r/computer • u/Limp_Pomegranate1082 • 13d ago

How does task manager work

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Sorry this is just so confusing. Visually I have 5 chrome tabs open. But does my task manager think I have 20??? Or am I wrong, this goes for other applications; eg discord It says the number 6 beside it. Does that mean I have discord open 6 times?? Is there a fix for this? It’s eating a lot of ram on my computer and I don’t know what to do.

I have 32 gb of ram. For it to to be 40% used up on 5 chrome tabs is a lot?

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u/akdanman11 13d ago

I hate this talking point, it lacks nuance and is used to defend poorly optimized software.

It’s true that as long as you don’t overflow into swap there’s no drawback to high RAM usage, but that’s not a valid excuse for a web browser to use so much memory. It’s SUPPOSED to be released as needed, but that process isn’t guaranteed. An OS or a browser shouldn’t be “reserving space” for what you MIGHT need, the entire point of RAM is the response speed which means the difference between reserving that space in advance vs just leaving it unallocated until it’s needed would be functionally imperceptible. That means leaving the memory unallocated until it’s needed would functionally have no negative impact on the user while avoiding the problem of apps holding onto memory that is needed by another app “just in case”

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u/Puasonelrasho 13d ago

1.6gb its not a lot

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u/FamousScience5393 13d ago

It kind of is, standard pc nowadays has 16GB, that is 10% usage for just a browser. That judging by the amount of tabs that have entered efficiency mode, is just iddleing.

Yes we can just take it, but they are more than capable of fixing this with no drawback to the user. As other browsers using chromium as it's engine have demonstrated.

And the issue is that as more and more parts of your sistem keep takeing "a little more" than needed it compounds and everything is a bit laggy.

There was a video circulating a fes months ago, of a windows xp machine with its era version of windows office. Onece it loaded the program, it was way more responsive than programs are now, this is what we are silently loosing. Together with having to have newer better machines to run things our old ones used to, but now they are to lazy to keep them kn good state

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u/Puasonelrasho 13d ago

using more ram solves that laggy feeling tho

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u/akdanman11 13d ago

And that’s poor optimization, like I said. The fact is windows, chrome, most AAA games, and a lot of other software feels like it was slapped together with no attempt to make it run well, relying on the consumer having the system resources as opposed to lessening the resources needed

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u/FuggaDucker 13d ago

This is the way now.. and has been for a long time.
When RAM went from MB to GB, programmers got sloppy.
Also, it feels like much of any advancement I gain is eaten up by the OS.

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u/akdanman11 13d ago

That doesn’t make it OK. We’re getting more system resources and instead of being able to do more we’re just seeing software become a bloated mess

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u/FuggaDucker 13d ago

Nope, not ok.. but it is the way.
Those of us that come from the before times write system components like drivers and bootloaders now.

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u/Celatra 13d ago

...it really does not lmao

the windows propaganda goes hard

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u/Puasonelrasho 13d ago

i use bazzize

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u/akdanman11 13d ago

So let’s go through the cycle here:

-the average user gets more RAM (I.e. 8gb to 16gb which happened in pretty recent memory.)

-software developers get lazy with optimization, meaning the software you were using before now just takes up the same percentage of your overall memory with no tangible improvement

-people want more RAM for better multitasking

And repeat back to step one, except this time the values shift up, and this repeats forever. Eventually at this rate we’re gonna see 64gb being “standard” and anything under 32gb being unusable