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Sometimes I wonder how comprehensive these comparisons actually are. This is what I currently have open in Chrome: 3 Chrome Beta windows, with 17, 14, and 1 t

Sometimes I wonder how comprehensive these comparisons actually are. This is what I currently have open in Chrome: 3 Chrome Beta windows, with 17, 14, and 1 tabs open. 1 Chrome Canary window with 2 tabs A good number of these tabs have not-very-light applications open like Gmail, Google spreadsheets, and some YouTube vids. If you say to yourself, "oh, let me go check out Firefox compared to this," and launch it with one tab, do a quick Google search, and then determine, "hey, this is way faster," well... yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Not only do you not have multiple windows and tabs open, but if you haven't used it in years you've probably got a pretty small cache not bogging you down. Personally I've never actually noticed Chrome's performance to have any issues. Maybe because I have 12 gigs of RAM and an otherwise decent setup. On a more constrained system perhaps problems start to show themselves more easily. But are you sure that those same problems don't also appear in other browsers, given you're using them as intensely as you've been using Chrome this whole time? I'd really love to see some browser comparison stats that go in-depth on this. Basically the only numbers you ever see these days are javascript rendering scores, and I feel like that's a really poor way to determine a browser's overall speed and efficiency. It doesn't account for how long it takes to open a new tab (like .01 seconds vs .3 seconds, which IMO is a big difference), scroll lag, startup time, etc, and it certainly doesn't account for how and if browsers become bogged down by real-world use. I fear that users may be making similar snap judgments by comparing on the basis of quick open-and-go tests, instead of actual in-depth testing. First impressions are everything. You may find yourself five years from now using a browser that is actually slower than you were using previously, but you maintain your use of it because one time five years ago you opened it and loaded a page and it was faster than the encumbered incumbent.

