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Author Topic: Edge Browser Question - Memory Hungry ( Caching ) - Is there a disable option  (Read 17765 times)

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DaveLembke

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Thinking maybe there isn't a solution for this, but running this by everyone here to see if maybe there is a solution for this. So I have been playing around with Windows 10 as a gaming system and for the most part everything runs good, however some online flash games that I play I notice start to lag out after playing for about 10 minutes. I tracked this down to Edge starts to grab up gigs of RAM to where only 268MB is free in which a memory compression kicks in and starts to make for lots of hard drive activity. If I exit out of Edge then 3 GB of RAM is freed up. Launching Edge again everything is good and only 1.7GB of 4GB of RAM is in use. Logon to flash based online game and now 2GB of 4GB is in use. I sized the browser window down so I would watch the RAM use and as I was playing the game slowly megabytes of RAM were getting eaten up. Eventually after about 10 minutes or sooner if my browsing activity has me doing more than just the flash game it drops to less than 1GB free and when available RAM drops below 500MB that is when the game starts to lag out and memory compression kicks in around 300MB free. When this lag is happening, the CPU is not very busy but the RAM is full and the game starts to lag out and hard drive activity goes wild with the memory compression.

For the last couple days I have been just exiting the game and relaunching every 10 minutes or so to shed the wasted memory issue which appears to be some sort of caching that this game causes to eat up my RAM. But thinking maybe even though a google search turned up dry on this, maybe there is a way to shut off the caching feature which I believe is causing this issue with Edge. I have a fast internet connection so not sure why it needs to store data locally for the browser and from reading online it appears that its doing this to make performance better, but they are making it worse because I don't need this caching going on. Whenever a frequently needed piece of information is needed I have broadband internet and so just grab a new copy vs a cached copy of what ever object it is.

The game is Forge of Empires https://us.forgeofempires.com/   which I play with some guys at work who introduced me to it. I have tried Firefox for this game and Firefox lags right at the get go, so I went to Internet Explorer for Windows 7 and no problems at all with Internet Explorer on Windows 7. Then I am trying to force myself to get use to Windows 10 and came across this annoyance of Edge in eating up all available RAM with this game and hoping for a solution without swapping browsers. I haven't tried Chrome yet to see if its the best choice at this point, but if I can avoid using Chrome, I'd like to be able to shut off this caching or purge the cache somehow to keep it from building in which if at all possible I just have a batch running or VBScript running that dumps the Edge Cache every 60 seconds etc if that's even doable I am not sure but just hypothetically speaking of a work around if Edge itself doesn't have a toggle option to shutting off its Caching, maybe the cache itself can be targeted on a timer interval to purge it if its unprotected of purging etc.  ::)

Additionally I have seen some people with same issue with Edge being memory hungry and one guy upgraded to 8GB RAM and he just stated that Edge is memory hungry with its caching and more RAM just reduces how often memory compression has to kick in which to me just sounds stupid. How much information has to really be cached. If I had 32GB RAM, could Edge decide to Cache 30.5GB of 99% useless info that can otherwise just be redownloaded on the fly.  ::)

Here is where I left off, and that doesn't work as a solution:  :-\  https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/apps_windows_10-msedge/windows-10-edge-using-too-much-ram/fd8dabb2-e218-4b7b-b4ab-dd827be3e7c4?auth=1

Additionally to add to this.... I installed Windows 10 Home 64-bit on another computer also with 4GB RAM and a Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz and clean install of Windows 10 Home 64-bit running this game right at the get go no software installed and Windows cleanly installed from Microsoft supplied ISO image, Edge starts to eat up the RAM and memory compression kicks in the same. So I know its not just this build. Its something with Edge being memory hungry which I believe to be excessive caching of web content and the flash game Forge of Empires maybe has lots of elements that are cacheable...  ::)

The computer by the way runs everything else awesomely well. I downloaded over 300GB of games from my steam library and am testing them out on my new build, and the APU surprisingly is running really well. Games I thought it would choke on its playing at quick FPS like Blades of Time. It will be interesting when I get to testing Witcher 3 if I will cripple the APU. How hard can I push it before I bring that mobile APU the AMD A8-5545m 1.7Ghz with 2.7Ghz Turbo APU to its knees. ;D Witcher 3 I know if going to be a long shot for it to run but it will be interesting to see just how bad or maybe this APU will surprise me and run it at 30 fps. Here is benchmark for the APU https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A8-5545M+APU  the GPU portion of it is around the equivalent of a Geforce GT 730 which isn't high end by any means but can support some gaming with its AMD Radeon HD 8510G.

soybean



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I suspect this issue with Edge has no solution unless, of course, Microsoft decides to get  serious about the issue and actually fix it. After scanning through the comments at the link you posted, it reminds me of my experience with Edge many months ago.  Why Microsoft does not fix this is incomprehensible.  When they introduced Edge, they touted it as a great new browser, and they did/do have some neat features in it, in my opinion.  But, since I tend to have a lot of browser tabs open at the same time, I quickly realized Edge was hogging memory.  That's when I decided to ignore Edge and use a different browser. 

patio

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Chrome does the same thing with multi tabs open...

