Real-World Firefox 3 Memory Usage Leads the Field

An anonymous reader writes "The author developed a program to snapshot memory usage per process every 3 seconds on Windows. Using this he recorded 3 hours of memory usage for five different browsers under real-world usage scenarios: Safari 3.1, Firefox 3, Flock 1.2 (a browser based on Firefox 2), Opera 9.5, and Internet Explorer 8. A million data points indicate that Firefox 3 has a surprising advantage over the other browsers tested. These are real-world tests and not contrived benchmarks."

Comments

What time of day did he do his tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find that for certain hours of the day (namely in the evening) My memory usage skyrockets. It probably has to do with the increased number of images I am loading :D

HTTP 503'd (aka /.ed)

[scatters]

Service Not Available.

At the time of posting this, there were like, 10 comments in the thread. Assuming that only 10% of all /.ers RTFA, that means that the site can support only 1 simultaneous user.

Re:HTTP 503'd (aka /.ed)

[electricbern]

It's IIS, it probably ran out of licenses.

Re:HTTP 503'd (aka /.ed)

[Kalriath]

Microsoft's way ahead of you there - in an effort to avoid you mistaking "insufficient licenses" for a server error, that's 403.15.

That's right, .15. Because with Microsoft, the spec just isn't detailed enough.

Service Unavailable

[MessageDrivenBean]

Already /.-ed? Or do I have to use any of the mentioned browsers... :-)

Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they didn't compare with Dillo/lynx, it's meaningless. Also, already slashdotted.

Re:Wonder what Firefox 2 looked like ...

[Bandman]

Cue Iraqi spokesman

There are no memory leaks. All memory usage is as we intend it to be. Any reports of leaks are lies by people who do not understand our page caching system. The infidels will never take Baghdad.

Re:Lools IIS can't hold its own

[Zero__Kelvin]

"The term "slashdotted" has become ubiquitous with smashing a webserver due to high traffic.
Most webservers are *nix based (though admittedly IIS is gaining ground)."

So what you are trying to say is that Slashdotting is becoming more and more popular?

Re:Wonder what Firefox 2 looked like ...

[icegreentea]

Looking at the RAM usage from TFA, 120 megabytes is acceptable. Web browsers apparently use a lot of RAM (when you load a lot of sites).

Re:...contrived benchmarks.

[billcopc]

<keynote style="Steve">
Safari on OS XI is going to be 400% faster. It's going to look 700% rounder, and integrate seamlessly with your ego. It will make you 1500% more smug, no matter how smug you were before.

Firefox ? Not smug.
IE8 ? *chuckles* next slide.
Opera ? They still have square corners, what does that tell you about their priorities ?

It's so awesome we had to give it a new name: Snow Safari.
(*applause*)
</keynote>

Re:Careful...

[Ilgaz]

' They're trying to charge money ofr something everyone else gives away for free, and with the latest browsers they're running out of legitimate advantages to boast."

Please change that template, it is 2008 already.

Contrived benchmarks? Try AMD...

[mangu]

Firefox running on an AMD processor uses "2200+" Mb of memory, which actually means about 100 Mb in an Intel processor

Re:How long has 256 MB been standard?

[flappinbooger]

Or, the other user is the botnet admin who 0wnz his box.