Why does FireFox take up so much memory?

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
97E-PF
Guest

Why does FireFox take up so much memory?

Post by 97E-PF »

at least 60+mb no matter how many tabs, etc.
Axord
Posts: 1072
Joined: February 3rd, 2004, 10:48 am

Post by Axord »

I've got 33mb right now with three tabs open. In general though, I agree that Firefox is a memory hog. It's something that the developers are working on.
97E-PF
Guest

Post by 97E-PF »

Axord wrote:I've got 33mb right now with three tabs open. In general though, I agree that Firefox is a memory hog. It's something that the developers are working on.
a lot of people i know are up in the 80mb range. seems to vaary all the time. its ridiculous. i have a killer system so it doesnt bother me too much, but unless im running a hog program it consistantly uses the most ram.
dthornburg
Posts: 9
Joined: March 19th, 2005, 10:45 pm

Post by dthornburg »

I was just checking on the process problem I was having and noticed mine was running 39mb's. Rather sizeable amount of memory.
dt
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

Firefox will grab what it can for performance reasons, and it is supposed to free it back up if other programs need it.

In other words, the more free RAM you have, the higher the memory used ammout you will see in task manager.
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

so, what you're saying mr guest, is that if I have a pc with 2gb ram with no other applications running, firefox is quite within it's right to take up 1.5gb of that memory to display 3 or four html pages?

just admit it, this is a weakness in an otherwise excellent product. firefox makes even the most powerful look short of resources.

I agree that Firefox is a memory hog. It's something that the developers are working on.


you're having a laugh. this has been talked about for over a year but they haven't even acknowledged it as a problem yet.
AnotherGuest
Guest

Post by AnotherGuest »

They have not only acknowledged problems, they have fixed many of them. The fixes will appear in the next release.

By the way, Fx generally does release memory as needed by other applications. On my 233 MHz Win 98SE machine I can load Fx with images, using hundreds of megabytes more than physical memory, and it barely slows down. Memory is quickly released to other applications and they run normally. It also behaves similarly on my Win XP Pro and NT machines. 40 to 100 MB is not at all unusual. I have no idea whether it really needs all that memory, but it does swap it out to disk as needed. In addition, in side-by-side tests with IE, in which both browsers are loaded up with many Web sites, users have reported that it uses slightly less than IE.

There are some known problems, however. Some users find that memory use grows slowly over a period of days to weeks. Some manage to load it up quickly. Those who want to keep Fx open forever find the SessionSaver extension to be helpful. They can save the current session, then close Fx and reopen it.
AnotherGuest
Guest

Post by AnotherGuest »

P.S.
Don't bother minimizing Fx to save on memory. The Task Manager doesn't show what you think it does. You can search the forum and waste your time and other users' time on all kinds of tweaks if you want. You could get lucky, or maybe the placebo effect will help, but honestly, you're probably better off just being happy and living with your free software. Use SessionSaver, and wait for the next version. (Disclosure: I haven't tried session saver but other people swear by it.)
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

I'm showing that IE6 is only using 10 to 20mb less than Firefox. So by comparing the two, firefox is not hogging all your memory. I'm willing to give up 10 or 20mb for a far better browser like Firefox.
puelly1
Guest

Post by puelly1 »

firefox.exe = 168,472K :(

I am using version 1.0.1
MC Escher
Posts: 22
Joined: September 18th, 2004, 3:57 am

Post by MC Escher »

I'm using Firefox on a laptop win Win98 SE machine with 64 MB ram, and when I have to load a page with a lot of images I have to do that in IE, because Firefox will slow down the machine a lot or just crash.
IE seems to simply stop loading images when out of RAM.
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Unclespellbinder
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Post by Unclespellbinder »

Anonymous wrote:I'm showing that IE6 is only using 10 to 20mb less than Firefox. So by comparing the two, firefox is not hogging all your memory. I'm willing to give up 10 or 20mb for a far better browser like Firefox.


You hit the nail squarely on the head.
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old FatJohn
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Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by old FatJohn »

97E-PF wrote:a lot of people i know are up in the 80mb range. seems to vaary all the time. its ridiculous. i have a killer system so it doesnt bother me too much, but unless im running a hog program it consistantly uses the most ram.


80 megabytz? OHNO - even my grannys puter would handle that easily!!!! Why would you like to have unused memory? Can't you just rip out your memory combs and store them to your drawer, if you want to be sure nothing is using that memory.

And this IE takes this much CPU cycles and memory while FX takes this much comparison is totally silly since most of IE is running all the time since it's integrated in windows OS. It never quits. How much memory does your windoze take? I'm sure that any given time it's way past 100 megs. Add the amoung IE seems to be using and you'll see who's the resource hog here... Get a clue people.

I don't get these people whining on this issue, if they have no problems. Stop whining!
anony
Guest

Wow...

Post by anony »

You are right... I've never noticed that before.

Interesting issue...

Mozilla FireFox RULEZ!!!!!!!!!
Knowledge Management
AnotherGuest.
Posts: 2158
Joined: December 22nd, 2004, 11:47 am

Post by AnotherGuest. »

MC Escher,
That's what virtual memory is for. Make sure you have lots and lots of virtual memory, or better yet, with Win 98SE, let Windows manage VM. That is the recommended setting on my Win 98SE. I have no trouble loading hundreds of megabytes of images, far in excess of total physical memory! I have 384 MB, and I loaded something like 500 MB of images from disk. Give it a try and see if it works.

Otherwise, you know 64 MB is kind of marginal considering that the OS takes most of that. If Fx doesn't get you, something else will. You might want to look for bargains in memory.

FatJohn,
Right on!
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