Opera Huge memory usage

I love Opera, I think it's a great browser but why does it have to use so much memory?

When I look in the windows task manager I can see it's using nearly 300MB of memory. Even when I have just one tab open. And before you ask it's not youtube or some other video site like iplayer. I thought Opera prided itself on it's low memory footprint but it seems to be making a huge footprint.

The other problem I have is that it never shuts down properly. When I close opera and then reopen it later I get a message saying opera is still open, when I check the task manager I can see opera.exe is still in the memory. I have to click on end process to close it before I can open it again.

What's going wrong, is it something to do with java?

Originally posted by induna:

When I look in the windows task manager I can see it's using nearly 300MB of memory. Even when I have just one tab open.

That's a useless comment without any context. When you can't even be bothered to mention how much RAM you have in total it's just a waste of time.

I thought Opera prided itself on it's low memory footprint but it seems to be making a huge footprint.

No, you are getting it wrong. Opera prides itself on running efficiently on any device. That means using more memory if more is available, in order to increase performance. You didn't get all that RAM just to save it, did you? You want it to be used to increase performance, right?

Okay then, perhaps you could explain why Opera uses 250-300MB of RAM when first launched, without a single web page ever being loaded? No plugins, no extensions, no voice, no sound, and no Opera mail. Did a clean install and it still does that. I'd call that bloat.

Originally I wouldn't care about a few hundred MB of RAM, except once Opera gets somewhere around 600MB it begins spiraling out of control and hogging processor overhead. Which means all it takes is ~15 tabs. Wost case it will use about 80% of one core without any flash or video pages open.

If I am running HPC applications in the background that require eight threads, having Opera hogging one thread is a huge problem because all seven threads are forced to slow down to the speed of the eighth thread that's fighting for CPU time with Opera. Every new release of Opera since 9.2x has just gotten progressively worse.

You are clearly not knowledgeable about memory usage, so you shouldn't make claims that are clearly completely bogus.

And still no context. Not even how much RAM there is in total. Yawn.

All it takes is someone to open task manager and watch the memory usage and CPU overhead columns for Opera.exe. If you're too ignorant to realize that fact from fiction then it's a good thing you're not part of the Opera team. Or maybe you're such a fanboy you refuse to see anything negative said about Opera.

Also, I didn't mention how much RAM I have because it's beside the point. I could have 4GB or 12GB of RAM, it wouldn't change the fact that this is an issue about Opera's processing overhead after it reaches around 600MB of active memory.

Originally posted by Kougar:

All it takes is someone to open task manager and watch the memory usage and CPU overhead columns for Opera.exe.

Isn't this a thread about memory usage?

Also, I didn't mention how much RAM I have because it's beside the point. I could have 4GB or 12GB of RAM, it wouldn't change the fact that this is an issue about Opera's processing overhead after it reaches around 600MB of active memory.

No, the amount of RAM is critically important to know if you claim to have memory problems. 600 MB is a mere 15% out of a total of 4 GB. That's a tiny amount and won't cause any problems whatsoever in most circumstances.

In other words, if you have 4 GB RAM, any CPU issues are unlikely to be related to memory usage.

And if you do want to report high CPU usage, doing it in a thread about memory usage is not allowed according to the rules. You are not supposed to change the subject in the middle of an existing thread.

Hi, I'm having major memory issue with Opera Version 11.60 - 1185.
Have 20 tabs open, can't see any videos loading or music playing in tabs. When I open Opera with these tabs it takes about 0,5 gigs. But when I do absolutely nothing with Opera the memory it uses just keeps going up. At the moment I have Opera in the background but this just keeps going on. Already up about 70 megs in 10 minutes. Earlier when I was away from the computer for maybe 2,5 hours and came back Opera process showed it used 3,8 gigs!
I have Windows home premium 64 bit with 8 GB ram.

Any Idea what might be causing this? Should I just try to uninstall/reinstall?

Maybe I could save the session if someone wants to check it out...

