high CPU and Memory usage.

No wonder nobody can do anything about this. The only widespread problem in these forums is that many users are clueless when it comes to reporting problems. No one has any idea whether the cause of HeinrichP's or IWasHere's problems are in any way related to that reported by aleph99.

Originally posted by iWasHere:

It should be consider as critical bug

Just to second IWasHere above: Opera has become unusable. Since all my Web stuff - feeds, links, searches - is stored in Opera, I even bought a new & faster machine on the assumption that the problem could be caused by the hardware. By now, however, it's plain that the problem lies in Opera itself.

For now I''m having to improvise with Chrome. Other people I know are doing the same. If it takes too long, they may not come back. I think it's high time for Opera to acknowledge the problem officially and provide either a solution or an expected date for a solution.

As an afterthought, in reply to Pesala above: you say "The same old nonsense we have seen in a hundred similar threads." Granted, not all of us know exactly how to report a problem, but couldn't those "hundred threads" be taken at least as an indication that there's something going on?

After I wrote above, my computer began acting strange, suddenly, a "cannot handle request" messages began appearing when pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE in order to quit Opera, when trying to open notepad, I was met by the same strange kind of windows messages, and lastly, when I tried to close my computer, the overall theme of windows changed to a design I have never seen before, although I am using the less cpu-consuming grey theme in windows and everything by all means looks strange.

Eventually, Opera closed, and I could do all these sort of things again.


In another thread, I read a suggestion one tried in order to solve this, he went to the folder "C:\documents and settings\[usrnm]\application data\opera\opera (or opera next]\ sessions and deleted all files present there. (AFTER closing opera, of course.)

- This also helped in my case. I personally deleted something 10'000 files.

Why would you have 10,000 files in Opera's sessions folder? Do you save Opera's session quite often or what?

Originally posted by aleph99:

couldn't those "hundred threads" be taken at least as an indication that there's something going on?

If other users don't see the same problems, in the absence of any list of web sites being visited when this allegedly happens, there is nothing anyone can do to diagnose if a problem exists in Opera, in the user's settings, or is due to other applications they are running like antivirus, firewalls, extensions, user javascript, etc., etc. Chasing every such "report" is an exercise in futility, and using 640 Mbytes out of 8 Gigabytes is insignificant, but if I had that much RAM being used, it might start to slow down switching to other applications.

Here, with ten tabs, two with videos playing, memory use is 281 Mbytes, CPU use is currently 50% on my single core system.

Pesala, I agree that memory consumption is not such a big problem when one has 8 GB, as I do. However, CPU consumption and random freezes are. Just to provide an objective parameter here, I opened exactly the same set of pages (9 pages taken randomly, including this one) in Opera, Firefox and Chrome (I suppose you would agree that we should leave IE out of this). Here is what I got:

Opera with ALL plugins + Javascript + sounds DISABLED: 222.840 Kb and growing, 10-12% of CPU (even while miminized & doing nothing)
Firefox unchanged: 288.076 Kb, 0% of CPU
Chrome: 13 separate processes totalling approximately 200 Kb, 0% CPU

You might say 10-12% of CPU is nothing in an i7 machine, but the problem is EVERYTHING becomes sluggish. Even typing this has been a chore. When I shut Opera down, everything goes back to normal.

This is a brand new machine that I bought after facing the same Opera problems in the old one for approximately 2 months. I have just installed the OS plus a few applications. And yes, I've been facing the same problem with my laptop.

Still no information that we could use to test this.

Just to clarify further: I am not an Opera basher, I love this program and have been using it for 10+ years. I didn't even complain earlier because I thought the problem could be caused by an old Win7 installation and/or slow hardware. But now I am out of options and I think it can safely be said that the problem lies with Opera itself, given the large number of users reporting very similar problems that I fould while looking for a solution.

What worries me is precisely the dismissive attitude, as exemplified by Pesala when he says the problem "allegedly" happens and criticizes people for not reporting bugs right. That's what kills products and whole companies (like Rapidshare, which almost disappeared from the market because they refused to listen to their users while introducing a change - for the better! - in their subscription plans). I am not a technical person and I am not aware of the proper protocol to report bugs, but I am interested in having my Opera working right and I would gladly provide any information requested by an Opera representative, should they bother to ask.

Perhaps it's a Windows 7 thing; perhaps it is restricted to 64-bit versions. I really don't know and I don't have the time, the means or the technical savvy to set up a test environment. Anyway, I believe that's up to Opera to find out. But the problem most definitely exists.

Originally posted by Pesala:

in the absence of any list of web sites being visited when this allegedly happens, there is nothing anyone can do to diagnose if a problem exists in Opera