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Content – The memory usage for a tab, ad, or extension is dependent on content, with things like pictures, video, and audio using more, and often substantially more memory, than text.The more tabs/ads open and extensions enabled, the more processes and the more memory required, as each process’s commit is separate, or private to the process. Number of tabs, ads, and extensions – Generally, each tab, ad, and extension is a separate process.When investigating Microsoft Edge’s memory usage, we typically want to use commit, as that is the metric under the browser’s control. The total commit size is determined by many factors, among the most prominent are the number of tabs, extensions and ads, web page content, screen resolution, and number of browser windows. Windows Task Manager – The “Memory” column in the Processes or Details tab shows the private working set for the process (Figure 3).This information can only be seen in the Windows Task Manager. Private working set is the amount of the private memory allocations made by the process that are currently in RAM and mapped into the process. This column can be added to the Details tab (Figure 3). Windows Task Manager – The “Commit size” column shows the commit size for a process.Browser Task Manager – The “Memory” column shows the commit size for a process (Figure 1).Commit can be seen in either the Browser Task Manager or the Windows Task Manager. When in RAM, the commit is either in the private working set, or on lists the OS uses to manage memory, like the modified, or standby list. The page file is a reserved portion of your hard drive that is used as an extension of RAM for data that hasn’t been used recently. These allocations may reside in random access memory (RAM), or in the page file on your hard drive.
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Each process’s commit is separate, or private to the process. The memory usage of a browser can be looked at in many ways and is dependent on several factors. Here, for Microsoft Edge, the memory metrics that we are most interested in are commit and private working set.Ĭommit is the total amount of private memory allocations made by a process.
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How Microsoft Edge thinks about memory usage However, for the times that your browser isn’t running as expected, we want to help you understand how Microsoft Edge is using the resources on your device and when Microsoft Edge’s resource usage is unusually high so you can get back to what you want to get done. To help ensure the browser doesn’t slow you down, we always keep performance in mind as we continue to improve Microsoft Edge. Performance is essential to your success, which makes it core to ours.
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