deleted 14y ago
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ewencp 14y ago
I honestly can't give hard numbers, but I really did switch back to FF because of the memory usage. My ancient-by-HN-standards but not-too-ancient-by-normal-standards desktop with 4GB RAM (Ubuntu 10.04 if that's relevant) was starting to thrash like crazy with a moderate number of tabs (maybe 6-12 on average), but most importantly, with a few open for long periods of time. Firefox seemed to really clean up their act wrt memory, where Chromium seemed to grow without bound and keep a lot of it in the working set, doubling the pain. Firefox isn't perfect, but it seems to be more of a problem with Flash than the browser (clearing out my Rdio tab has the most effect). And measuring memory usage through top isn't perfect, but FF does seem to use significantly less RES even after long sessions. So, anecdotal evidence, but I was using Chromium as my regular browser for years and ended up switching back to FF because I found the performance on my reasonable-but-aging machine to be far superior to Chromes under regular, long-term usage.
- ok_craig 14y ago
  Makes sense. I wonder if Chrome is particularly bad on Linux? (My desktop runs Windows.)
  - ewencp 14y ago
    Not in my experience -- I have the same issues on my MBP, though I use it maybe 1/10th the time, so I'm less certain of that impression.
    - beaner 14y ago
      Yeah, that's suspicious. On my Macbook Air, which is noticeably weaker, I don't experience any of that with Chrome.
      - ewencp 14y ago
        Should probably qualify: MBP from 3-4 years ago... But I don't expect it should suck this bad this quickly....
  - slacka 14y ago
    I have a win7 laptop with 4GB of RAM. After using Chrome from the beginning, I also was forced to switch back to Firefox because recent builds of Chrome began thrashing with 10+ tabs open. Firefox has it's issues. It still doesn't silently update when run under a normal user account. Also the UI freezes when running heavy HTML5 pages. Chrome is beginning to feel like FF 3. Google needs to take a page from Mozilla and start their own MemShrink program.
    - mnarayan01 14y ago
      > Also the UI freezes when running heavy HTML5 pages. Any examples? I've never seen this (other than blatantly broken JS), and would be interested in seeing what would cause it.
      - 14y ago
ibotty 14y ago
this post is uninformed. first, a cache should never slow you down. old obscure settings can. and these can be in your old firefox profile as well. second, the usecase of many open tabs is better in firefox. there are studies out there that show lower ram usage in firefox for many tabs. (first google link, because i don't find the one i had in mind right now: http://lifehacker.com/5976082/browser-speed-tests-chrome-24-firefox-18-internet-explorer-10-and-opera-1212 http://lifehacker.com/5976082/browser-speed-tests-chrome-24-...) btw: if you are going to criticize test methodology, why do you include two browser? you know you can run various development version of firefox as well?
- csdigi 14y ago
  With Chrome you have to trade memory usage for the process sandboxing of each tab which adds a measurable overhead. But I think for the general population it is a trade worth making.
  - mhaymo 14y ago
    I think it definitely used to be, but these days Firefox crashes so rarely that I don't see it as an issue. I imagine other browsers are similarly stable, and it depends on your personal usage patterns, but I think the majority of users probably neither use dozens of tabs nor experience frequent crashes, so both should be fine for most users, but power users are likely to prefer one or the other.
- voidlogic 14y ago
  "first, a cache should never slow you down." Cache tangent: Of course it can and will, generally things that use caches wait for the results of those caches query before hitting whatever the slower thing is being cached. Anytime you have a cache miss and the slower thing must be queried anyway, the wasted time you spent waiting for the cache query results "slowed you down". Also applications that allocate huge caches for data sets with poor cache rates or low utilization can "slow things down" by starving other data-sets with better hit rates or higher utilization from being as large as they could be.
- ok_craig 14y ago
lbenes 14y ago
>I'd really love to see some browser comparison stats that go in-depth on this. Basically the only numbers http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/internet-explorer-10-chrome-23-windows-8,3349-9.html http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/internet-explorer-10-chr... In the 40 tab test, Chrome used 1619MB while FF only used 872MB. This memory bloat is why I switched back to Firefox. After reading this article I fired up Chrome and it loaded about 20 tabs, then a message popped up: Close programs to prevent information loss. Your computer is low on memory. Looking at the old browser comparisons on Toms, I can see that Chrome's memory has ballooned from 991MB in Chrome 13 to 1619MB in Chrome 23. This is a real problem. I wish Google would return to it's roots of making a lean responsive browser.
- owenwil 14y ago
  We're talking about a couple of hundred megabytes in a world where RAM is so cheap that it's easy for anyone to upgrade. Why does it even matter?
  - kmike84 14y ago
    1. Notebook RAM is often impossible to upgrade. 2. While a couple of hundred megabytes is usually a small portion of the total RAM, it could be a critical share of the free RAM, and this is what matters.
    - eulo 14y ago
      Can't say I've ever encountered a notebook that's impossible to upgrade the RAM on.
  - zobzu 14y ago
    600 and 700 megs != 200 megs.
- dgesang 14y ago
  You should try Opera as well, it's is the only browser that runs smoothly with many tabs, every other browsers fails with 25+ tabs when it comes to speed and stability. ATM I'm running 50+ tabs with 1.5 GB RAM usage. I want my browser to be open all the time and run smoothly no matter how many tabs I have open, so it can use all the memory it needs, RAM is cheap, 16GB have to be filled with something.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ewencp 14y ago

I honestly can't give hard numbers, but I really did switch back to FF because of the memory usage. My ancient-by-HN-standards but not-too-ancient-by-normal-standards desktop with 4GB RAM (Ubuntu 10.04 if that's relevant) was starting to thrash like crazy with a moderate number of tabs (maybe 6-12 on average), but most importantly, with a few open for long periods of time. Firefox seemed to really clean up their act wrt memory, where Chromium seemed to grow without bound and keep a lot of it in the working set, doubling the pain. Firefox isn't perfect, but it seems to be more of a problem with Flash than the browser (clearing out my Rdio tab has the most effect). And measuring memory usage through top isn't perfect, but FF does seem to use significantly less RES even after long sessions. So, anecdotal evidence, but I was using Chromium as my regular browser for years and ended up switching back to FF because I found the performance on my reasonable-but-aging machine to be far superior to Chromes under regular, long-term usage.

