IE8 Beta 2 Fatter Than Firefox and XP

snydeq writes "Consuming twice as much RAM as Firefox and saturating the CPU with nearly six times as many execution threads, Microsoft's latest beta release of Internet Explorer 8 is in fact more demanding on your PC than Windows XP itself, research firm Devil Mountain Software found in performance tests. According to the firm, which operates a community-based testing network, IE8 Beta 2 consumed 380MB of RAM and spawned 171 concurrent threads during a multi-tab browsing test of popular Web destinations. InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy speculates that Microsoft may be designing IE8 for the multicore future. But until your machine sports four or eight discrete processing cores, IE8 will remain 'porcine,' Devil Mountain's Craig Barth says."

Comments

It's also _BETA_

[_bug_]

I hate being turned into a Microsoft apologist on this one, but give them a break. IE8 is still beta. Comparing release quality software to beta quality software is simply unfair.

Re:It's also _BETA_

[EvanED]

Sometimes I disagree, like when we're talking about features.

Here? Yes, you're right. Beta software is often compiled with less optimization and extra debugging information. I was using VMWare Server 2 beta, and it ran painfully slow, well under the speed of Server 1. Because it was a beta.

Re:It's also _BETA_

[spectre_240sx]

OK. We can compare it to FF3 beta, then. That was fast as hell.

Re:It's also _BETA_

[kannibal_klown]

Blame Google.

I know too many people that think "beta" means Gold (or at least Release Candidate). I wouldn't be surprised if they now think "beta" is synonymous with freeware.

Anything beta should be given a lot leeway in terms of stability and performance.

On the other hand, if the difference is DRASTICALLY different from past versions then maybe it brings some pause. While it could simply be the package isn't optimized and there are debug lines in there, it is also possible that it is a sign that the end-product might be a hog.

Re:It's also _BETA_

[AKAImBatman]

Not only that, but I'd like to point out that process isolation comes at a cost. Many users were rejoicing yesterday when it was announced that Google Chrome would have process isolation. Google was very up front about the fact that the browser would use MORE memory as a result. However, the security, memory cleanup, process tracking, and isolation features were all considered worth it.

So give IE a break here. If you want to complain, complain about the fact that it STILL doesn't support the standards and that it STILL uses that God-awful IE7 interface.

Re:It's also _BETA_

[wanderingknight]

I used FF 3 since Beta 2 and I barely noticed any groundbreaking differences between them and the final product... Granted, there were a couple of loose ends, but not *THIS* terrible. This is evidently by design.

Re:It's also _BETA_

[Tolkien]

Agreed, complaining about performance at this stage in IE8's development is unfair.

However, if we don't complain, they won't put as much effort into tuning its' performance.

That said, it's slow and that's okay for now, but when it's released... *shakes fist threateningly at Microsoft* (even though I use Firefox).

Microsoft bashing?

[adpsimpson]

Multi threaded browsing is a plus. One of my pet hates of Firefox is the one-bad-tab-crashes-the-browser problem.

I've not used IE for donkey's years, but one thread per tab strikes me as an excellent idea.

Re:Microsoft bashing?

[AvitarX]

Also, 380 MB for a multi-tab session would be about what I expect.

Firefox will happily use that much RAM.

Currently 4 tabs RSIZE 129M VSIZE 412M on OSX

Re:Microsoft bashing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, IE uses one process per tab. This means that each tab has a different address space, and this is what makes it so that one bad tab crashes only itself and not the entire browser. If they were only doing threads, it'd be what Mozilla does.

bullshit

[Kuciwalker]

"Consuming twice as much RAM as Firefox and saturating the CPU with nearly six times as many execution threads"

Unless those threads are actually processing anything, they represent basically zero overhead.

Re:Firefox is a pig

[Millennium]

Because everyone already knows that Firefox is a bloated pig, and that Opera is much leaner. Showing that IE is more bloated that Opera isn't saying all that much; most things are more bloated than Opera. To claim that IE is more bloated than even Firefox, however, really takes the cake. When you're not rolling your own runtime envionment and yet you still consume more than Firefox does, that's when you know you've really screwed up.

Note that I say this as a Firefox user.

have we forgotten chrome already?

[Anonymous Coward]

I could have sworn that yesterday there was a link to a comic book on this very site that was extoling the VIRTUES of having a browser that uses many processes (which are the heavy hitters, threads are cheap) with a logical minimum of 1 thread per process. Oh, right, M$ == automatically teh wrong, I forgot, forgive me.

Software grows, hardware grows, weeds grow. These things are inevitable, get over them. Don't believe me? Compare the memory footprint of firefox to that of IE4. Oh, features you say? Guess what, that's growth.

Signed,
A future Chrome user temporarily stuck advocating Opera

Porcine

[javilon]

Vista's performance is "porcine" enough by itself, but combined with the new and "improved" IE, you will start thinking about yourself as a swineherd

Check the current poll, man.

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Ah, it did not take too long before fanbois invaded the discussion. It is difficult to determine who are more annoying fanbois. Apple's or Opera's? May be a possible poll suggestion?

I think that the current poll is "Which Fanboys Make You Cringe the Most?"

As for IE8, I guess somebody saw all the bitching people do about how Firefox is a resource hog and decided, "I'll give 'em something to cry about."

Google Chrome

[nmg196]

I think you'll find Google Chrome will have the same problem. It creates a new entire browser PROCESS for each tab. What could be more bloaty than that? That will mean LOTS more RAM. Stop worrying and just buy more RAM - it's dirt cheap and the Google Chrome model of creating a new process for each new site will mean we have a much more stable browser. Google Chrome and IE8 are designed for modern multi-core systems with plenty of RAM - not for running on your 7 year old Pentium 3. Deal with it. They're not forcing you to upgrade, so if you don't have lots of RAM, stick with a memory efficient browser such IE6 and avoid memory hog browsers like Firefox and IE7-8.

I never get why people are so worried when apps USE their RAM. That's what it's for. As long as it's not due to leak (ie ram usage after a point, remains constant rather than growing infinitely) then I don't get the problem.

Re:Firefox is a pig

[interstellar_donkey]

It's designed by Microsoft to answer user complaints of "System Idle Processes" using up so much CPU. This can almost guarantee to lower the resource hog that is "System Idle Processes".

Re:Firefox is a pig

[PainKilleR-CE]

Whether or not parallel code is superior to a single-threaded solution depends on the application and the actual implementation. In some cases there's no way to actually make a multi-threaded version of the same application any faster, the best you can hope for is the same level of performance. In other cases the assumptions made when deciding what parts of the application should be in separate threads turn out to be incorrect.

Multi-core is working because most people now run multiple applications at a time, not because more applications take advantage of multi-threading properly (not to mention that the OS itself is using CPU time in addition to any applications you are using). Going from 2 to 4 cores has proven less beneficial for most users simply because people so rarely use the CPU resources they have, and the problems of getting more benefit in a single application from 4 cores are even more complicated than 2, except in specific applications.

Browsers, especially in a world of multi-tab browsers with higher use of flash and javascript on the web, should be able to benefit from multi-threading, but how much benefit can be gained and whether or not the initial assumptions programmers make going into the project are correct are the main questions at hand.

Of course, 171 threads makes you wonder what assumptions they were making, or even what they're doing with those threads.