Forum Discussion
Browser and GPU process are much higher compared to Brave
Hi!
I was comparing Edge vs Brave and I noticed that Edge uses about 30-50% of my CPU in Browser task manager (both browser and gpu) while Brave uses less than 10% combined.
I think there is some problem with resource management that must be fixed.
I hope there will be futher analysis about this behavior.
Surface pro 3, W10 1809
Edge Insiders,
My name is Tim Scudder and I’m a member of the Edge performance team. I wanted to provide an update on this issue: we were able to repro the problem locally, we have a fix coded, validated and are now working to get this change into our next dev drop (estimated to be 76.0.166.0).
We apologize for the inconvenience, but truly appreciate everyone’s help in isolating the problem.
NOTE: We are also aware of a https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=962784 that also has CPU/battery impact that originated upstream in Chromium's codebase. This issue has been fixed upstream and we are also working to make sure the fix is in our next dev drop (again, estimated to be 76.0.166.0)
Regards,
Tim Scudder
57 Replies
Edge Insiders,
My name is Tim Scudder and I’m a member of the Edge performance team. I wanted to provide an update on this issue: we were able to repro the problem locally, we have a fix coded, validated and are now working to get this change into our next dev drop (estimated to be 76.0.166.0).
We apologize for the inconvenience, but truly appreciate everyone’s help in isolating the problem.
NOTE: We are also aware of a https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=962784 that also has CPU/battery impact that originated upstream in Chromium's codebase. This issue has been fixed upstream and we are also working to make sure the fix is in our next dev drop (again, estimated to be 76.0.166.0)
Regards,
Tim Scudder
Thanks for the update and your involvement in this matter. It shows how much more efficient product development is when augmented by direct communication with keenly interested browser testers. :)
Check Version 76.0.166.0 (Official build) Canary (64-bit) out, I think the CPU high usage has been fixed.
- This issue appears to be fixed with this build on my end
- It's still too early to decide about it, this issue happen randomly and is not always present.
Can someone post Browser Task Manager screenshot confirming that? We need to move on with testing, but some folks already uninstalled Edge.
sambul95 Can you do it yourself? As a techician yourself, do not trust anyone else, instead "trust" yourself and "trust" your own eyes.
We are having the same issue. Edge seems to open from 9-10 processes per tab open. It seems to be using a lot of CPU clocks. This seems to be a huge issue and hopefully they will address this in future builds.
We are aware of an issue that is impacting CPU and could reduce battery life. We have a high priority bug tracking this issue and are actively investigating. Thank you for self-hosting Microsoft Edge and alerting us of the issue. We will communicate the status of the issue in our dev updates.
"We have a high priority bug tracking this issue and are actively investigating."
And that's what I got in today's email from Edge Support:
"I've been asked to have you use the Microsoft Edge Preview feedback tool for help on this issue. Looks like yours may be the first feedback on the issue. The engineering team uses customer submissions from that tool as a means to learn customer issues and track them.
Can you share this bug number with us and the link to track it, just like Mozilla's Bugzilla does?
Elliot Kirk Marco Mollace ikjadoon sambul95 Aaron44126
In light of Elliot's comment, I will not be filing the MES bug report mentioned earlier in this thread.
Thank you for doing all your troubleshooting and research here. I'm glad it got Microsoft's attention and we're keeping this browser's development accountable.
Marco Mollace sambul95 Aaron44126 EbonJaeger
I am putting together a testing/result log (using Windows Task Manager and all three computers) that I will submit to Microsoft Edge Support either later today or Wednesday, depending on when I get it done, and ask MES to open a bug on the issue.
I've found in the past that opening a bug through MES focuses attention on an issue. In the past, MES has asked me to resubmit to Feedback using the bug number as the title, and if that happens, I will come back to the thread and report that so that any of you who wish to can do the same.