ok_craig 14y ago
Makes sense. I wonder if Chrome is particularly bad on Linux? (My desktop runs Windows.)
- ewencp 14y ago
  Not in my experience -- I have the same issues on my MBP, though I use it maybe 1/10th the time, so I'm less certain of that impression.
  - beaner 14y ago
    Yeah, that's suspicious. On my Macbook Air, which is noticeably weaker, I don't experience any of that with Chrome.
    - ewencp 14y ago
      Should probably qualify: MBP from 3-4 years ago... But I don't expect it should suck this bad this quickly....
- slacka 14y ago
  I have a win7 laptop with 4GB of RAM. After using Chrome from the beginning, I also was forced to switch back to Firefox because recent builds of Chrome began thrashing with 10+ tabs open. Firefox has it's issues. It still doesn't silently update when run under a normal user account. Also the UI freezes when running heavy HTML5 pages. Chrome is beginning to feel like FF 3. Google needs to take a page from Mozilla and start their own MemShrink program.
  - mnarayan01 14y ago
    > Also the UI freezes when running heavy HTML5 pages. Any examples? I've never seen this (other than blatantly broken JS), and would be interested in seeing what would cause it.
    - 14y ago

ibotty 14y ago

this post is uninformed. first, a cache should never slow you down. old obscure settings can. and these can be in your old firefox profile as well. second, the usecase of many open tabs is better in firefox. there are studies out there that show lower ram usage in firefox for many tabs. (first google link, because i don't find the one i had in mind right now: http://lifehacker.com/5976082/browser-speed-tests-chrome-24-firefox-18-internet-explorer-10-and-opera-1212 http://lifehacker.com/5976082/browser-speed-tests-chrome-24-...) btw: if you are going to criticize test methodology, why do you include two browser? you know you can run various development version of firefox as well?

csdigi 14y ago
With Chrome you have to trade memory usage for the process sandboxing of each tab which adds a measurable overhead. But I think for the general population it is a trade worth making.
- mhaymo 14y ago
  I think it definitely used to be, but these days Firefox crashes so rarely that I don't see it as an issue. I imagine other browsers are similarly stable, and it depends on your personal usage patterns, but I think the majority of users probably neither use dozens of tabs nor experience frequent crashes, so both should be fine for most users, but power users are likely to prefer one or the other.
voidlogic 14y ago
"first, a cache should never slow you down." Cache tangent: Of course it can and will, generally things that use caches wait for the results of those caches query before hitting whatever the slower thing is being cached. Anytime you have a cache miss and the slower thing must be queried anyway, the wasted time you spent waiting for the cache query results "slowed you down". Also applications that allocate huge caches for data sets with poor cache rates or low utilization can "slow things down" by starving other data-sets with better hit rates or higher utilization from being as large as they could be.
ok_craig 14y ago

lbenes 14y ago

>I'd really love to see some browser comparison stats that go in-depth on this. Basically the only numbers http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/internet-explorer-10-chrome-23-windows-8,3349-9.html http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/internet-explorer-10-chr... In the 40 tab test, Chrome used 1619MB while FF only used 872MB. This memory bloat is why I switched back to Firefox. After reading this article I fired up Chrome and it loaded about 20 tabs, then a message popped up: Close programs to prevent information loss. Your computer is low on memory. Looking at the old browser comparisons on Toms, I can see that Chrome's memory has ballooned from 991MB in Chrome 13 to 1619MB in Chrome 23. This is a real problem. I wish Google would return to it's roots of making a lean responsive browser.

owenwil 14y ago
We're talking about a couple of hundred megabytes in a world where RAM is so cheap that it's easy for anyone to upgrade. Why does it even matter?
- kmike84 14y ago
  1. Notebook RAM is often impossible to upgrade. 2. While a couple of hundred megabytes is usually a small portion of the total RAM, it could be a critical share of the free RAM, and this is what matters.
  - eulo 14y ago
    Can't say I've ever encountered a notebook that's impossible to upgrade the RAM on.
- zobzu 14y ago
  600 and 700 megs != 200 megs.
dgesang 14y ago
You should try Opera as well, it's is the only browser that runs smoothly with many tabs, every other browsers fails with 25+ tabs when it comes to speed and stability. ATM I'm running 50+ tabs with 1.5 GB RAM usage. I want my browser to be open all the time and run smoothly no matter how many tabs I have open, so it can use all the memory it needs, RAM is cheap, 16GB have to be filled with something.