Why does memory usage for FireFox go up so much?

[Capt Caveman]

Actually, it does. The reason why browsers use so much memory is that they cache the history of each tab. Right now I probably have 20 tabs open and each tab probably had around 3 previous webpages open, so those are all stored in memory for faster back<->forward action.

But with Firefox, you also need to consider that Firefox.exe is not the only thing to look at. plugin-container.exe is the program is uses to contain plugins so them crashing doesn't bring down the browser. Right now I'm using 618MB of memory with Firefox and 595MB of memory with the Plugin Container.

The biggest problem I notice with FF is that if you leave it open for awhile, it is absolutely awful with Flash videos. The video begins to exhibit "micro-pauses" (only affecting the video, not the audio) and this problem only goes away when you close Firefox and reopen it. Because of this, I sometimes have to open Netflix in Chrome because FF will simply do those micro-pauses throughout an entire TV show or movie.

I have updated my FF config settings to not cache any history and it will still use a 1gb of page file. I don't mind it using RAM but when it starts getting to use that much page file, it slows the whole pc down.

 

[Ns1]

i'm glad i'm not the only one.

 

[darkxshade]

Would it be practical to spend upgrade money to buy a cheap 16GB SSD for example just for the pagefile, browser cache and what have you instead of RAM?

 

[Crusty]

Would it be practical to spend upgrade money to buy a cheap 16GB SSD for example just for the pagefile, browser cache and what have you instead of RAM?

It would be far better and far cheaper to just upgrade your RAM.

 

[lxskllr]

Would it be practical to spend upgrade money to buy a cheap 16GB SSD for example just for the pagefile, browser cache and what have you instead of RAM?

Ram is always better than storage, no matter the type.

 

[TwiceOver]

There's a reason we now need 12gb of ram to run a system.

 

[darkxshade]

Ram is always better than storage, no matter the type.

Well that's the thing, I'm no techie... so how much faster exactly is RAM over SSD? I know SSD is a major leap over HDDs but there comes a point where speed differences become unnoticable unless you're doing benchmarks. So then for me at least, it becomes a question of more capacity or more speed.

 

[bignateyk]

And this is why you do networks and don't write software.

And this is why you write software and don't design networks. If applications weren't so bloated and useless like, for example, flash and were actually efficient in what they do there's no way they would use so much memory.

 

[Crusty]

Well that's the thing, I'm no techie... so how much faster exactly is RAM over SSD? I know SSD is a major leap over HDDs but there comes a point where speed differences become unnoticable unless you're doing benchmarks. So then for me at least, it becomes a question of more capacity or more speed.

RAM transfer rates are measured in GB/s.

SSD transfer rates are measured in MB/s.

RAM access latency is measured in nanoseconds

SSD access latency is still measure in milliseconds.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Well that's the thing, I'm no techie... so how much faster exactly is RAM over SSD? I know SSD is a major leap over HDDs but there comes a point where speed differences become unnoticable unless you're doing benchmarks. So then for me at least, it becomes a question of more capacity or more speed.

A normal HDD is a fat obese dude plodding along on a treadmill.
An SSD is an Olympic Sprinter who just consumed a bunch of stimulants and is running at full speed
RAM is a Jet running on full afterburner.

There is a massive difference.

 

[lxskllr]

A normal HDD is a fat obese dude plodding along on a treadmill.
An SSD is an Olympic Sprinter who just consumed a bunch of stimulants and is running at full speed
RAM is a Jet running on full afterburner.

There is a massive difference.

:^D

That's a pretty good analogy.

 

[Capt Caveman]

It would be far better and far cheaper to just upgrade your RAM.

Except, FF and other apps will still use your pagefile.

 

[SunnyD]

XML DOM. Enough said.

 

[Bateluer]

Buy more RAM. Honestly, I can't think of much reason to run less than 4GB unless there's special hardware limitations.

Then again, I don't think a netbook is going to benefit from 4GB anyway.

 

[Crusty]

Except, FF and other apps will still use your pagefile.

Go read up on Virtual Memory. FF does not know nor does it care that some of it's data is stored in the pagefile. Virtual Memory is managed by your OS kernel and decides when and where to put things, NOT the process that is using the data.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Go read up on Virtual Memory. FF does not know nor does it care that some of it's data is stored in the pagefile. Virtual Memory is managed by your OS kernel and decides when and where to put things, NOT the process that is using the data.

With both Windows XP 32bit and Windows 7 64-bit, I've disabled paging executive and LargeSystemCache. I have also reduced my virtual memory to 128mb but Windows will give me an alert that my virtual memory is too low and will bump it up to over 1gb even with 2gb+ of free RAM.

 

[Crusty]

With both Windows XP 32bit and Windows 7 64-bit, I've disabled paging executive and LargeSystemCache. I have also reduced my virtual memory to 128mb but Windows will give me an alert that my virtual memory is too low and will bump it up to over 1gb even with 2gb+ of free RAM.

And the problem is? Go read up on Virtual Memory, you're not understanding the point of it at all.

edit: part of the problem is that windows uses the wrong terminology. What it calls 'virtual memory' is not in fact what real virtual memory is.

 

[Capt Caveman]

And the problem is? Go read up on Virtual Memory, you're not understanding the point of it at all.

edit: part of the problem is that windows uses the wrong terminology. What it calls 'virtual memory' is not in fact what real virtual memory is.

It's not using free RAM but using the page file on my hdd, slowing down performance. You don't seem to understand the problem.

 

[vailr]

I agree that Firefox needs to address their memory hog problem.
With over a dozen tabs open (I do a lot of online sweeps entries), there's often 1.4 Gb of memory in use by Firefox.
You can exit from Firefox completely, and it still takes another 10 or 15 seconds for Task Manager to show that firefox.exe has quit using any memory.

 

[spidey07]

I agree that Firefox needs to address their memory hog problem.
With over a dozen tabs open (I do a lot of online sweeps entries), there's often 1.4 Gb of memory in use by Firefox.
You can exit from Firefox completely, and it still takes another 10 or 15 seconds for Task Manager to show that firefox.exe has quit using any memory.

That's how long it takes windows to clean up all the shit it left behind in memory. Whenever my computer is running slow the first thing I do is shut down firefox and everything is all better because of the massive amount of memory it has gobbled up.

 

[vshah]

you could try setting browser.cache.memory.capacity in about:config to something like 15000 or 20000

 

[pcslookout]

I disagree.

Firefox Beta 10 running just fine. Firefox 3.6 would always crash once it got to 1.1 to 1.3 GB of ram usage. I don't care how much ram my browser uses as long as it works smoothly.

 

[Ronstang]

I have two windows of FF open with a combined 33 tabs and am using about 370 megs of memory. I have 8 gigs on a 64 bit system, what is the worry?

 

[Minjin]

I generally wait till FF gets up to about 1 GB before I close it down and restart it. Happens a few times a day. Chrome runs javascript and flash better and seems to consume less memory but it is missing some critical extensions that I use so I stick to FF as my primary.

 

[brianmanahan]

if you work at a place that puts 1gb RAM in their boxes

quit