Is Firefox Really a Memory Hog?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Howard Schwartz
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Howard Schwartz

I have been using firefox for quite a while. On my win98 OS, it loads at a
hefty 20 to 25Megs of ram which seems to be a lot. Some say, IE
seems to use less memory because so much of it is already loaded as part of
the OS. Others say - this may be true -- but it is also true that Firefox
is a real, genuine memory hog. I wonder which is it?
 
I think you're right in the first suggestion.

You can get https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffpreloader/ Firefox
Preloader which does the same thing.

Also, you can follow this guide..
http://codebetter.com/blogs/darrell.norton/archive/2005/01/28/48720.aspx

If you type about:config into a new tab, then you can alter the
following..

browser.cache.disk.capacity (lower number the less memory taken)

browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers (firefox takes up memory to
allow the new fangled 'fast forward/backward' history. Setting this
value to 0 effectively disables this, and releases more memory.
 
DDR-RAM chips are so cheap these days. Why complaining about this?


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Man-wai Chang said:
DDR-RAM chips are so cheap these days. Why complaining about this?
Click to expand...
IF you are so serious about RAM usage, don't use graphical browsers.
You don't need fonts. You only need to read the english words. :)

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^ ^ 20:54:01 up 3 days 23:33 load average: 1.00 1.00 1.00
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I have been using firefox for quite a while. On my win98 OS, it loads at a
hefty 20 to 25Megs of ram which seems to be a lot. Some say, IE
seems to use less memory because so much of it is already loaded as part of
the OS. Others say - this may be true -- but it is also true that Firefox
is a real, genuine memory hog. I wonder which is it?
Click to expand...

As a lot of OpenSource software, Firefox IS hungry of system resources
(1). It is still not optimised, and I doubt it will be. But the time
when browsers used less that 20 MB of memory is long over.

I'd suggest investing into additional memory into your system, becaus
things won't get any smaller :o)

Ivan.

(1) there was a recent test which office suite uses more memory, MS
Office or Open Office, and it was clear that Open Ofice uses more
memory on same set of files opened.
Also, whenever I used some OS software, it used more memory than I
think it should. I guess days of assembler programming and code
optimising are over :o)

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I have been using firefox for quite a while. On my win98 OS, it loads at a
hefty 20 to 25Megs of ram which seems to be a lot. Some say, IE
seems to use less memory because so much of it is already loaded as part of
the OS. Others say - this may be true -- but it is also true that Firefox
is a real, genuine memory hog. I wonder which is it?
Click to expand...

Firefox 1.5 uses memory in proportion to what's available on your system.
Depending on how much ram you have, it will store a certain number of pages
in memory to achieve the faster forward/back caching. On my Win2k with
512mb ram, Firefox will use between 50-60mb ram consistently. I have not
seen it rise above 60 ever, even after hours or days of use. On systems
with less ram, I suspect it will use a little less. But in general, you
can expect it to use a fair share of ram yes. With IE, I believe parts are
already loaded with the OS, so you won't see such high usage in Task
Manager, or at least that's the story everyone tells. There are some
about:config tweaks to adjust ram usage I believe, as there are ways to
adjust it in Opera too. But in general, you can probably expect the modern
browsers to use more ram than IE.
 
Howard said:
I have been using firefox for quite a while. On my win98 OS, it loads
at a hefty 20 to 25Megs of ram which seems to be a lot. Some say, IE
seems to use less memory because so much of it is already loaded as
part of the OS. Others say - this may be true -- but it is also true
that Firefox is a real, genuine memory hog. I wonder which is it?
Click to expand...

If memory serves, Mozilla recently admitted that Firefox can have
memory leak/use problems. It's still an excellent browser though.
 
If memory serves, Mozilla recently admitted that Firefox can have
memory leak/use problems. It's still an excellent browser though.
Click to expand...


I had problems with earlier versions on a system with 256Kb ram.
Refreshing pages seems to exacerbate the problem, upping the ram usage
each time until the system crashed ( and it didn't take long ).
The addition of another 256Kb of ram hasn't made the problem go away,
but it's at least given Firefox a bit more to play with, and I'm
usually done with my browsing before the system goes critical.

