The problem started about 2 months ago, I have no clue what version of Opera it was, but it still remains and consumes my battery in huge amounts, plus melts my table and everything where my superhot laptop is (the insides are clean, seems not to be the dust problem).

i had the same problem and i solve it my going to task manager-process-show processes from all users-and if you see a svchost is taking up a lot of cpu right click and go to services,then try and find the service and stop it.

for me the service "Windows Update" is starting automatically and its destroying my 2 core cpu.
if you have a similar problem go to the task manager-services tap-services...(bottom right)-then you find the Windows Update service-click it and in the menu and in the startup type switch from automatic to manual and you're done
if the service starts you can go to the services and stop it

!!WARNING!! don't stop ANY services without doing you're research...i did it once and i ended up struggling to fix it with a command prompt from the windows troubleshooting future.

Please go to View menu and enable Developer Tools. From the new Developer menu, open the Task Manager.

What process is using so much CPU? Please quit it using the Task Manager and let us know if resource usage goes down.

Why would I use a Clone of Chromium if I can have Chromium.

Was that actually necessary ?. I mean the rest of your post was a valid concern about a problem you seem to be having, but then throw in a quick dig right at the end.

Anyway, have you tried 'Tab hibernation' in 'opera://flags' ?. I think it's still experimental (though i could be wrong), but may help with your problem.

Each of these (could be as many as 50-70) are gobbling up 20-100 mb of memory. I have 4GB memory on laptop but I easily run out of memory because of Opera.

The CPU is constantly on 80% or above, at times hitting 100% on both cores of the dual core processor.

The thing which really sucked about Opera pre-Chrome version was CPU and resource usage. Now it seems the problems returned in another form. I don't know what is Opera doing about this issue. It makes things insane to the point I want to stop using the browser, if it wasn't for over 15 years I am with Opera.

I believe the focus should be on making the browser resource efficient and not the try to catch up with whatever Chrome/Chromium comes with.

Efficiency was always Opera's strength till about Opera 11 or 12 release when the team started to fool around with Unite and then things started to go downwards.

Why would I use a Clone of Chromium if I can have Chromium.

EFFICIENCY and SWIFTNESS are the keys for me if I continue using Opera or not.

Thanks.

http://www.brendangregg.com/FlameGraphs/cpu-opera-helper.svg

The 6 towers you see are for each of the 6 Opera Helper processes.

For background on flame graphs:

http://www.brendangregg.com/FlameGraphs/cpuflamegraphs.html

This particular flame graph was generated using:

$ sudo bash
# dtrace -x ustackframes=200 -n 'profile-199 /arg0 && execname == "Opera Helper"/ { @k[stack(), ustack()] = count(); } profile-199 /!arg0 && execname == "Opera Helper"/ { @u[ustack()] = count(); } tick-30s { exit(0); } END { printa("%k%@d\n", @u); printa("%k-%k%@d\n", @k);  }' -o out.operahelper
# cat out.operahelper | ../FlameGraph/stackcollapse.pl | ../FlameGraph/flamegraph.pl --title "Opera Helper Flame Graph" > out.operahelper.svg

With the flame graph software from: https://github.com/brendangregg/FlameGraph

Hope that helps.

Here's "top -o cpu":

PID    COMMAND      %CPU  TIME     #TH   #WQ  #PORT #MREG MEM    RPRVT
49635- Opera Helper 101.0 08:40.76 13/1  1    152   358   22M    18M
49677- Opera Helper 100.9 08:40.10 13/1  1    149   259   22M    17M
49668- Opera Helper 100.8 08:39.71 13/1  1    149   305   56M    52M
49646- Opera Helper 100.7 08:43.29 13/1  1    152   403   45M    40M
49676- Opera Helper 100.6 08:40.08 13/1  1    149   258   21M    17M
49675- Opera Helper 100.4 08:40.59 13/1  1    150   259   22M    17M

Using DTrace to profile stacks, shows the hottest includes:

          libsystem_kernel.dylib`_kernelrpc_mach_port_insert_member_trap+0xa
          CoreFoundation`__CFRunLoopRun+0x4e1
          CoreFoundation`CFRunLoopRunSpecific+0x18a
          CoreFoundation`CFRunLoopRunInMode+0x7b
          HIToolbox`RunCurrentEventLoopInMode+0x103
          HIToolbox`ReceiveNextEventCommon+0x20e
          HIToolbox`_BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInModeWithFilter+0x5c
          AppKit`_DPSNextEvent+0x642
          AppKit`-[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:]+0x77
          AppKit`-[NSApplication run]+0x2d7
          Opera Framework`0x0015bb80+0x14b
          Opera Framework`0x0015b580+0x5c
          Opera Framework`0x0019a390+0x21
          Opera Framework`0x001af2f0+0x41
          Opera Framework`0x0019a140+0x1a
          Opera Framework`0x02c38c70+0x6c0
          Opera Framework`0x001e2d20+0xb3
          Opera Framework`0x001e38d0+0x7f
          Opera Framework`0x001e2c00+0x40
          Opera Framework`ContentMain+0x36
          Opera Helper`0x000cef40+0x35
          Opera Helper`0xd

The Opera Framework symbols are stripped, but I hope the other frames provide a clue.