Frustrating.
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soybean



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The attached image of Task Manager shows the system I'm using now with 28 tabs open in Firefox.  The computer has 8GB of RAM, just the the record.

[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]

BC_Programmer


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You might try disabling Javascript. Depending on what is on the page, it may be that advertisements or other background logic are running. Edge's Javascript Interpreter is practically an open sieve when it comes to memory as a few Javascript HTMLInputElement wrappers are cleaned up within the javascript engine correctly but the native component is not free'd and is orphaned and is thus a memory leak.

You might also try disabling Page Prediction.

Of course, it may also be a problem with Adobe Flash. Some browsers are affected worse than others. Or perhaps an issue with Edge altogether, as people have been reporting memory usage problems for quite some time; Microsoft's response on their forums has gone from dismal to outright ridiculous. One thread I found had the tagged Microsoft Support user advising that the user needs to replace their Memory modules.
I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

DaveLembke

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Thanks Patio for sharing that Chrome has same issue.

Thanks soybean for your input in this too. Its unfortunate that Firefox doesn't play well with this flash game for me. I had been using Firefox for years and then all of a sudden either the latest Firefox introduced game lag when you click on an object and the animation is lagged and the response is sometimes 2 or 3 seconds before you hear the audio trigger to an event you clicked on which use to be instantaneous etc, or Adobe Flash updated and made this change, or the game itself server side they made a change that just runs like mud on Firefox for me on systems I have tested the game on to see if it was a system issue or browser issue etc. On systems running Windows 7 Internet Explorer runs the game with no problems. And with Windows 10 the game runs fast as well, until all RAM is consumed and then becomes just about unresponsive and same event trigger lag as Firefox has etc.

Thanks BC for suggestion to disable JS and disabling page prediction. Tonight when I get home I will see where the options are for it. I tried getting toolbar to show up to go into tools for Edge last night but I needed to get to sleep and so I gave up on it to deal with it today. Just found out here that I have to search for Internet Options ... not sure why they hid all that stuff behind having to search for it. ::) https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/where-is-the-tools-button-in-microsoft-edge/d34b1ef4-5ddb-4a8f-9268-38cc291e80ca

I guess the cache area must be protected well for someone to not have come up with a tool by now to clear it on the fly. There is always memory injection methods, but those usually lead to BSOD and all sorts of other problems if your targeting the wrong memory allocation to wipe a web cache. I've only messed with those sorts of tools in stand alone games where you can target an address and force unlimited ammo and health etc and force a god mode to a game with a known address for whatever it is your forcing a value to. Not sure if its allowed to talk any further about memory injection, so gonna drop it at that.  ;D

Closing and opening a browser every 10 minutes when all RAM is consumed might be the way it is I guess. The etchasketch method   ;D

DaveLembke

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Update to this:

Tried the stuff suggested by BC and didnt see a change.

However I installed 8GB RAM last night as ( 2 x 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz ) sticks to replace the 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333Mhz and this pointed out something interesting that I didnt see with 3.2GB of the 4GB usable. With 3.2GB usable of 4GB due to shared memory of the GPU, I saw all my RAM consumed all the way to around 200MB free and then memory compression would kick in, and the game would lag out. What I found with 8GB RAM is that RAM use climbs to 4.1GB used by Edge Browser of the 7.2GB usable of 8GB with 768MB used by the GPU of the APU. And there is still 3.1GB RAM available of the 7.2GB and the game lags out the same. The other thing I discovered is that if I logon as one of my 5 accounts and do whatever game play is to be done and then close out Edge and then relaunch edge browser before logging on as another of my 5 game accounts the problem doesnt happen. But if I logoff of one account and logon as another account that next logon seems to be just barely lagged but as game play progresses the memory consumption of edge continues to rise and then the game lags out pretty badly including can become unresponsive yet the browser itself is still responsive to open new tabs and do whatever. Additionally while its lagged out badly the APU's CPU use of the quadcore is at 24% and its not 24% with 1 of 4 cores pegged to 96% its 24% CPU use with all cores mostly free and balanced load.

