I am running Windows 7 x64 with 12GB of RAM
I often have multiple windows and a ton of tabs open. I use the extension Session Buddy to restore all my windows and tabs once the memory gets too high.
So my 12gb of ram will get up to around 93% used because of Chrome, now I can close chrome down and restore the same amount of windows and tabs and it will only use about 25% of memory, it then over time increases back up to the 90% zone after several hours.
It seems that when I close tabs, instead of freeing that memory up, it doesn't so that is why the huge increase of memory usage as new tabs are opened and closed it just adds up, this sounds like a huge bug in chrome.
Just for an example I just re-booted my system, I only have 1 window with 4 tabs open and in the task manager, it shows 29 chrome.exe processes
I then killed all chrome processes and opened a chrome window with just 1 tab, it made 27 chrome.exe processes.
Is this an issue that others have?
More importantly, is there a fix?
UPDATE
I just read that each plugin and extension creates a chrome.exe process, I then couunted 24 extensions so that helps explain a portion of the large processes.
Still not sure about memory not being freed up though!
Best Answer
If you use Process Explorer or Process Hacker 2, how much Private Bytes are each Chrome.exe process using on average?
I monitor Chrome.exe's memory usage very closely on my 32 bit 4GB system, and what I find is that typically the only chrome.exe to bloat is the one containing the Flash plugin. When it reaches 700-900MB Private Bytes, I know it's time to close it via Chrome Task Manager and restart it.
You might also gleam some useful info by visiting about:memory in the Chrome address bar.