Firefox Ram Hungry

[Stabbo-Lad]

Hi all,

Just bought a new PC and thought I'd give Firefox a try as most of you guys rave about it. Not sure if I'm won over yet; seems a bit slower than IE7. But the main gripe is its using 150MB of RAM with just three tabs open. Is that normal? I thought IE7 was hungry at 70MB but double that seems way too high.

Anything settings I need to change to get it lower?

SL.

[astral]

I am running IE7 at the moment with 4 windows open and it is also showing 150MB usage

Closing one window only dropped that to 147Mb.

I cannot use FF at the moment, the company proxy does not permit,

but running the basic programme with only one blank page showing uses 27Mb.

Back home and have FF running with 3 windows, 50Mb

[cdnvic]

Try running Firetune over it to tweak your settings and speed it up then see if there's improvement.

[Nikkijah]

I am running IE7 at the moment with 4 windows open and it is also showing 150MB usage

Closing one window only dropped that to 147Mb.

I cannot use FF at the moment, the company proxy does not permit,

but running the basic programme with only one blank page showing uses 27Mb.

Back home and have FF running with 3 windows, 50Mb

Interesting, I'm using FF with only 2 tabs and it is using 94MB!!!! Why is it using so much???

[Nikkijah]

Try running Firetune over it to tweak your settings and speed it up then see if there's improvement.

I've just used the FireTune tool and now FF is using 55MB but the usage figure usually rises until I shut down

[cdnvic]

Go to tools/options/advanced and have your cache size set to max 10mb.

[Nikkijah]

Go to tools/options/advanced and have your cache size set to max 10mb.

it was set at 50

now it's using 52,168 k

should it be that high?

[cdnvic]

I get much faster performance with a small cache (10mb). It's much less info for the browser to parse through everytime it loads a page.

[waldwolf]

Stabbo-Lad & Nikkijah - This quirk in Firefox (FF) has been "noted" by many others and it appears there could be a number of causes, including FF's reluctance to release unused memory. A number of people have noted that, when comparing FF to IE, when a window is closed IE will release memory immediately, while FF doesn't. However, with the same number of windows/tabs open, IE uses slightly more memory than FF.

Suggest you review info in these links for additional ideas: 1 and 2 .

waldwolf

Edited May 17, 2007 by waldwolf

[Stabbo-Lad]

Try running Firetune over it to tweak your settings and speed it up then see if there's improvement.

Noticeable difference. Quicker and currently using 98Mb with 5 tabs open. I've just changed my cache size to 10 (was 50) so hopefully that will also help.

Thanks a lot!

SL.

[octagon]

May I suggest trying Opera? It's fast, clean, and full-featured. I used to use Firefox, but after a few hours with Opera, I never went back.

Edited May 18, 2007 by octagon

[Firefoxx]

It depends. I've used firefox to open certain webs, and the memory usage kept increasing nonstop. After leaving the computer on overnight, it reached nearly a gig, and was causing problems with my page file. Of course, this is only with certain (very few) webs. Doesn't matter how many tabs I have open (usually around 20). Normally it uses around 150-200MB, which is OK with me for 20 tabs, and since I have 2GB of physical memory.

IE, OTOH, also seems to want to do this, and this time on pretty much every web page. The memory usage will keep increasing around 100k at a time, and tops out at around 150MB. Since I'm not using tabbed IE, having multiple IE windows open can be a real memory hog.