WTF is the new Steam UI doing to take this much RAM?

[USARice]

I have Steam minimized to task bar, and when it's open it's only on my Library page and yet Steam is now taking more than 4GB of RAM...
Pic here [i.imgur.com]

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

You probably are looking at a lot of websites inside of the steam client. Remember: The steam client has a version of the Chrome Web Browser inside of it. If you look at lots of websites in the steam client it will cause ram usage to go up. If like me you tell Steam to default to your library on opening and DO NOT use it to browse facebook / the internet then the steam client only uses 200 MB of ram, no more or less than it did before the update.

To summarize: You did this. Don't do that and it won't happen.

[USARice]

Publicado originalmente por 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

You probably are looking at a lot of websites inside of the steam client. Remember: The steam client has a version of the Chrome Web Browser inside of it. If you look at lots of websites in the steam client it will cause ram usage to go up. If like me you tell Steam to default to your library on opening and DO NOT use it to browse facebook / the internet then the steam client only uses 200 MB of ram, no more or less than it did before the update.

To summarize: You did this. Don't do that and it won't happen.

I have literally never opened the in-game Steam web browser, lol. There are many reports of the new Steam UI taking much more RAM than the previous, but never to this degree.

I've killed the 4gb process and just by going to this discussion from within the Steam client, I'm back up to 2.6gb.

[darkdragonfire]

yeah its somehow garbage, mine using 460 - 580 . think it depends also what you doing in client

i also closed community feeds and deletes categories on startsite :P

[Coffee]

it only uses around 300 to 400 for me, a bit higher. Minimum ram is 16gb, recommended is 32gb. If have the minimum ram (for 2023 gaming requirements) it shouldnt be an issue at all. And its nothing if have 32gb

[Start_Running]

Publicado originalmente por Artoria:

it only uses around 300 to 400 for me, a bit higher. Minimum ram is 16gb, recommended is 32gb. If have the minimum ram (for 2023 gaming requirements) it shouldnt be an issue at all. And its nothing if have 32gb

Ditto. Dunno what's going on on your end OP but that is not normal.

[Fearagen]

Publicado originalmente por Start_Running:

Publicado originalmente por Artoria:

it only uses around 300 to 400 for me, a bit higher. Minimum ram is 16gb, recommended is 32gb. If have the minimum ram (for 2023 gaming requirements) it shouldnt be an issue at all. And its nothing if have 32gb

Ditto. Dunno what's going on on your end OP but that is not normal.

Me and other people have had 900 MB/s for just having it sit on the library for launching games. And one dude left his computer running overnight and it climbed to 6 GB usage. Seems like a memory more than "Chrome" behavior, even edge running on the same engine is better at memory usage.

[Tharon]

Are you using big picture / steam controller UI ?

Because Steam have massive memory leaks and add 200/300 megabytes every time BPM or the controller UI is launched and then closed.

That was reported when in beta but never addressed.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Publicado originalmente por VenomBlade:

I have literally never opened the in-game Steam web browser, lol.

You do not have to "open the steam web browser" It is built in as part of the client. If you go clicking around the steam store in the client, it's using the web browser. If you use the client to browse the steam forums to reply to threads, it's using the web browser. It's all baked into the client and it's seamless from the outside but it is in there. That's probably where your ram usage went to.

[USARice]

Publicado originalmente por Tharon:

Are you using big picture / steam controller UI ?

Because Steam have massive memory leaks and add 200/300 megabytes every time BPM or the controller UI is launched and then closed.

That was reported when in beta but never addressed.

Nah, never used BPM or the Controller UI, but good to know.

Publicado originalmente por 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

Publicado originalmente por VenomBlade:

I have literally never opened the in-game Steam web browser, lol.

You do not have to "open the steam web browser" It is built in as part of the client. If you go clicking around the steam store in the client, it's using the web browser. If you use the client to browse the steam forums to reply to threads, it's using the web browser. It's all baked into the client and it's seamless from the outside but it is in there. That's probably where your ram usage went to.

