SillyDog701

[Mandrake]

For the record that is Firefox 3.5 using over 1GB of memory. That's just insane. I did have about thirty tabs open simultaneously over two windows but that isn't too far from the norm for me.

I guess this is why i need so much RAM.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[James]

With that many tabs and windows open, Mandrake, what would be the memory usage of Opera? Chrome? IE?

I think it's premature to say that FF is a memory hog if these other browsers have been untested using the same demand for memory.

I'm very curious what the outcome might be.

Thanks for sharing.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6

[Mandrake]

That's a very interesting point James. I only have Firefox and IE installed so I did a quick test in IE8 with the same number of tabs. Obviously I don't remember exactly all the tabs I had open earlier, but I've tried to get as close as possible.



IE opens a ton of different processes, the total is just shy of 1GB according to my quick calculations. Perhaps I should change my conclusion to stat that 'Modern web browsers sure love to eat RAM!'.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; Creative AutoUpdate v1.40.01)

[Fulvio]

I have come to the conclusion that Firefox 3.5.x is almost unusable in my puny computer, with anything else running. It barely comes into view, and I have to do all sorts of tricks to get it going. I have two tabs to start, and nine addons, a few of which will be uninstalled or disabled, as they do nothing. I remember the days when I upgraded my old computer RAM to 256MB to be able run the old Nescape or Mozilla. With 512MB, Firefox 3.5.x takes over two minutes to load. I have the Task Manager opened to see if anything happens. The first time, it went up to 73 MB memory usage, dropping off to 66, and never showing up. I killed the application, and it, slowly loaded to over 100MB, before showing up. I used to open a tab in the same window, but nothing happens, so I have to open a new tab.
I, never, use, intentionally IE8, and don't have Opera. However, Google Chrome is well behaved (as well as Firefox3.0.16. Not too sure about the latter). Under what conditions is 3.5 faster than 3.0?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8pre) Gecko/20100102 Shiretoko/3.5.8pre

[iJohnE]

Yeah, FF 3.5 usually eats my ram and throws my Core 2 Duo into 100% usage. The 64-bit version is even worse.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.16) Gecko/2009120208 Firefox/3.0.16 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[iJohnE]

Pulvio, I feel your pain. My Dell Dimension 8250 only has 256MB of RAM, and it used to have 128 not to long ago. Firefox is barely usable on it. Chrome plays nice though.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.16) Gecko/2009120208 Firefox/3.0.16 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[Mandrake]

I have come to the conclusion that Firefox 3.5.x is almost unusable in my puny computer, with anything else running. It barely comes into view, and I have to do all sorts of tricks to get it going. I have two tabs to start, and nine addons, a few of which will be uninstalled or disabled, as they do nothing. I remember the days when I upgraded my old computer RAM to 256MB to be able run the old Nescape or Mozilla. With 512MB, Firefox 3.5.x takes over two minutes to load. I have the Task Manager opened to see if anything happens. The first time, it went up to 73 MB memory usage, dropping off to 66, and never showing up. I killed the application, and it, slowly loaded to over 100MB, before showing up. I used to open a tab in the same window, but nothing happens, so I have to open a new tab.
I, never, use, intentionally IE8, and don't have Opera. However, Google Chrome is well behaved (as well as Firefox3.0.16. Not too sure about the latter). Under what conditions is 3.5 faster than 3.0?

Provided your system can handle Firefox 3.5, which is usually just a matter of having enough RAM, the updates to the rendering engine are pretty significant (especially in terms of Javascript) and result in a pretty substantial increase in rendering speed. How old is your system Fulvio? You could probably do a cheap upgrade of the RAM by yourself, it's not a difficult procedure. Even with Windows XP 512MB ram really isn't enough these days. You'd see a huge jump in system responsiveness with at least 1GB (or even 2GB) of RAM.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[iJohnE]

A RAM upgrade is a wonderful idea. Except my max is 1GB unless I can find 4 sticks of 512MB PC800 RDRAM.

Even with Windows XP it seems these days that below 1GB is just not cutting it.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/532.0 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/3.0.195.38 Safari/532.0

[Fulvio]

I understand, but, for now I will have to live with this. My system is nearly six years old, and, almost, exactly, one year ago, my system was almost dead. But, I did not want Vista, and I had a warranty on my machine. It took a while, but it was fixed. I had been blaming the repairs, while it seems to be more of a case of development which makes older systems obsolete. Of the two existing tabs, only one has loaded in 5 min. Another one has, still, a blank page, and another one, beside this is blank, as well. But, I can load the pages, almost, instantly, if Reload, or stop loading, and start again. I don't understand this, but I have had to use these tricks to get anywhere with Firefox3.5 or Seamonkey 2.0.

Note: my post did not go through, until I reload the page! And, transferring from sillygog.org is always incomplete.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8pre) Gecko/20100102 Shiretoko/3.5.8pre

[James]

Why not look at a netbook or an e-machine, Fulvio? They've come a long way, are relatively inexpensive and are reasonably fast.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6

[Antony]

From my experience, Firefox uses less memory than Safari.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6

[iJohnE]

Safari on Windows is light. Slow at page rendering, but light on the hardware. On the macs at school, especially the PowerPC ones it's a huge resource hog. Kind of ironic no?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.16) Gecko/2009120208 Firefox/3.0.16 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[Fulvio]

Why not look at a netbook or an e-machine, Fulvio? They've come a long way, are relatively inexpensive and are reasonably fast.

I have an emachine, though old. It works fine, in every way, although I must play tricks to have it behave with Firefox. I am not ready to invest in a new computer with this.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8pre) Gecko/20100102 SeaMonkey/2.0.2pre

[James]

Well... if you're not ready for a new computer and if the computer you currently run is old and cannot be updated (in terms of adding more memory) then you're going to have to put up with what it can and cannot do. And one of those issues will be keeping as few tabs open as possible, getting rid of things that require memory (why not go back to the Classic GUI which requires very little memory to run?) and simplify (few "if any" extensions). I firmly believe that downloading all these browsers and nightlies that you have done for years has left behind all sorts of files that have probably had an effect on the efficiency of your machine. If you insist on testing everything that is "right out of the gate" there's bound to be a price to pay and it's evident, Fulvio, in the issues you've reported here over the years. I congratulate you on being willing to test things. Hey... we need folks who are willing to mess about with the latest versions of programs. But generally folks do this on test machines and not their main computer for the simple reason that these betas and alphas have bugs and will eventually impact one's machine.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.6) Gecko/20091201 Firefox/3.5.6

[Fulvio]

I firmly believe that downloading all these browsers and nightlies that you have done for years has left behind all sorts of files that have probably had an effect on the efficiency of your machine.

Same old arguments. I suppose that you must think that the simple act of downloading, and using nightlies have a deleterious effect. I never install them, as I work from the unzipped program. When I am done, I delete the files. Nothing, ever, was in my Add/Remove. And, I clean up my Registry, just in case. Each version uses its own profile, so I don't see a possibility of cross-contamination, or whatever is in your mind.
At this point, I have four Firefox versions. 3.0.16 is installed, the other three are not.
I have no issues with 3.0.16.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.8pre) Gecko/20100102 Shiretoko/3.5.8pre