Why does memory usage for FireFox go up so much?

[pcslookout]

I have two windows of FF open with a combined 33 tabs and am using about 370 megs of memory. I have 8 gigs on a 64 bit system, what is the worry?

Which version of Firefox?

 

[pcslookout]

if you work at a place that puts 1gb RAM in their boxes

quit

1 GB is plenty.

 

[brianmanahan]

1 GB is plenty.

not if you do any sort of real work

 

[bruceb]

My computers run 512MB of RAM and with Firefox 3.6.15 seems to be enough. But I do have 2 questions

1): Does Firefox use less Memory if you open a New Tab as opposed to a New window?

2): How is the memory useage of the new Firefox 4 as compared to Firefox 3 ?
Better or worse ?

Thanks

 

[Soundmanred]

eye luk up howe 2 rite pomes an my gygabites r like 300

 

[bfdd]

because FF is shitty and has had this issue for YEARS which is main reason I don't use it.

 

[Zebo]

Who cares? I mean really ram is like $12 a GB. I don't even use a page file.

 

[bommy261]

memory is balls cheap. people are practically giving away 1gb sticks of the stuff...

 

[M0RPH]

I have to say I think you guys are full of crap about Firefox being a memory hog... at least if we are talking about 3.6. I have done comparisons in the past and as you start opening lots of tabs Chrome and IE tend to use more memory than FF since they run all their tabs in a seperate process.

So if you're gonna complain about FF memory use, how about actually doing some tests and presenting some numbers? It's not like it's difficult to do... open up the exact same sites in each browser and check the memory usage. Make sure you're counting ALL the processes for IE and Chrome.

 

[Ns1]

Not in a position to have IE tabs @ work.

 

[bfdd]

TBH Ns1, that resembles more along the lines of what I have seen from browser usage than not. I've had less problems with IE eating up memory in short periods of time than FF for years. I still used FF over IE for other reasons though. Hell I switched to Opera for awhile due to the memory leaks.

 

[Ns1]

TBH Ns1, that resembles more along the lines of what I have seen from browser usage than not. I've had less problems with IE eating up memory in short periods of time than FF for years. I still used FF over IE for other reasons though. Hell I switched to Opera for awhile due to the memory leaks.

that's a small loadout, 1 tab too. At home when I'm @ 10-20+ tabs....

 

[spidey07]

I think I set a record today. My computer was running like crap and sure enough, FF had 2.7 Gigabytes of memory. Ridiculous.

 

[bfdd]

I think I set a record today. My computer was running like crap and sure enough, FF had 2.7 Gigabytes of memory. Ridiculous.

2.7gb? has me beat, I think the largest I've ever seen was right at 2gb.

 

[M0RPH]

Let's talk about typical usage, not just one tab open. Here I opened 8 tabs in each browser with these sites:
yahoo.com, anandtech.com, ebay.com, imdb.com, newegg.com, bing.com, dominos.com, facebook.com



Chrome is roughly 225(?) and Firefox 3.6 at 70. Pretty big win for FF.

So let's see your numbers guys? Using whatever browser you thinks uses less memory than FF.

That's Tor browser FF btw.

And yes, I realize the claim is that FF leaks over time, but how long do I have to run these browsers before Chrome even manages to close that gap?

 

[her209]

I turned off disk caching and enable memory caching only. Pure win!

 

[Ns1]

Let's talk about typical usage, not just one tab open.

1 tab open could and should be considered typical usage.....

that said I'll be happy to open up 10 tabs when I get home and post up a pic.

 

[pcslookout]

Let's talk about typical usage, not just one tab open. Here I opened 8 tabs in each browser with these sites:
yahoo.com, anandtech.com, ebay.com, imdb.com, newegg.com, bing.com, dominos.com, facebook.com



Chrome is roughly 225(?) and Firefox 3.6 at 70. Pretty big win for FF.

So let's see your numbers guys? Using whatever browser you thinks uses less memory than FF.

That's Tor browser FF btw.

And yes, I realize the claim is that FF leaks over time, but how long do I have to run these browsers before Chrome even manages to close that gap?

Thank you for proving this topic wrong.

Firefox does not leak over time though. Not even Firefox 4. I kept it open before for days.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Thank you for proving this topic wrong.

Firefox does not leak over time though. Not even Firefox 4. I kept it open before for days.

Depends what you have open. Over the course of a day, my FF will grow from 250mb to 1gb. Need to restart it a couple of times a day.

 

[destrekor]

Thank you for proving this topic wrong.

Firefox does not leak over time though. Not even Firefox 4. I kept it open before for days.

I'm not doing anything on Firefox at the moment (I am using both Opera 11 and Firefox 4 RC, though through yesterday I had been using 3.6.6 or whatever was latest)... and yet, I open task manager and memory usage is climbing.
I haven't touched firefox in a few hours, and memory usage has climbed 300mb.

hmm?
Opera has too, so it's not like anything is better. I saw it in Chrome, and I've seen it in IE9.

 

[0roo0roo]

eh just live with it, i've tried chrome and it bloats up with many tabs as well.
using firefox and 68 tabs, 1 day 494mb so far, it will bloat up to 800+ eventually. i carry over the same session from long ago so tabs build up, and doesn't really matter these days with so much ram avaliable. i use bar tab extension which in theory only loads the tabs you click on or the ones around them, so most the tabs probably aren't loaded, but these days it is a bit broken and just seems like a progressive loader, speeds up startup but it looks like all the tabs are loaded.. no script helps as well.

 

[arkcom]

Been using Chrome since posting in this thread. It isn't any better. I left CCC in the shot because I thought that was pretty bad too.

 

[pcslookout]

Been using Chrome since posting in this thread. It isn't any better. I left CCC in the shot because I thought that was pretty bad too.

Why do you install CCC ? You don't have to.

 

[pcslookout]

I just made a screenshot of my current Firefox 4 RC that I am running with more tabs than you are I believe, 104 to be exact. No problems and not even 1 GB of ram usage.

 

[destrekor]

I just made a screenshot of my current Firefox 4 RC that I am running with more tabs than you are I believe, 104 to be exact. No problems and not even 1 GB of ram usage.

how long has it been running with that many tabs?

I am willing to bet if you let it go longer, the memory usage would have been higher.