While I think that the difference between Edge Chromium's Browser Task Manager and Windows Task Manager in measuring/reporting CPU usage is interesting, the important thing to remember is that we have identified a bug in Edge Chromium (CPU use at rest) that is not hardware dependent, not tab/website dependent, is both consistent and persistent, manifests at Edge Chromium's core, and does not manifest in Edge (Classic), Chrome or Firefox.
We need to get Microsoft focused on this, and keep them focused until it is resolved.Stay focused! Yet bug fixing priority is again defined by the Program Manager and Roadmap schedule. Another way to try is contacting this forum Mods, they can push Edge Support to at least Reply to your bug report email. :)
sambul95 "Keep focused! Yet bug fixing priority is again defined by the Program Manager and Roadmap schedule."
I've had good luck with MES responsiveness when reporting other bugs. On earlier occasions, MES e-mailed me shortly after submission, I submitted the test/results log, MES replicated, and then opened the bug. The point of opening a bug (as I understand it) is that the process kicks the issue onto the roadmap schedule, usually with a higher priority than it might otherwise have had. I don't have access to the Program Manager or the Roadmap schedule, so I do what I can to kick the issue up the ladder.
"Another way to try is contacting this forum Mods, they can push Edge Support to at least Reply to your bug report email. "
I would expect the moderators to visit this thread today or tomorrow (that seems to be the pattern after a weekend thread breaks out) and report that they will notify the appropriate team(s).
I can confirm the same behaviour. Much, much higher CPU & RAM usage than on previous builds.
I wrote a longer response here.
This is on both an i5-8600K / 16GB / 250GB SSD desktop and an i5-6200U / 8GB / 500GB SSD laptop. This resource-hogging is new to Edge C; the previous Edge C build was fantastic.
My CPU fans have not quieted once with Edge C 76.0.159.0. There is absolutely a week-by-week regression for the Dev channel (and others are reporting the same on Canary builds, too, having started earlier and the bug survived into Dev).
Let us know what troubleshooting information you need, Microsoft. I recommend everyone willing to post here also send a Smiley report from within Edge, so Microsoft can collect diagnostic data.
This bug has just hit dev build as well, draining battery like crazy.
I did some comparison testing on CPU use this morning, opening instances of Edge (Classic), Edge Chromium and Firefox Quantum, each with 6 Bing tabs open, all in static state, on each of three Windows (a Dell XPS 8920, Intel i7, 16gb RAM, AMD Radeon 580 graphics; a Dell Latitude 7280, Intel i5, 8gb RAM, Intel 620 graphics; and a Dell Inspiron 3185, AMD a9420e, 4gb RAM, Radeon R5 graphics). I run Windows without visual effects (transparencies, shadows and so on) and I run all three browsers in native state, so no extensions or add-ons are running that could complicate results. I am using the most recent Dev build (76.0.159.0).
After the browsers were opened an had a minute or two to settle down to static state, I opened Task Manager on each of the three computers and observed CPU use of the three browsers on each computer.
In each case, over a period of 15 +/- minutes of watching Task Manager, an identical pattern appeared that was both persistent on each computer and consistent between the computers: Edge Chromium used 1-1.5% of CPU resources when in the static state described, but neither Edge (Classic) nor Firefox Quantum used CPU resources in the static state described. This snapshot from the Dell XPS 8920 illustrates what I observed:A caveat: I checked several similar Task Manager screenshots (comparing Edge (Classic) and Edge Chromium, but not Firefox) that I used in a discussion related to Chromium-based process handling. At the time I was using an earlier Dev build (I don't recall which, but I think that it was the first Dev release). I saw similar results in snapshot form (that is, Edge Chromium using 1-1.2% of CPU at rest, Edge (Classic) at 0%). The screenshots from that time suggest that the CPU use pattern is not new with the most recent builds.
I don't know whether this pattern is related to the issue reported by Marco Mollace with respect to Brave or not, and I am not in a position to compare CPU use between Edge Chromium and Chrome, which would seem to me to be a more definitive and useful test.
