3 ms·

Firefox 3 is Still a Memory Hog

9 points by nickb 18y ago

neovive 18y ago
Maybe Mozilla is making Firefox more Vista-compatible. :) Seriously speaking, the author didn't mention which add-ons, if any, were installed. In the end, if Mozilla really uses this much RAM, it comes down to a tradeoff: if you need to conserve RAM use the default OS browser (IE 7/8, Safari, Konquerer, etc.); otherwise, to enjoy the benefits of Firefox, it will cost you some RAM. This tradeoff exists with other software as well -- I still use Photoshop over MS Paint, even though Paint uses much less RAM.
evdawg 18y ago
Am I the only one who doesn't really mind Firefox using up a ton of RAM? I mean, there is more than enough RAM in my machine, and then some...
- Tamerlin 18y ago
  I rather dislike it, because I have to kill it in order to free up memory for Photoshop. My laptop only has 4 GB, and my image scans end up being around 1 GB each. I need that memory!
  - ComputerGuru 18y ago
    Same here, except with VMware instead of Photoshop. It's rather disconcerting when Firefox takes up as much memory as an entire virtual machine running Windows XP....
- bmj 18y ago
  Yeah, I don't seem to mind either, but typically my development tools (Notepad++, MS SQL Server Mgmt Console) don't require a bunch of memory either. When I noticed FF having issues with JS heavy sites, I just restart. Perhaps I've gotten conditioned for such behavior with Windows....
Mystalic 18y ago
700,000 k at times for me. It's at 400k now.
notauser 18y ago
Would you rather they optimize for ram, which is cheap, or for time, which is expensive? Assuming an hourly rate of $30 and 100 web pages visited a day it would take approx ~40 days to recover the cost of 1gb of ram if loading speed was increased by just 1 second per site.
Herring 18y ago
restarting firefox: 15 sec 1GB ram at newegg: $30 posting atypical results as FUD: priceless
LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
Wow, this seems very trollish to me. The author doesn't account for the various types of memory usage (shared memory, VSS/BSS/RSS, file swap, disk pages)... This is an extremely naive measurement of "memory usage" being presented here. Firefox now has an impressive test and instrumentation suite for measuring memory usage. There are some highly tuned allocation algorithms and garbage collection in use here. The poster doesn't present any evidence to support his assertion but rather only vague suppositions and some hand-waving. The article clearly displays the author's lack of understanding of how modern "memory usage" works.
- ComputerGuru 18y ago
  There are four screenshots in the post and throughout the comments... doesn't that count as some evidence?
  - LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
    Unfortunately the "Memory" column in System Monitor is pretty much useless for actually visualizing what memory a process is or isn't using. There are a lot of different ways to measure memory for different situations. That column doesn't actually give any concrete data on what's going on in the system. http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-memory-usage-on-linux.html http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-mem... Gives the 10,000 foot overview of measuring memory usage on a Linux system.
mdasen 18y ago
Firefox is a memory hog - you can't deny that. Of course so are other browsers. I've been using Firefox all day (6 hours now?) and loaded hundreds of pages and have 8 pages open now (including a flash-based music player) and it's using about 200MB of RAM. That IS hoggish. I just launched MSIE 7. Three tabs (YouTube homepage, news.yc, and macrumors.com - nothing too heavy). It's at 140MB. That's hoggish too (especially considering how light a load). So yeah, Firefox hogs memory, but I at least don't see a compelling advantage in alternatives. I guess I just can't get riled up at this time of day.
henning 18y ago
This really doesn't matter to someone who has a recent machine - my crappy Dell laptop has 2 GB of RAM and Firefox feels very snappy. Casual users with older machines with less RAM probably won't use Firefox long enough for it to start using up lots of RAM. It's not really that big of a problem. For most computer users, spyware is a much bigger concern from the perspective of performance.

9 points by nickb 18y ago

Maybe Mozilla is making Firefox more Vista-compatible. :) Seriously speaking, the author didn't mention which add-ons, if any, were installed. In the end, if Mozilla really uses this much RAM, it comes down to a tradeoff: if you need to conserve RAM use the default OS browser (IE 7/8, Safari, Konquerer, etc.); otherwise, to enjoy the benefits of Firefox, it will cost you some RAM. This tradeoff exists with other software as well -- I still use Photoshop over MS Paint, even though Paint uses much less RAM.

evdawg 18y ago

Am I the only one who doesn't really mind Firefox using up a ton of RAM? I mean, there is more than enough RAM in my machine, and then some...

Tamerlin 18y ago
I rather dislike it, because I have to kill it in order to free up memory for Photoshop. My laptop only has 4 GB, and my image scans end up being around 1 GB each. I need that memory!
- ComputerGuru 18y ago
  Same here, except with VMware instead of Photoshop. It's rather disconcerting when Firefox takes up as much memory as an entire virtual machine running Windows XP....
bmj 18y ago
Yeah, I don't seem to mind either, but typically my development tools (Notepad++, MS SQL Server Mgmt Console) don't require a bunch of memory either. When I noticed FF having issues with JS heavy sites, I just restart. Perhaps I've gotten conditioned for such behavior with Windows....

Mystalic 18y ago

700,000 k at times for me. It's at 400k now.

notauser 18y ago

Would you rather they optimize for ram, which is cheap, or for time, which is expensive? Assuming an hourly rate of $30 and 100 web pages visited a day it would take approx ~40 days to recover the cost of 1gb of ram if loading speed was increased by just 1 second per site.

Herring 18y ago

restarting firefox: 15 sec 1GB ram at newegg: $30 posting atypical results as FUD: priceless

LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago

Wow, this seems very trollish to me. The author doesn't account for the various types of memory usage (shared memory, VSS/BSS/RSS, file swap, disk pages)... This is an extremely naive measurement of "memory usage" being presented here. Firefox now has an impressive test and instrumentation suite for measuring memory usage. There are some highly tuned allocation algorithms and garbage collection in use here. The poster doesn't present any evidence to support his assertion but rather only vague suppositions and some hand-waving. The article clearly displays the author's lack of understanding of how modern "memory usage" works.

ComputerGuru 18y ago
There are four screenshots in the post and throughout the comments... doesn't that count as some evidence?
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  Unfortunately the "Memory" column in System Monitor is pretty much useless for actually visualizing what memory a process is or isn't using. There are a lot of different ways to measure memory for different situations. That column doesn't actually give any concrete data on what's going on in the system. http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-memory-usage-on-linux.html http://virtualthreads.blogspot.com/2006/02/understanding-mem... Gives the 10,000 foot overview of measuring memory usage on a Linux system.

mdasen 18y ago

Firefox is a memory hog - you can't deny that. Of course so are other browsers. I've been using Firefox all day (6 hours now?) and loaded hundreds of pages and have 8 pages open now (including a flash-based music player) and it's using about 200MB of RAM. That IS hoggish. I just launched MSIE 7. Three tabs (YouTube homepage, news.yc, and macrumors.com - nothing too heavy). It's at 140MB. That's hoggish too (especially considering how light a load). So yeah, Firefox hogs memory, but I at least don't see a compelling advantage in alternatives. I guess I just can't get riled up at this time of day.

henning 18y ago

This really doesn't matter to someone who has a recent machine - my crappy Dell laptop has 2 GB of RAM and Firefox feels very snappy. Casual users with older machines with less RAM probably won't use Firefox long enough for it to start using up lots of RAM. It's not really that big of a problem. For most computer users, spyware is a much bigger concern from the perspective of performance.