Why does Firefox use so much memory?

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Sabrewulf165

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Now don't get me wrong, I love Firefox, and you couldn't pay me to use IE as my primary browser, but I've always wondered why Firefox uses so much more memory than IE. On my system with both browsers running, all caches/cookies/files cleared, just one tab/window open, sitting at Google.com, Firefox is using just over 40 MB vs IE's 18.5. This is for IE6 vs FF2. Any thoughts?
 
Some evil tongues may suggest that a lot of the memory that IE uses is "hidden" due to its OS integration.
 
firefox doesn't seem that stable in vista for me. my system slowyly degrades when it is active. I am doing tests to see if ie7 does it. So far I regrettably have to say that ie7 is more stable. also mouse wheel scrolling is broken in vista in firefox.
 
Here is a screenshot of my task manager, I have the same page open on both firefox and ie7:
firefoxvsiegu3.jpg
 
drizzt81 said:
Some evil tongues may suggest that a lot of the memory that IE uses is "hidden" due to its OS integration.
Click to expand...

I'm not one of the "M$" people but I'd say this is the logical answer.

Also:

Firefox is configured by default to use more memory on systems that have more memory available and less on systems with less.
Click to expand...

From:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_(Firefox

It also uses the memory for cache more so than IE.

More info here:

http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/memusage.html#about-intro
 
bendit said:
firefox doesn't seem that stable in vista for me. my system slowyly degrades when it is active. I am doing tests to see if ie7 does it. So far I regrettably have to say that ie7 is more stable. also mouse wheel scrolling is broken in vista in firefox.
Click to expand...

Mouse wheeling is certainly not broken, running 2 separate vista systems without incident, one of which is only RC2.
 
Firefox2 had a lot of memory leaks fixed. Of course, the more extensions you have installed, likely the more memory it's gonna use. Also, having Flash or Java running tends to up the memory as well. And then there's having a lot of tabs open.

Other than that it's fine! :D
 
I'm not using FF2, and there's definitely a mean memory leak present. I have plenty of ram, so I don't sweat it much, but it pisses me off a bit because when it starts to use about 500mb it doesn't matter if I close every tab but one, the memory useage doesn't decrease much.
 
drizzt81 said:
Didn't someone just say that they fixed a lot of memory leaks in FF2?
yeah two posts up:
Click to expand...

I never questioned the fact that they fixed some memory leaks in v2. I'm just stating my experiences. FF2 fixed the memory leaks, but from what I've read, broke some other things. And I'll take an old demon over a new god in this case.
 
Man I just opened my FF2 and it is using up 74meg already......
 
Hah, I remember last year when I left for spring break I left my computer running for a week, the only two programs that crapped out were Outlook and Firefox. Outlook was probably mad that FireFox's memory usage had grown include most of my available physical memory :eek:
 
If you guys are that worried about a program taking up <100mb of RAM than maybe you should get more memory?

;)
 
Hey, I had 2 GB back then, if not the 4 GB I have now. Just by virtue of sitting there, Firefox decided to slowly take over all the available RAM. Hopefully these problems have been fixed in FF2. I guess I'll find out come spring break :)
 
matt fury said:
FF2 fixed the memory leaks, but from what I've read, broke some other things. And I'll take an old demon over a new god in this case.
Click to expand...

Broke things like what? I'll give you extension compatibility. Quite a few from FF1.x still haven't been updated, but a lot have and are now compatible.

It's kind of silly to complain about an older version of a program leaking memory when the newest version had many of the leaks patched up.

I was mad when several of my extensions were no longer compatible, including my theme. Then I realized that they're no longer compatible because the code was probably cleaned up and made more efficient. If such is true, then I'm glad to be using FF2.

You could try FF3 Alpha. I'm not sure how many compatible extensions there are though.
 
On my old Barton 2500+, when I was playing a game, sometimes I got massive FPS lag randomly. Every time that happened, I ctrl-alt-del and ended the Firefox process. The lag _always_ went away after that. It still happens on my friend's computer, and whenever he gets FPS lag, he knows its the Firefox.

Since my new rig, I haven't had any experiences with that, but yeah, it does use a lot of memory.

Oh, and all the systems were using FF2.
 
I'm running FF2 on an Athlon XP 3000+ with 1GB Corsair Value on an Abit NF7-S V2. It uses a lot less memory than FF1.x did, and as far as I can remember I've never had to manually end the process.

Guess YMMV with Firefox.


Shouldn't this be in General Software?
 
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