Why does memory usage for FireFox go up so much?

[lxskllr]

Put your own ram in.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

So the question is what's changed:

1) Browsers?
2) The Internet?

I mean I used to surf the web fine on 128MB of RAM. What happened? Then I noticed my 512mb XP system wasn't even cutting it. 1GB helped, but 1.5GB really helped it more. It's kinda sad.

 

[her209]

So the question is what's changed:

1) Browsers?
2) The Internet?

I mean I used to surf the web fine on 128MB of RAM. What happened? Then I noticed my 512mb XP system wasn't even cutting it. 1GB helped, but 1.5GB really helped it more. It's kinda sad.

Flash... I'm just guessing.

 

[Ns1]

wwowowwow, increasing pagefile 3x makes my computer usable again.

i never knew that shit actually worked.

 

[lxskllr]

So the question is what's changed:

1) Browsers?
2) The Internet?

I mean I used to surf the web fine on 128MB of RAM. What happened? Then I noticed my 512mb XP system wasn't even cutting it. 1GB helped, but 1.5GB really helped it more. It's kinda sad.

Internet's changed. Features are fine, but many of them are poorly encoded/optimized. There's a few pages I visit that hammer my cpu, with no obvious reason for doing so.

 

[her209]

wwowowwow, increasing pagefile 3x makes my computer usable again.

i never knew that shit actually worked.

Wow. How big was the pagefile before?

 

[spidey07]

Firefox frequently uses 1 GB of memory on me. I make a habit of closing it every now and then. Very annoying. A web browser, need 1 gigabyte of memory? REALLY?

 

[Ns1]

Wow. How big was the pagefile before?

~1.2gb -> 3-4gb


srsly it sounded like it was writing to the HD ALL THE FUCKING TIME before.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Bah, you're all n00bs. I regularly (or used to) exceed the 2GB virtual-memory limit on a 32-bit process with Firefox. LOTS of tabs.

I'm at 423MB right now.

I'm anxiously waiting for a mainstream 64-bit Firefox version. I have 8GB of RAM on Win7 64-bit. No reason to limit myself to a piddly 2GB of VM per process.

 

[coloumb]

Windows 7 machine at home - FF is using 100mb memory with only the anandtech forums displayed. Open a 2nd tab to break.com and the memory usage increases to 140mb. Close the tab and the memory usage drops to about 125mb. Open a 2nd tab again to google.com - literally maybe 2mb memory usage increase.

Firefox on my work laptop [while using it at work] slowed and sometimes stalled the OS [Windows Explorer would literally take 10-20 seconds to open]. SO I've opted to use Chrome instead while on the intranet at work - no slow downs at all...

 

[GlacierFreeze]

I like that modern browsers (and OSes) are using more RAM. Web browsing these days is much faster than 10 years ago. Not sure why people are complaining about more memory usage. Noobs I guess. Buy more damn RAM. 128MB RAM ain't gonna cut it any more.

/general rant

 

[bhanson]

I've had sessions where my browsers are taking up 3GB+.

Buy your own RAM for the work computer. I'd imagine you piss away more than that cost without even thinking about it.

 

[manimal]

I had a shitbox vista box at work for a while and I brought in my own flashdrive and used it for readyboost..

till they made everyone sign shit that they wouldnt bring in flash drives for security reasons..

 

[Locut0s]

I like that modern browsers (and OSes) are using more RAM. Web browsing these days is much faster than 10 years ago. Not sure why people are complaining about more memory usage. Noobs I guess. Buy more damn RAM. 128MB RAM ain't gonna cut it any more.

/general rant

That's true however as many other browsers have shown it shouldn't be an excuse. Modern web sites are demanding but its still possible to write browsers that are at least reasonable in the amount of RAM they use. I have 12 gigs of RAM and use FF as my main browser and love it but even I agree it could handle RAM better.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I like that modern browsers (and OSes) are using more RAM. Web browsing these days is much faster than 10 years ago. Not sure why people are complaining about more memory usage. Noobs I guess. Buy more damn RAM. 128MB RAM ain't gonna cut it any more.

/general rant

And also much slower as the browser needs more memory forcing you to restart them. Plus, they use increasing amounts of page file when there's plenty of free ram.

 

[Zebo]

Who cares? RAM is ~$70 for 8GB. Bring on the bloat. I feel I don't get my monies worth from 6GB.

Remember back in the day? I used to nlite my 2000 installs to not use so much ram. So great no to care.

 

[Crusty]

That's true however as many other browsers have shown it shouldn't be an excuse. Modern web sites are demanding but its still possible to write browsers that are at least reasonable in the amount of RAM they use. I have 12 gigs of RAM and use FF as my main browser and love it but even I agree it could handle RAM better.

Define 'better'. What's the point of having all that RAM if you're going to complain when a program tries to use it? Having a web browser cache as much as possible in memory is a good thing. You do want your websites to load as fast as possible right?

 

[vshah]

i also think you should just bring your own ram in, stay a bit late one day and pop it in when no one is looking.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

as stated numerous times, it's a work machine.

3ghz with only 1gb ram...

grab a spare stick from home and stick it in.

and stop touching yourself at night.

 

[spidey07]

Define 'better'. What's the point of having all that RAM if you're going to complain when a program tries to use it? Having a web browser cache as much as possible in memory is a good thing. You do want your websites to load as fast as possible right?

There is simply no reason for a browser to use 1GB of ram no matter how much caching is going on.

 

[Aikouka]

Firefox frequently uses 1 GB of memory on me. I make a habit of closing it every now and then. Very annoying. A web browser, need 1 gigabyte of memory? REALLY?

Actually, it does. The reason why browsers use so much memory is that they cache the history of each tab. Right now I probably have 20 tabs open and each tab probably had around 3 previous webpages open, so those are all stored in memory for faster back<->forward action.

But with Firefox, you also need to consider that Firefox.exe is not the only thing to look at. plugin-container.exe is the program is uses to contain plugins so them crashing doesn't bring down the browser. Right now I'm using 618MB of memory with Firefox and 595MB of memory with the Plugin Container.

The biggest problem I notice with FF is that if you leave it open for awhile, it is absolutely awful with Flash videos. The video begins to exhibit "micro-pauses" (only affecting the video, not the audio) and this problem only goes away when you close Firefox and reopen it. Because of this, I sometimes have to open Netflix in Chrome because FF will simply do those micro-pauses throughout an entire TV show or movie.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

There is simply no reason for a browser to use 1GB of ram no matter how much caching is going on.

"'640K is more memory than anyone will ever need"

Wake up to the real world. As technology advances.... well, things are going to use up more resources to take advantage of better features. Period.

Feel free to go back to Windows 98 and Netscape. smh

 

[bignateyk]

Because it's full of memory leaks? If I leave firefox open for a week or so it will eventually be using 500+MB ram even after all the tabs are closed. I have to restart it every few days or it brings my computer to its knees.

 

[Crusty]

There is simply no reason for a browser to use 1GB of ram no matter how much caching is going on.

And this is why you do networks and don't write software.

 

[edro]

It's because you are still on IPv4 and you don't have Web 2.0 enabled.