Originally posted by kuvittelija:

Maybe I could save the session if someone wants to check it out...

Maybe that would help.

Try minimising Opera when away from your computer.

Thanks for the quick reply Pesala! I've kept Opera minimized now from starting it, Windows shows it using 793500 kb now. So, growing steadily again.

If I would save the session I need to know what folder it saves into...also, where should i send/save the session file to download? I wonder if the session file would contain any personal info like passwords?

Ok, now 821000 kb...

Edit: picture! (original in my Opera photos folder now)


Edit 2: Found the reason for this! (I hope) I had this website open in one tab:
http://yacy.net/en/ -it seems to download and refresh an png image over and over again and never stop, is it a bug in that web pages code? It is not set to delete/release the ram when loading new image?

Well, happy now I found the cure!

Originally posted by Slamdex:

You are clearly not knowledgeable about memory usage, so you shouldn't make claims that are clearly completely bogus.

And still no context. Not even how much RAM there is in total. Yawn.

I will give you context.
What about deallocation of memory when you close tabs? Even if I clean the trashbin of closed tabs? Why Opera is still continuing using for example 840mb of ram after I closed all tabs and I left only an empty tab?

Originally posted by Slamdex:

That's a useless comment without any context. When you can't even be bothered to mention how much RAM you have in total it's just a waste of time.

and

Originally posted by Slamdex:

You are clearly not knowledgeable about memory usage, so you shouldn't make claims that are clearly completely bogus.

And still no context. Not even how much RAM there is in total. Yawn

@Slamdex: maybe you could stop being a douchebag and actually help the guy. He has a genuine problem, but he doesn't know how to state it. Typical computer user. Not everyone is as tech-intelligent as you. God, I hate Opera forum members. Such jerks.

One example of what I was saying. Watch it in hd.

@Caterpillar: Yes, "deallocation of memory" is a problem which pretty much every browser suffers from - chrome, firefox et al.

The only way out is to restart the browser when it becomes sluggish. There is no acceptable memory limits here. For example, when I was on 2GB system RAM, Opera became slow once it crossed 1GB and total RAM usage exceeded 80%. Now I have 4GB RAM and I can use Opera without any problem even with 2GB and more of memory consumption.

So the key is: get more RAM.

Edit: As regards why Opera doesn't release all memory upon closing tabs maybe has got to do with the Undo feature. Notice how quickly Opera recovers closed window when you reopen them? Perhaps Opera holds all that info in memory.

This is my first time to visit this forum. And, it was my understanding the forums are for asking and answering questions AND for helping those you can. I agree with some of the others...there are some nasty and condescending comments in here. Not all of us are the geniuses some of you act like you are and don't have a lot of computer skills. I DID have a question, but i won't be coming back to these forums to ask. Disgusting!

Originally posted by wings2c:

This is my first time to visit this forum.

It doesn't matter how clever you are, its vital to get the start right.

OK back to my original question. I have 1GB of PC2100 DDR RAM (266Mhz) running on Windows XP SP3, the processor is an AMD Athlon XP +2600 (2133Mhz) Thoroughbred-B. Opera tends to use 250/300MB of RAM and never closes properly. I think the latter problem has something to do with java as that is still running in memory and when I kill opera.exe the java.exe disappears too. Java is (Version 6 Update 31).

Originally posted by Kougar:

All it takes is someone to open task manager and watch the memory usage and CPU overhead columns for Opera.exe. If you're too ignorant to realize that fact from fiction then it's a good thing you're not part of the Opera team. Or maybe you're such a fanboy you refuse to see anything negative said about Opera.

Also, I didn't mention how much RAM I have because it's beside the point. I could have 4GB or 12GB of RAM, it wouldn't change the fact that this is an issue about Opera's processing overhead after it reaches around 600MB of active memory.

pardon me for saying - but people are coming to this opera.com forum in ORDER TO RECEIVE HELP!
BEING A TOTAL DOUCHEBAG IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE AND JUST SIMPLY RUDE AS FUCK!

Jacquii.