All I can suggest is that you run similar comparison tests between Edge Chromium and Chrome, and see if the results are similar or dissimilar. If Edge Chromium is using CPU resources in static state, but Chrome is not, then Edge Chromium has an issue that is not present in Chrome, and that should be reported as a bug.I installed Chrome on the XPS 8920 and ran the CPU comparison again, this time comparing CPU use on Edge (Classic) Windows 10 Version 17763.503, Edge Chromium Version 76.0.159.0, Google Chrome Version 74.0.3729.157, and Firefox 66.0.5, with identical conditions to the previous test (6 Bing instances open on each browser, all Bing instances idle, stock builds of each browser without extensions or add-ons, running on Windows 10 without visual effects.
The results confirmed to me that the CPU use at idle issue is confined to Edge Chromium. Google Chrome, like Edge (Classic) and Firefox, does not use CPU resources at idle. Edge Chromium, and Edge Chromium alone uses CPU resources (typically in the range of 1-1.5%, sometimes higher) at idle.
I've reported the bug, pointing to this discussion thread,
Possible corroboration? I hopped on here because I noticed background CPU usage for Edge seems unreasonably high. I only have two tabs open and they are both for static pages. I closed and restarted the browser and there was no change. I checked in the browser "task manager" (accessible by right-clicking on the title bar) and "GPU process" seems to be gobbling a lot of CPU cycles. Why is this happening when there is basically nothing going on in the browser?
[Edit] Figured I would mention the system specs, my system has an Optimus configuration of Intel HD Graphics 4000 and Quadro M5000M, but when I took this screenshot I was accessing it remotely over Remote Desktop.
[Edit 2] For comparison, I just opened Chrome for a comparison check. I opened the exact same two tabs. The extensions installed are the same. In Chrome, the "GPU process" sits mostly at 0% CPU use and occasionally spikes to 3%. Why is it so busy in Edge?
Marco Mollace This is a known issue with Chromium and Chromium derivatives (e.g. Chrome, now Edge Chromium, and so on). Chromium creates new processes for each open tab, and that eats resources. If you open identical browser instances (6-8 identical tabs) in Edge Chromium, Edge (Classic) and Firefox, for example, and check Task Manager or other resource monitors, you'll typically see that Edge Chromium is using about 1.5 times the resources used by Edge (Classic) and Firefox, sometimes more than that. We've had a dozen threads requesting that Microsoft do what it can to reduce resource use in Edge Chromium by bundling processes or otherwise, and we hope that Microsoft is working on it.
I disagree with your comment. We have 2 separate issues here. One issue as you mentioned is browsers using a separate process per tab may consume more system resources than browsers using one common process for all open tabs. In that regard both Edge Preview and Brave are similar, as both are based on Chromium and use a separate process per tab. So your comment does NOT match the topic of this thread.
This brings us to second issue, namely very high CPU and GPU load in current Edge Preview builds due to bug or lack of optimization. It may also be a "known issue" to Edge developers, but your comment masks it for users thus making appear less urgent to fix, when in fact the opposite is true.
I have to stop testing Edge Preview, and go back to using stable Chrome (despite both are based on multiprocess Chromium), because Edge now uses MUCH more system resources due to namely this bug or lack of optimization. Compare 2 screenshots below: one is Edge with one tab open and no extensions installed using 20% of CPU and GPU resources, and another is Chrome with one tab open and multiple extensions running using 1% of PC CPU and GPU resources. Its on average 10 to 20 times higher for Edge, clearly pointing on a bug, which is not surprising for alpha builds we are offered to test.
Important is, such bugs should be urgently fixed to encourage users continue testing the browser, rather the masked as unrelated generic "known issue" that can not be fixed at all.
sambul95 I stand corrected. Thank you for taking the time to do so. I am not able to replicate your results because I do not have Chrome on any of my computers, by choice.
This is also true for MS Edge Preview internal pages, new tabs, and even empty pages and web pages with no or suppressed scripts.
