addressing Firefox RAM usage...

[tami]

inspired by Koing's thread... i decided this question needs a thread of its own.

my FF on average consumes about 150-200MB of RAM. obviously, this is not optimal.

i continually have to close FF with all its open tabs and reopen it, only to have the RAM usage spike up not long afterwards anyway.

i'm not even using flash/dhtml/etc intensive web pages (and i'm using adblock to kill unnecessary flash ads anyway): i open gmail occasionally, but i am afraid that the constant refreshing affects the RAM. i have hotmail open, and anandtech, among some other pages that are similar in nature, but again, nothing extravagant so i can't see a memory leak coming from any of the pages i'm loading.

how does one fix this problem? how can i ensure that FF performs just as (or more) optimally, while at the same time, lowering the RAM usage?

 

[globalcitizen]

no tabbed browsing and remove all the extra extensions.

 

[CTho9305]

Surfing pages with lots of images?

 

[Smilin]

Are you sure you have a memory leak? High ram usage can be a perfectly healthy thing and a sign of an application that is well optimized.

Is your system as a whole getting low on memory? If so what is the indication that it is (perfmon, taskmgr)? What are the numbers?

 

[tfinch2]

Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I asked him about ram usage in the other thread, and he did mention that FF is using some crazy amount of ram and he gets bogged down with swapping.

 

[UCJefe]

That's my problem too. I really could care less how much RAM FF uses because like everyone says, RAM usage in and of itself is not a problem, but swapping is killing me. Every morning trying to restore FF from a minimized state it takes 30+ seconds. Even if I just minimize, do some work (CPU/RAM intensive work), and then try to get back to my browser it takes forever. This has been a huge area of frustration and has caused me to stop using FF 2 or 3 times now. I keep going back though because I WANT to use it but just can't. FF is the only app that has this problem.

 

[CTho9305]

Every morning trying to restore FF from a minimized state it takes 30+ seconds.

Mozilla products take a lot longer to come back from the swapfile than other apps. It's unfortunate.

Even if I just minimize, do some work (CPU/RAM intensive work), and then try to get back to my browser it takes forever.

see here

 

[tami]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I asked him about ram usage in the other thread, and he did mention that FF is using some crazy amount of ram and he gets bogged down with swapping.

you mean her.

tami is a female name. why do people fail to recognize that?

 

[tami]

in response to the questions and comments given so far in this thread:

1. what's the point of using FF without extensions+tabbed browsing? FF is a unique program in itself simply because of these features, especially tabbed browsing.

2. i'm not accessing any pages that are graphic intensive. i still don't understand this. i just opened a new FF window (the only FF window/tab i have open) just to read this thread and it's consuming 43MB of RAM.

3. unused RAM may be wasted RAM, but FF's RAM usage only increases until it slows my system to a crawl (at which point i have to close all my web pages, often losing track of what i've been doing). i want to keep it under control.

 

[bNeta86]

just use IE

 

[tami]

Originally posted by: bNeta86
just use IE

that's like telling users who experience windows crashes to use a mac.

please don't insult my intelligence.

thank you.

 

[Nothinman]

tami is a female name. why do people fail to recognize that?

Most people here don't use their real name and no offense, but I'm sure the majority of users here are male, so the assumption is that the person is male until told otherwise.

my FF on average consumes about 150-200MB of RAM. obviously, this is not optimal.

I have FF running on my work box using ~100M of memory with a dozen tabs or so. I just don't pay attention to it, since I have 1G memory it doesn't hurt anything. I just never minimize it so that I avoid the long restore times.

 

[tami]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

tami is a female name. why do people fail to recognize that?

Most people here don't use their real name and no offense, but I'm sure the majority of users here are male, so the assumption is that the person is male until told otherwise.

understandable (although if you frequent the ATOT forum, you may find pics and posts disproving the assumption)

I have FF running on my work box using ~100M of memory with a dozen tabs or so. I just don't pay attention to it, since I have 1G memory it doesn't hurt anything. I just never minimize it so that I avoid the long restore times.

shrug. this isn't my work box. this is my everyday laptop. i use it for everything. and when i find slowness in my system, it's because FF is consuming 250-300MB of RAM. (i have 512 here.)

 

[tami]

lemme reiterate my problem.

firefox consumes lots of RAM. i'm using a laptop with 512MB of RAM.

when a lot of RAM is being used (e.g. when i leave firefox on, such as overnight, since i don't reboot this machine often and really shouldn't have to), eventually, over time, my laptop gets heated up and i can hear the fan spinning more heavily than usual.

this often occurs when firefox is up and running for 5 days or so while consuming 200MB or so of RAM.

so... unused RAM may be wasted RAM, but too much RAM used is killing my computer.

what do i do?

 

[tungtung]

I think this is one of the weakness of Firefox that has not been corrected this far. However I think later version of FF is slightly better in this regard. Just browse around the web, you should be able to get some reference about FF and it's memory-leak problem.

I use version 1.0.1 now, and seems to be better ... I usually used about 10 tabs with approximately 60 MB memory being used. However I have never left FF open overnight so I don't really know how bad the problem gets if FF is left too long.

One thing I notice that FF always have problem is with websites that have lots of Flash animation, FF usually gets bogged down when I have several sites that have some Flash animations open.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: tungtung
I think this is one of the weakness of Firefox that has not been corrected this far. However I think later version of FF is slightly better in this regard. Just browse around the web, you should be able to get some reference about FF and it's memory-leak problem.

I use version 1.0.1 now, and seems to be better ... I usually used about 10 tabs with approximately 60 MB memory being used. However I have never left FF open overnight so I don't really know how bad the problem gets if FF is left too long.

One thing I notice that FF always have problem is with websites that have lots of Flash animation, FF usually gets bogged down when I have several sites that have some Flash animations open.

Please provide a link with information on a memory leak. Thanks.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: tami

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I asked him about ram usage in the other thread, and he did mention that FF is using some crazy amount of ram and he gets bogged down with swapping.

you mean her.

tami is a female name. why do people fail to recognize that?

Because I don't pay attention to screen names.