Comparing Memory Usage of Firefox 2 vs 3

DaMan writes "ZDNet picks up on yesterday's Firefox 3 beta 1 review by comparing the memory usage of Firefox 2 against the latest beta. The results from one of the tests is quite interesting, after loading 12 pages and waiting 5 minutes, 2 used 103,180KB and 3 used 62,312KB. IE used 89,756KB.""

Comments

And Opera

[Anonymous Coward]

is using 34mb (winXP)

Re:And Opera

[CastrTroy]

Not raw like your camera raw, but raw uncompressed format. All those JPGs and GIFs and PNGs must be converted to raw or bitmap files to display them on the screen.

Re:And Opera

[LizardKing]

The "w3" web browser extension for Emacs can display images.

Re:And Opera

[daniel_newton]

plugins (dlls) generally run in-process

Re:And Opera

[rtaylor]

Unfortunately that is an operating system problem.

We need a way to tell the operating system that some memory is important and other segments can be dropped at any time (cached or precalculated data) provided the application is told so it can rebuild it when necessary.

The OS scheduler would choose which applications are idle to the user and dump some of the applications data.

How are they measuring?

[MyLongNickName]

Are they using the handy dandy Task Manager? If so, this is not even remotely accurate. In the age of managed memory, this is an estimate at best. Don't believe me. Open up internet explorer, run it a while and look at the memory usage. Now minimize IE. Watch the number drop like a lead balloon.

Re:How are they measuring?

[volpe]

When you minimize, the working set size is reduced. This causes pages to be swapped out to the pagefile. When you maximize (or restore), the working set size is increased, meaning that the application is *allowed* to use more physical memory, but that doesn't mean it's going to immediately start loading back the same pages it swapped out. It's going to wait for page faults to compel it to do so. That is why #6 is lower than #2.

Re:not to point out the obvious

[ceejayoz]

From the article:

Both Firefox 2.0.0.9 and Firefox 3.0 b 1 were installed fresh using a standard install.

Re:Strange, 1p/10 mins more than 12pp/5 mins?

[stony3k]

Form the tests that the developers have been running, most of the memory leaks in Firefox itself seem to be fixed (there are probably still some left). However, memory usage still remains a problem. I think this blog post summarizes their findings. They've been using dtrace and other tools to find out exactly what is going on.

Unfortunately, I think the damage to Firefox's reputation is already done. There are many people who have had negative experiences with Firefox who keep on harping about the "memory leaks" and I don't see how Mozilla devs can change this public perception.

Re:Yes, but... looking in the wrong spot! :)

[damaki]

Here is what you are searching for : http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/processexplorer.mspx

Re:Memory still an issue for me...

[magicsquid]

I wish I had mod points, because this needs to be brought to people's attention. Everyone seems to be claiming victory over the memory bugs, but for me (and you and many others) there are still random problems.

My system exhibits the exact same problem you describe. My Firefox will spike from around 66 MB of RAM usage to 700 then 800 then 900 and will just sit there chewing up more RAM until I kill it. I'd love to know the cause and even better, the solution to this problem.

It is happening in FF2 and in the 3 Beta. It doesn't happen on the same site every time. It happens most frequently when using JavaScript, but not always. I can't seem to narrow it down unfortunately.

Just did this test in linux

[Adult film producer]

FC 6 .. kernel 2.6.22.. Firefox 1.5.0.12 vs 3.0b1

I created a new user, logged in and loaded up FF 1.5.. opened up 12 tabs and logged into these sites

www.bbc.co.uk
www.slashdot.org
www.dailykos.com
www.news.com
www.abc.com
www.foxnews.com
www.freep.com
www.youtube.com
www.youporn.com
www.liveleak.com
www.rawstory.com
www.drudge.com

Here are the numbers for ff 1.5. The first line is when it loaded up with 12 empty tabs. The second line is the 12 websites loaded initially.. and the third line is 12 minutes afterwards

  3876 perfume 20 0 175m 54m 38m S 0.0 14.5 0:18.19 firefox-bin
  3876 perfume 20 0 348m 124m 49m R 72.0 33.2 1:47.83 firefox-bin
  3876 perfume 20 0 338m 135m 49m R 46.8 36.0 7:30.93 firefox-bin

I logged out, rm -rf ./.mozilla then logged back in and fired up FF 3.0b1.. same procedure, same 12 websites and 12 minutes of idling on them

  4231 perfume 20 0 202m 58m 38m S 3.6 15.6 0:11.79 firefox-bin
  4231 perfume 20 0 273m 106m 40m S 59.7 28.4 1:31.37 firefox-bin
  4231 perfume 20 0 254m 107m 40m S 1.3 28.5 2:27.26 firefox-bin

CPU usage seemed to be much better with FF 3B1 as well.. not sure why the difference but everything was clean...

Regrettably It Also Locked Up!

[Toad-san]

After about 2 minutes of use, 2 or three different pages online .. the new 3.0 slowed down my entire system to a crawl, and finally to a lockup. Had to pull the plug.

Rebooted (Win2K, 2.8 MHZ Pentium 4, 1GB RAM), manually fired up ye olde Firefox, went to same pages, ran fine.

Closed, re-ran 3.0 .. same problem.

Sorry boys, not ready for Prime Time IMHO.

Still giving issues

[kryliss]

I just downloaded and installed FF3beta, opened up slashdot and BAM....

http://home.windstream.net/slashdot/pics/firefox3beta.jpg

Re:Yes, but... looking in the wrong spot! :)

[X0563511]

An excellent tool. Careful using it though, as it attaches to the system through debugging hooks and hence certain copy protection systems scream at you and make you reboot, and not run it... I'm staring at you SecureROM!