Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes

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Tomatoshadow2
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Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes

Post by Tomatoshadow2 »

Hey guys,

My Mac pro laptop has 16 GB of Ram, and I have Nightly set to five content processes, can it handle more then that and if so, how many would you recommend?
Last edited by Tomatoshadow2 on July 16th, 2017, 2:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by LIMPET235 »

Moving to Firefox Builds...
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Virtual_ManPL »

What CPU?
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Tomatoshadow2 »

2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Are You A Wiiizard? »

tomatoshadow2 wrote:2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
That doesn't really help... But I'm assuming it's a dual core so I'd say 5 processes sounds about right. You wont be limited by ram but by threads on your CPU and possibly your iGPU.
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by mayankleoboy1 »

I have 8GB RAM and a 2 core+2Hyperthreaded processor.
I use 20 processes and it all works fine.
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Are You A Wiiizard? »

mayankleoboy1 wrote:I have 8GB RAM and a 2 core+2Hyperthreaded processor.
I use 20 processes and it all works fine.
Working fine is different to working optimally. Having more will make tabs more stable if you have many open (as it won't crash a whole heap of tabs sharing the same process) but there is a performance impact of having too many than your computer can handle.
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Grumpus »

@tomatoshadow2 - Your processor specs
4 core - 8 threads i7 Sandy Bridge
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by sciguyryan »

Are You A Wiiizard? wrote:
mayankleoboy1 wrote:I have 8GB RAM and a 2 core+2Hyperthreaded processor.
I use 20 processes and it all works fine.
Working fine is different to working optimally. Having more will make tabs more stable if you have many open (as it won't crash a whole heap of tabs sharing the same process) but there is a performance impact of having too many than your computer can handle.
Agreed. That's one issue that Chrome has for example. The multi-process model is sub-optimal and it is less efficient over all. Even if it is nice to have it such that a single tab can't crash more than one at any given time!
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Tomatoshadow2 »

Thanks Grumpus greatly appreciate it!! and thanks for the input everyone, so five content processes seems like it's just right. Also, Are you a wizard? can you explain more about limitations I may face? Thanks so much.
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Are You A Wiiizard? »

tomatoshadow2 wrote:Thanks Grumpus greatly appreciate it!! and thanks for the input everyone, so five content processes seems like it's just right. Also, Are you a wizard? can you explain more about limitations I may face? Thanks so much.
Well, if your CPU is indeed the i7-2720QM then it should be capable of more, likely 8 processes (though might still be held back by iGPU). While it is much older, almost all current-gen laptops use dual-cores. For example: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/In ... 1274vsm532 where the multi-thread performance is 21% higher on the 2720QM.

About limitations, I used to run 10 content processes on my AMD FX8320 (8 cores, 8 threads) with my HD7970 and I noticed no performance issues even with many heavy sites open (after they fixed the spinner issues). A couple of weeks ago my 7970 stopped working and I put in my really old 5750. Almost instantly I noticed when I had many fairly heavy tabs open that performance was suffering and was almost eliminated by dropping down to 8 processes but I still get a few issues with slow rendering etc. due to the slow GPU. I keep it at 8 because I'd rather suffer a little bit of performance to decrease the chance of an important tab crashing due to another tab having issues.
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Tomatoshadow2 »

Yeah my Macbook pro is late 2015, is it restricted by iGPU?
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Are You A Wiiizard? »

tomatoshadow2 wrote:Yeah my Macbook pro is late 2015, is it restricted by iGPU?
Honestly I'm not sure. It depends how you use the browser I guess. You could try experimenting yourself, if you notice any slowdowns reduce it. Even if you assign too many it's not going to slow your browser to a crawl unless you do something like 50+.
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Grantius »

Are You A Wiiizard? wrote:
tomatoshadow2 wrote:Thanks Grumpus greatly appreciate it!! and thanks for the input everyone, so five content processes seems like it's just right. Also, Are you a wizard? can you explain more about limitations I may face? Thanks so much.
Well, if your CPU is indeed the i7-2720QM then it should be capable of more, likely 8 processes (though might still be held back by iGPU). While it is much older, almost all current-gen laptops use dual-cores. For example: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/In ... 1274vsm532 where the multi-thread performance is 21% higher on the 2720QM.

About limitations, I used to run 10 content processes on my AMD FX8320 (8 cores, 8 threads) with my HD7970 and I noticed no performance issues even with many heavy sites open (after they fixed the spinner issues). A couple of weeks ago my 7970 stopped working and I put in my really old 5750. Almost instantly I noticed when I had many fairly heavy tabs open that performance was suffering and was almost eliminated by dropping down to 8 processes but I still get a few issues with slow rendering etc. due to the slow GPU. I keep it at 8 because I'd rather suffer a little bit of performance to decrease the chance of an important tab crashing due to another tab having issues.
>due to the slow GPU

You should see how much VRAM the content processes use, they really need to tune this aspect
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Re: Laptop has 16 GB of ram, how many content processes do y

Post by Tomatoshadow2 »

Alright, can I check that in activity monitor or is there another place to check it?
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