An upgrade to V1.5 on a different machine shows a marked improvement
in resource management.

Regards,
 
Howard Schwartz said:
I have been using firefox for quite a while. On my win98 OS, it loads at a
hefty 20 to 25Megs of ram which seems to be a lot
Click to expand...

You may want to have a look at K-Meleon (also Gecko based), which uses
12.5 (no pages loaded) tot 25 Mb (8 tabs, 8 different pages) on my W2K
system.

Tim
 
You may want to have a look at K-Meleon (also Gecko based), which uses
12.5 (no pages loaded) tot 25 Mb (8 tabs, 8 different pages) on my W2K
system.

Tim
Click to expand...

I'm on Win2k also and found K-Meleon to be almost the same as Firefox. In
fact, looking in Task Manager at Peak memory usage I saw it hit 260mb,
which was wildly higher than Firefox or SeaMonkey. That's Peak though, not
normal usage. Normal usage for me was around 48-50mb, window mode only, no
layers etc.
 
Steve H skrev:
I had problems with earlier versions on a system with 256Kb ram.
Refreshing pages seems to exacerbate the problem, upping the ram usage
each time until the system crashed ( and it didn't take long ).
The addition of another 256Kb of ram hasn't made the problem go away,
but it's at least given Firefox a bit more to play with, and I'm
usually done with my browsing before the system goes critical.
Click to expand...

I believe the general consensus is that 640 kB is enough.
 
Memory leaks have been fixed with the latest release 1.5.0.1 ....1.0.7
was fully stable with no memory leaks... it as only the release 1.5
which had bugs
 
"kenny/John Jay Smith/john" <-> wrote in
Trash firefox and use www.
Click to expand...

[snip]

But, kenny, your website still gives Firefox five stars (the max),
calls Firefox "great", and has a Firefox button on the main page.

Last time you tried this particulary weak and hypocritical (even for
you) form of trolling, you ended up apologizing to the group. Why
are you at it again? And why did you morph again?
Disclaimer: This info is given "as is".
If you do not like the content or attitude of my posts,
please put me on your ignore list or dont read my posts.
Click to expand...

If you add a disclaimer saying that what you post is misinformation,
you might get your expressed wish to be ignored. Otherwise, people
will occasionally have to followup to point it out.
 
DDR-RAM chips are so cheap these days. Why complaining about this?
Click to expand...

I knew one or more people would say, ``disk and ram memory is cheap; so why
worry?'. I am constitutionally incapable of encouraging bad inefficient
programming, just because hardware capabilities have, as of now,
outstripped software needs. It offends my general sense of asthetics.

It also smites of something similar like, ``crude oil is cheap; why not
make more big SVUs?''
 
F you are so serious about RAM usage, don't use graphical browsers.
You don't need fonts. You only need to read the english words. :)
Click to expand...

Indeed, I still use the time honored, Lynx from the Unix world. But,
perhaps the majority of web pages DO contain pictures, graphs, and
other graphical material. Alas, it is so easy for a web designer to
throw in a picture here and there, that text based browsers like Lynx can
now longer render the non-graphic information in some sensible way on the
screen, for many many web pages.

Once upon a time, Web designers actually took non graphics browsers into
account when designing a web page. I think that time is past.
 
I knew one or more people would say, ``disk and ram memory is cheap; so why
worry?'. I am constitutionally incapable of encouraging bad inefficient
programming, just because hardware capabilities have, as of now,
outstripped software needs. It offends my general sense of asthetics.

It also smites of something similar like, ``crude oil is cheap; why not
make more big SVUs?''
Click to expand...

Sounds like you'd be happier back in the good old Ms-Dos days where
programmers counted every byte. But alas, that isn't the reality of
things anymore...
 
I knew one or more people would say, ``disk and ram memory is cheap; so why
worry?'. I am constitutionally incapable of encouraging bad inefficient
programming, just because hardware capabilities have, as of now,
outstripped software needs. It offends my general sense of asthetics.

It also smites of something similar like, ``crude oil is cheap; why not
make more big SVUs?''
Click to expand...
Ah! The American way!
 
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