@xoran Unfortunately it's not that uncommon to run out of RAM during attract mode on 8 gig systems. I did a lot of work a while back to reduce RAM usage as much as I could; it's not a memory leak, but rather the CoverFlow images take up a lot of RAM. You can reduce the CoverFlow image quality in the settings, which does help. Another option should be to simply just not use the CoverFlow views, as the other views aren't nearly as RAM-heavy (let me know if you aren't using CoverFlow).
I'm almost certain that this would have nothing to do with the 8.1 release (or at least very little, it could have to do with the Chrome addition taking up slightly more RAM). It's one of those things that is not very common, but does happen, and depends on a lot of different factors.