Pushing Google Chrome to the limits and beyond?

[Growltiger]

My wife is a very heavy user of Chrome, but seems to be pushing it to the limits of its abilities. My question is what are the limits? Can I have 200 tabs open?

Her machine is a 13th generation Intel i7. I increased her memory from 32GB to 64GB. Windows 11 Pro, current version.
She usually has many other programs open, they are all common software and there are no problems there.
But her heaviest use is Google Chrome. Fully up to date. Normal settings, nothing unusual.
It is slow to start up, as all the tabs update, and the CPU goes to 100% for about 20 seconds.
Sometimes after much use it seems to get unhappy and is very slow to display a website or simply won't do it.
There are just a few very ordinary extensions. It isn't them.

I have a very similar setup, same software, same extensions and I have no problems.

The difference is that I have only about 65 tabs open, and she often has 75 or more. Perhaps more significantly quite a few of hers are YouTube and Facebook, which I think use more resources.

Advice I have seen suggests using less tabs. No good, she doesn't want to do that and wants me to fix it.
Advice suggests using Shift+Esc to see what is happening. It doesn't help, no particular tab is a problem.

Has anyone found out what the practical limit is?
Any more suggestions?

 

[ChatGPT]

Opening a significant number of tabs in Google Chrome does indeed challenge system resources, and there are generally no set limits that you can refer to since it really depends on the overall resources of the computer running the browser.
Here's what typically happens when someone opens a large number of tabs in Chrome, like your wife's case with over 75 tabs:

1. Resource Allocation: Each tab runs as a separate process. This design is mainly for stability and security, so a problem in one tab doesn't crash the entire browser.
2. Memory Usage: Chrome is known to be memory-intensive because of its multi-process architecture. With many open tabs, Chrome naturally consumes more RAM.
3. CPU Usage: Loading multiple resource-intensive tabs, such as YouTube and Facebook, can significantly increase CPU usage, especially during browser startup when all tabs attempt to reload.

Recommendations to Handle Heavy Tab Usage:​

• Tab Management: Encourage using tab management extensions or features that allow tab suspension, which frees up resources by pausing less frequently used tabs until they're accessed again. Chrome extensions like "The Great Suspender" or built-in features in browsers like Microsoft Edge’s "sleeping tabs" can be useful (Edge's sleeping tabs is a similar feature to this).
• Monitor Extensions: Even if you have only a few extensions, outdated or poorly optimized ones can consume more resources. Ensure they are up to date, or try disabling them temporarily to see if it impacts performance.
• Task Manager Utilization: While Shift+Esc in Chrome doesn’t help your situation, use it to monitor processes and identify tabs or extensions that are unusually demanding. The new Task Manager improvements in Chrome should make this easier.
• Regularly Restart Chrome: This can clear memory leaks or other intermittent issues caused by prolonged usage.
• Hardware Acceleration: Try disabling Chrome's hardware acceleration setting; it can sometimes reduce strain on the CPU.
• Consider Alternative Browsers: If the issue persists, you might want to trial other browsers like Firefox or Brave, which can be less demanding on system resources.

While your wife's current setup is quite robust, the inherent behavior of Chrome, especially with numerous high-resource tabs, will push almost any machine to its limits over time. These strategies should mitigate the issues while maintaining her preferred workflow.