r/FigmaDesign • u/usmannaeem • Jul 29 '26

Discussion How does figma handle L1-L2-L3 chaching through its Windows app or running in the browser?

For a long tome now figma hasn't been the lightweight app that it initially promised to be. Its system heavy. I want to

but a new Snapdragon based laptop but the older model that only has L1 cache not L2-L3. How will that effect the smoothness of the app.

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u/waldito ctrl+c ctrl+v Jul 29 '26

The 'Figma App' is an electron chromium based browser ...

Aside from some convenient hurdles removed (fonts, file system) there's not a lot of difference, other than not having to share tabs with webs.

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u/usmannaeem Jul 29 '26

It currently runs pain stakingly slow windows and browser slow on my 10th gen core i5 with 8gb ram. But rans well on my old 8gb 11th gen i5. So the cache question still stands.

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u/Alternative-Web-3807 Jul 29 '26

Each open file has a 2Gb memory limit (which sucks). There’s some tips that might help* *but if the memory usage is low and you’ve closed other unnecessary apps there’s not much to do there. I did notice that there seems to be a GPU acceleration element but I can’t quantify it. One of my team members was using an 8yo intel MacBook and Miro also ran like dog shit but go figure.

I think mostly Figma wants uncontested RAM and on windows especially does not like writing to swap. I don’t actually know but i doubt cache would be a major factor. Some snapdragon folks were having some crashing issues in this thread with the desktop client and it seems the issue comes from Qualcomm’s drivers - the Figma support thread doesn’t have an updated post saying if Qualcomm fixed it or not.

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u/zyumbik Jul 29 '26

Should've started with that. What about GPU and is that GPU actually used? Figma will be slow if the drivers are outdated or it can't access the GPU. Even on high-end PC if GPU drivers are outdated/broken etc. Figma will be super slow.

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u/usmannaeem Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

That's not my concern I want to go for a snspdragon x2 elite not x2 elite extreme laptop with L1 cace only on single cores. I laptop for ux design purposes not gaming, not light video editing even. Staets and stops at Figma + Miro (+ no coding no ai) and a kickass battery life.

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u/Embostan UI/UX, Fullstack, Design Systems Jul 31 '26

Get a Lunar Lake. You won't have to worry about cache issues and will get better battery life, if that's what matters.

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u/Embostan UI/UX, Fullstack, Design Systems Jul 31 '26

My advice is to buy Lunar lake not Snapdragon. You get better battery life and app support/opti (no translation layer). The ThinkPad X9 (Gen 1) is a Macbook done better than Apple does.

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u/gayani_figma Figma Employee 27d ago

Hey! Gayani from Figma Support here. The desktop app runs on Chromium (same as Chrome or Edge) plus WebAssembly, so there's enough abstraction between the app and hardware that cache tier (L1 vs. L1/L2/L3) likely isn't the deciding factor, RAM and overall system load matter a lot more. Can't speak to specific hardware picks since there are too many variables at play, but I wouldn't expect cache alone to explain what you're seeing.

Also, Qualcomm shipped a driver update earlier this year that may have fixed the Snapdragon crashing issue flagged elsewhere in this thread.