7 ms·

Anyone know how the new FireFox compares on battery-life? Safari crushes Chrome on this front currently, but I'm curious how FireFox compares now.

mccr8 9y ago
None of the Firefox Quantum work has looked at power usage, so don't expect any changes on that front.
- akerro 9y ago
  Well... new renderer and JS engine are faster and use less memory, which means less CPU cycles are used for the same thing and less information is stored in RAM, there are improvements for Windows and Linux hardware acceleration. This all summed-up means reduction of power consumption.
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    The new style system is faster, but partly due to parallelizing, which doesn't necessarily mean fewer CPU cycles (though _can_ mean more time spent in CPU sleep state). I don't know why you think 57 uses less memory than 56 for the "renderer and JS engine". I don't think it does. In fact, the data shows that it actually uses a bit more than 56, though this obviously depends on workload. (Disclaimer: I work on the Firefox rendering engine and have done some work on the JS engine.)
    - hinkley 9y ago
      In theory, race to idle might save it. In practice, my fellow web app devs will throw more crap on the web page until things are slow again and only then push back on feature creep from management.
- Starwatcher2001 9y ago
  This is mentioned in the release notes: "AMD VP9 hardware video decoder support for improved video playback with lower power consumption"
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    How many users have AMD laptops?
    - skarap 9y ago
      1
    - dralley 9y ago
      AMD graphics. And since we were talking about Macs, the answer is "a lot"
      - revelation 9y ago
        And what is the intersection of "Macs", "AMD graphics" and "battery powered"? Pretty sure it is the empty set.
        stinky613 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro Find in Page "AMD"
yalogin 9y ago
What is the typical use case for you?
- puszczyk 9y ago
  Web browsing
Yoric 9y ago
For Firefox 57, the team has been working essentially on improving CPU, GPU and memory usage, as well as concurrency. I know that some people have been looking at energy, but that's not where most efforts were spent. I hope that our next priority becomes energy. Stay tuned :)
- amirmansour 9y ago
  That's great to hear. For a lot of users, Chrome is not the competition, but rather Safari, because Safari is energy efficient and privacy conscious. If Firefox can get as energy efficient, or even just close enough to Safari then it becomes THE clear winner.
ucha 9y ago
It has not been improved and still consumes significantly more power than Safari. It's the major reason why I won't switch.
bonaldi 9y ago
It's really pretty terrible, on Mac at least -- there's a bug about it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 which is being tracked for v58.
- nnethercote 9y ago
  Note that these kinds of things are typically highly dependent on machine/browser configuration and workload. So that bug's title is overly broad, power consumption is fine for many (most?) people.

mccr8 9y ago

None of the Firefox Quantum work has looked at power usage, so don't expect any changes on that front.

akerro 9y ago
Well... new renderer and JS engine are faster and use less memory, which means less CPU cycles are used for the same thing and less information is stored in RAM, there are improvements for Windows and Linux hardware acceleration. This all summed-up means reduction of power consumption.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  The new style system is faster, but partly due to parallelizing, which doesn't necessarily mean fewer CPU cycles (though _can_ mean more time spent in CPU sleep state). I don't know why you think 57 uses less memory than 56 for the "renderer and JS engine". I don't think it does. In fact, the data shows that it actually uses a bit more than 56, though this obviously depends on workload. (Disclaimer: I work on the Firefox rendering engine and have done some work on the JS engine.)
  - hinkley 9y ago
    In theory, race to idle might save it. In practice, my fellow web app devs will throw more crap on the web page until things are slow again and only then push back on feature creep from management.
Starwatcher2001 9y ago
This is mentioned in the release notes: "AMD VP9 hardware video decoder support for improved video playback with lower power consumption"
- tedunangst 9y ago
  How many users have AMD laptops?
  - skarap 9y ago
    1
  - dralley 9y ago
    AMD graphics. And since we were talking about Macs, the answer is "a lot"
    - revelation 9y ago
      And what is the intersection of "Macs", "AMD graphics" and "battery powered"? Pretty sure it is the empty set.
      - stinky613 9y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro Find in Page "AMD"

yalogin 9y ago

What is the typical use case for you?

puszczyk 9y ago
Web browsing

Yoric 9y ago

For Firefox 57, the team has been working essentially on improving CPU, GPU and memory usage, as well as concurrency. I know that some people have been looking at energy, but that's not where most efforts were spent. I hope that our next priority becomes energy. Stay tuned :)

amirmansour 9y ago
That's great to hear. For a lot of users, Chrome is not the competition, but rather Safari, because Safari is energy efficient and privacy conscious. If Firefox can get as energy efficient, or even just close enough to Safari then it becomes THE clear winner.

ucha 9y ago

It has not been improved and still consumes significantly more power than Safari. It's the major reason why I won't switch.

bonaldi 9y ago

It's really pretty terrible, on Mac at least -- there's a bug about it: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404042 which is being tracked for v58.

nnethercote 9y ago
Note that these kinds of things are typically highly dependent on machine/browser configuration and workload. So that bug's title is overly broad, power consumption is fine for many (most?) people.