Is there any memory limit for Google Chrome browser?

Question

What is the default memory limit for a single tab in chrome ??

Answer 1

It's hard to answer correctly and the answer could be figured out only in benchmarks for particular task with particular build.

There are several thing that could allow you to use from 1 to 2 GB of memory:

• Chrome version: because different V8 engines have different memory limits.
• Chrome platform: 32-bit or 64-bit.
• Operating System itself: chrome could be built with different flags for different platforms.
• Again, Chrome version: there are some discussion on the internet about recompiling chrome with some compilation flags that could allow to use more memory, then chrome developers decide to exclude such flags because of some reasons. Who know — maybe they will include them again or will increase default heap size.
• Video memory: in some cases page's content may require some video memory and, if your video adapter has no sufficient amount, Chrome will take it from general memory, which will increase memory usage for the page.

Right now, with 64bit Chrome version 47, on Windows 8.1 I can take up to 1.8GB with one tab, then it crashes.

Update:

As I can see some magic has happened and limit has changed.
For Chrome version 63, on x64 Windows 10 OS, I could allocate up to 3.5 GB memory, parsing a huge JSON string and then displaying it on the page.
The number is taken from Chrome's Task manager and from Process Explorer's Private Bytes metric.

Answer 2

You can have a perfect answer once you benchmark on a specific platform with a specific version. The outcome will only be applicable to that platform and chrome version you experimented because there is so many factors that may have a different effect in results including,

1. The Chrome Version may have different v8 engines and not all v8 engines have the same memory limits. Also, the 32 bit and 64-bit architecture come into picture when we benchmark the chrome. The default heap size may varies from v8 version to version.

2. The system configuration on which you run the chrome. chrome requires the graphics memory/video memory and when you don't have that, It will use internal memory resulting in more memory usage.

3. It's also related to process itself, every thread requires some memory for bookkeeping, notably its stack. 32-bit processes can only address 4 GB of memory. 64-bit processes don't have problems with address space, but rather with the actual allocations. However, programs should not approach any such limit or need to worry about it and the same applies to chrome as well.

I tried once to export and print the database from PHPMyAdmin from chrome. It had 1.22GB of size in DB and chrome crashed. Same thing I performed to file export and magically it worked fine.

About the v8 engine, it has 512MB memory limit on 32bit system and 1434MB(1.4 GB) on 64bit system. The chrome has v8 it's heart, this is a major factor affecting the memory limit.

Answer 3

if you're running 32-bit Chrome, you can't allocate more than 2 GB, because that's the process limit for a 32-bit Windows process. for 64bit chrome there is 4gb limit. Chrome doesn't allow allocations over 4Gb

Answer 4

I was able to increase the memory limit for my nw.js (chrome) based destkop app by passing following command line options:

Node.js: node --max_old_space_size=12288 script.js
Google Chrome: chrome.exe --js-flags="--max_old_space_size=12288"
NW.js: add "js-flags": "--max_old_space_size=12288" to the package.json.

Adjust 12288 (12GB) to suit your needs

Answer 5

There was some talking about a very similar topic. Here

You should try the following:

Right click on the Chrome icon and go to properties. Chrome should be here:

"C:\Documents and Settings\%USER%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" 

Where %USER% is your username on your PC, obviously ;)

At the end of the line add --purge-memory-button

It should look like this:

"C:\Documents and Settings\%USER%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --purge-memory-button 

Now, when Chrome works, press shift+Esc, and now you have a new option, "Purge Memory" which frees up memory. The tabs that do not need attention at that particular time will be purged from your RAM.

You can also add one of these lines:

Never voluntarily relinquish memory

--memory-model=high  

Voluntarily reduce working set when switching tabs

--memory-model=medium 

Voluntarily reduce working set when switching tabs and also when the

--memory-model=low 

Browser is not actively being used

You can have several lines after the target place "C:\Documents and Settings\%USER%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"

Let's say we wanna use the "Purge memory" line and the "Low memory model" line. It would look like this:

"C:\Documents and Settings\%USER%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --purge-memory-button --memory-model=low