Microsoft's RAM limiter for Edge is now available in the browser's latest 125 beta release. The new feature gives users complete control over how much RAM Edge consumes to improve performance or boost battery life.
Edge's RAM limiter was introduced over a month ago in the Microsoft Edge Canary channel. Since then, the feature has been moved to the beta channel as Microsoft irons out the last few bugs before pushing it out to all Edge users.
Nothing has changed since we last looked at Edges RAM limiter when it was still in the Canary channel. The new memory management utility is the first tool in Edge's efficiency settings menu that gives users direct manual control over the browser's resource consumption. When enabled, the RAM limiter can be applied while gaming or activated continuously to keep Edge's memory footprint low.
Memory limits are applied with a slider that users can tweak to their liking. The RAM slider starts at 1GB and extends to the system's physical memory capacity in 1GB increments. Additionally, Microsoft has also added a RAM consumption monitoring tool to Edge's "Browser Essentials" sidebar so users can quickly view Edge's memory consumption at any moment.
Obviously, reducing Edge's memory accessibility can have performance repercussions, so users will want to ensure that they don't set a capacity amount that is too low, which will make Edge run at a snail's pace.
The new RAM limiter and Microsoft's existing performance-enhancing features make Edge one of the most flexible browsers regarding a browser's performance footprint. Edge can consume quite a lot of memory and CPU resources (similar to Chrome), but when tuned with the RAM limiter and Microsoft's plethora of efficiency settings, Edge's large footprint can be greatly reduced. We hope some of these features make their way to Chrome one day since Google's browser is notorious for consuming loads of memory. The only other browser we know of employing a RAM limiter is the Opera GX browser.
The new RAM limiter won't be that useful for high-end machines with loads of memory to spare, but it will benefit low-end machines like 8GB laptops and desktops where every gigabyte counts. If Microsoft continues its speedy development pace, we wouldn't be surprised if the RAM limiter makes its way to a live release next month.