Ok, that I understand. However, my usage with Steam generally hasn't changed. I'm not navigating to pages more often than usual. I monitor RAM pretty frequently, and with the old UI my usage never even climbed to half of this. Regardless, I would've hoped there would be some garbage cleaning in place where Steam recognizes I haven't been to those pages in a long time and unloads them from RAM. Something the old UI appeared to do(because the RAM footprint was never this high), but this new one doesn't.

[Jesus Maria José]

Its funny because before I used to say to my friends that Steam was the best of the best applications, since It has a lot of functions and stays hide in the toolbar like It didn't exist.

But now....

[RiO]

Publicado originalmente por 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

Publicado originalmente por VenomBlade:

I have literally never opened the in-game Steam web browser, lol.

You do not have to "open the steam web browser" It is built in as part of the client. If you go clicking around the steam store in the client, it's using the web browser. If you use the client to browse the steam forums to reply to threads, it's using the web browser. It's all baked into the client and it's seamless from the outside but it is in there. That's probably where your ram usage went to.

Has little to do with it.
The baseline consumption is higher.

I could (and still can, with the -vgui parameter...) visit the community forums and post here from the client and it'll remain around 250~300 MB RAM consumption on a 32 GB system.
If I launch just the library and leave it sitting there on the new client, it'll already consume 500~550 MB RAM.

Apart from the baseline consumption being higher, the new client also has a number of known memory leaks.
The controller configuration UI and BPM have already been mentioned.
But it also leaks on viewing certain store content.
And it leaks when viewing artwork in the community hub.

Part of these leaks existed in the old client as well, but weren't really an issue there.
Only in the new client do they become an issue because the leaks are exacerbated by the fact that the new client uses one single web view to present everything. It and all its tabs; are kept alive for the entire duration the client is running. Whereas with the old client using the VGUI application shell, it would switch between different views and allow memory to be reclaimed because 'tabs were closed.'

[alupinu]

Just wanted to chime in that I'm having the same problems. Making my games almost unplayable.

[USARice]

Publicado originalmente por RiO:

Publicado originalmente por 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

You do not have to "open the steam web browser" It is built in as part of the client. If you go clicking around the steam store in the client, it's using the web browser. If you use the client to browse the steam forums to reply to threads, it's using the web browser. It's all baked into the client and it's seamless from the outside but it is in there. That's probably where your ram usage went to.

Has little to do with it.
The baseline consumption is higher.

I could (and still can, with the -vgui parameter...) visit the community forums and post here from the client and it'll remain around 250~300 MB RAM consumption on a 32 GB system.
If I launch just the library and leave it sitting there on the new client, it'll already consume 500~550 MB RAM.

Apart from the baseline consumption being higher, the new client also has a number of known memory leaks.
The controller configuration UI and BPM have already been mentioned.
But it also leaks on viewing certain store content.
And it leaks when viewing artwork in the community hub.

Part of these leaks existed in the old client as well, but weren't really an issue there.
Only in the new client do they become an issue because the leaks are exacerbated by the fact that the new client uses one single web view to present everything. It and all its tabs; are kept alive for the entire duration the client is running. Whereas with the old client using the VGUI application shell, it would switch between different views and allow memory to be reclaimed because 'tabs were closed.'

Thank you for that explanation. With the way the new client loads everything into one webviewer process, I can now track the more I look at community content, the larger the process gets and it never terminates because it doesn't have multiple tabs as you said. Really hope this behavior is fixed..but it sounds like this UI was in beta for awhile and many issues weren't addressed.

In order to keep RAM usage down I've just disabled all community content loading.

[badfluffy]

Publicado originalmente por Artoria:

it only uses around 300 to 400 for me, a bit higher. Minimum ram is 16gb, recommended is 32gb. If have the minimum ram (for 2023 gaming requirements) it shouldnt be an issue at all. And its nothing if have 32gb

Sure but shouldn't a game app client you know... maybe leave your resources to run the actual games instead of hogging them for BS features and data mining?

[Crashed]

I have 64GB and it doesn't go much over 1GB. Try closing Steam, deleting all files from the Steam folder except steam.exe, steamapps, and userdata, and relaunching Steam. You may lose some settings (library layout is synced to the cloud thankfully) but this will force Steam to reinstall all its client files.