The issue seems to be with this game and the fact that I play multiple accounts. If I stick with one account per browser launch, the problem isnt there. Not quite sure how the game can become crippled yet the CPU isnt flooded with anything to crunch and the browser otherwise can go off to elsewhere while the game is crippled and everything else runs fine. I havent tried launching another flash game at the same time though to see if flash itself is borked.

8GB RAM also calmed my Hard Drive usage down lots for Windows 10. Far less paging and memory compression doesnt trigger or I havent found anything yet that causes it to trigger.

One odd issue that I had though with the RAM upgrade that I dont believe is related to any of this is that when I installed the RAM initially Windows 10 said I only had 3.2GB usable of 8GB. The BIOS and Windows 10 saw the full 8GB but it kept telling me that only 3.2of 4GB was available with 768MB shared with the GPU. Lots of hits on google for people complaining about Windows 10 having issues only using 1/2 your installed RAM. I ram memtest86 and no problems with the full 8GB. Tried going into advanced settings and MSconfig for memory management and no change to issue. I followed another persons suggestion to reseat the RAM and still no change. I was thinking i was going to have to stick my 2 x 2GB sticks back into it and maybe the 2 x 4GB sticks that are 1600Mhz arent supported somehow, but another person suggested swapping the sticks A to B and B to A. So I tried that since what can I lose from trying that when everything else didnt work. WHAMMO!! That was the fix. For some really strange unknown reason these RAM sticks will only work with Windows 10 to use all 8GB with 7.2 now available vs the issue of only getting half my RAM if the sticks were installed a certain way. Memtest86 run again for 4 iterations and no problems. The RAM installed was high end gaming RAM from Corsair and they are a matched set. Some other people on the hits had mentioned theirs was also Corsair so not sure if this is a bug with Windows memory management and some odd timing issue with Corsair memory that Memtest86 wont detect where with these 2 sticks installed in the current order satisfies Windows 10 because of the slightest difference between what should be 2 RAM sticks that perform exactly the same in performance.  ::)  Happy that issue is over with with only 1/2 of my 8GB usable, and when i got my 8GB it pointed out that even with plenty of RAM left at 3.1GB left, the game lags and freezes up when switching accounts under the same Edge Browser session. So I guess the closing of Edge and relaunch of it for each account is the way to go. Most people dont play 5 accounts of the same game, but I found that its beneficial with this game to have something else to do while waiting for a material creation timer etc, so i can do something on account 1 and then do something on account 2, then 3, 4, 5 and then when done with 5 go back to account 1 and pick up where I left off vs twiddling my thumbs for a 5 minute timer which i cant just watch the counter and sit there bored, I have to do something and so I multitask in this game to get rid of idle time. As well as its great when I need materials I can just trade it between my own accounts and self assist under my own guild.  ;D

BC_Programmer


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Sounds like a memory leak in the Flash Player software. Which wouldn't surprise me whatsoever.

Anyway, regarding memory compression, it is used to avoid paging. Instead of paging information to disk, it compresses the information. Which (at least in theory) is faster to decompress/compress than to read/write from disk.


Leading back somewhat to your original question, You can turn it off via an administrator powershell. However I wouldn't expect that it would fix the issue because the issue is largely due to the memory load, and not the fact that compression is being used rather than disk paging.

Code: [Select]
Disable-MMAgent -mc

Turns it off, and

Code: [Select]
Enable-MMAgent -mc

turns it on. You can control a few other things as well, according to:

Code: [Select]
Help Enable-MMAgent
I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

DaveLembke

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What i feel is strange is how something can lag out and yet the CPU isnt running a marathon to keep up with it, its quite happy at 24% a walk in the park of in use of its total processing power and not like 1 of 4 cores is pegged to 100%, its a balanced core load among all cores. There must be something else behind the scenes that is limited I am guessing and it gets to its limit and thats why the lag happens and eventual freeze. Is there a memory cap that Flash can get to to which it chokes itself to death even when more memory is available?

I can run other browser tabs and no lag there other than I havent tried a second flash instance yet, and everything else is snappy and responsive without lag for the rest of Windows 10.

Also thanks for the info on how to enable/disable mmAgent via powershell. Gopnna check that out when I get home from work especially the help page it has.  :)

BC_Programmer


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Edge uses the Adobe Flash Player that is frustratingly bundled with Windows. Just checking the module listings and it uses C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\Flash.ocx.

Perhaps that is out-of-date?

Also remember Adobe Flash is pretty much it's own programming environment, so the game itself may be responsible for it's own memory leaks via ActionScript, too.
I was trying to dereference Null Pointers before it was cool.

bkdroid13



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    thank you, thats just what i wanted to know