From the Browser Mem Buster Test benchmark, it looks like IE leaks much more than Firefox. That is, unless MS fixed the memory leaks between RC1 and the final release. We'll have to try IE 7 final and see how it does.
What's happening is that Opera 9 is swapping out memory from RAM to disk when you minimize the Opera window. To see the total memory usage (both in RAM and on disk) look at the VM Size column in the Windows Task Manager.
I've had over a month of uptime with Opera hanging out at 40 MB.
That's amazing that memory use is so low for you in Opera. When I tried opening the same six sites in six tabs that I did in a post father down the page, Opera used 99 MB of memory, and went down to 56 MB when I closed all but the first tab. That's about the same amount of memory Firefox 2 uses with the same sites.
Don't get me wrong, I love firefox, and use it pretty exclusivly, but it does have a big memory footprint.
Not compared with other browsers. From this post farther down the page, you can see I opened the same six sites in six tabs in Firefox 2 and IE 7. Firefox 2 memory usage was 97 MB, but IE 7 memory usage was 130 MB.
That's basically what the browser memory benchmark does. When I run the test, Firefox 2 uses significantly less memory than IE 7, similar to the posted results in the forum thread I linked to.
I tried this in IE 7 (I don't have IE 6 on my computer any more). I opened google.com, abc.com, cbs.com, nbc.com, cnn.com and nytimes.com each in a different window. Memory usage went up to 135 MB. After closing all but the window with google.com, memory usage went down to 57 MB. After opening the same pages in tabs, memory use went to 130 MB. After closing all tabs but the one with google.com, memory usage went back to 60 MB.
I tried the same operations in Firefox 2. It uses 99 MB of memory when the pages are opened in new windows. After closing all windows but the one with google.com, memory use went down to 51 MB. After opening the pages in tabs, memory use went to 97 MB. After closing the tabs except the one with google.com, memory use went back to 59 MB.
You're right. Firefox gives back less memory than IE 7. But that's only because Firefox 2 takes up less memory than IE 7 to begin with! I would rather that Firefox developers not fix this "problem".
I can't help but take this information with a grain of salt considering the website that this forum thread originates from.
Better yet, run the benchmark yourself and see what numbers you get. There's no reason to take anyone's word that Firefox uses so little memory. See for yourself.
When I have 10 tabs open with lots of history, Firefox should use ~200 megs of memory. When I close 9 of the tabs, the memory usage should drop to ~30megs.
Do you know of any browser that actually exhibits this behavior? If so, please list which browser, version, OS, and which 10 URLs to open in the 10 tabs to see it. In my experience, once a browser is using well over 100 MB of memory, nothing will get it to use as low as 30 MB of memory except restarting the browser.
I tried Opera 9 when it first came out and it hit 100 MB within the day. Even after using Firefox 2 for days, it is often still below the 100 MB level. If you could simply describe what you do when you see "Firefox chewing up more and more memory over time," the problem could be fixed.
I've had situations where, upon running the app FRESH, it's shit all over 70 megs of my memory - on RC3. And on/. alone. Opera in the same environment only uses ~30
If you describe what those situations are, the problem can be fixed. Whenever I start Firefox 2, it uses 24 MB of memory, as opposed to 27 MB for Opera.
I'm saying I don't see the memory leak that others are reporting. Most other Firefox users never see it either. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. However, people who complain about the problem need to explain in detail what the problem is so we have an idea what they're referring to. Remember that even if only 0.1% of the tens of millions of Firefox users see a problem, that's still tens of thousands of people seeing the problem. Just because many people are complaining about the problem, that doesn't mean that we have any clue what they're referring to.
Bug 213391 does have some example pages that use lots of memory in Firefox. This is because Firefox stores all images on the page uncompressed in memory. For pages that have lots of large images, that can take quite a bit of memory. But when you leave the page, the memory is released. If you can demonstrate a way in which the memory is not released, causing a large memory leak, be sure to describe step-by-step how to see the problem, and it can be fixed.
I'm really tired of leaving up a browser up overnight, and coming in in the morning to find my machine all jammed up because Firefox is sitting on 200+ Meg of memory for a single web page.
When I leave Firefox overnight, I come back the next day and it's using the same amount of memory as the night before. Even after days of continuous use, it's using only about 100 MB of memory, as all browsers seem to do when I use them for days at a time. If you can show how to reproduce over 200 MB of memory use by having Firefox have a single web page open overnight, please do so. Is it some particular page that causes that memory use?
Other than telling us Opera is "consuming 100000kB," the user doesn't give any details.
I don't understand the point of this comment. When Firefox users complain about memory usage, they don't give any details either. It seems like both Opera and Firefox users report the same typical memory usage of about 100 MB, and they both describe memory problems.
65 MB of memory usage is normal for a browser. I tried Opera 9 when it first came out, and it was using over 100 MB on the first day. I wouldn't consider either browser a "memory hog".
I can't see a pattern that regular in the historical record of browser usage. But IE posting a gain one reporting period only to lose share the next is common. The trend still seems to be IE usage decreasing and Firefox and Safari usage increasing. To verify that there's a new trend in browser usage share, we'll need to see more than just one data point from one stats source.
By your logic I could now say that the link to the Opera forum leads to a "fabricated" post.
No, by linking to the post, that proves it's real and not fabricated. If I said it existed without such a post, that would be fabricating it. Need a dictionary, huh?
You're looking at startup time, not script execution speed. Please be careful to read the posts to see what we're discussing before jumping in with an irrelevant observation.
This is nothing more than yet another instance of fabricated bad news about Firefox. Of course Opera has problems like this. You can browse around the Opera forums and find instances of Opera hogging memory and CPU. And yet no one says Opera is a memory or CPU hog. Go figure.
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What's happening is that Opera 9 is swapping out memory from RAM to disk when you minimize the Opera window. To see the total memory usage (both in RAM and on disk) look at the VM Size column in the Windows Task Manager.
Not compared with other browsers. From this post farther down the page, you can see I opened the same six sites in six tabs in Firefox 2 and IE 7. Firefox 2 memory usage was 97 MB, but IE 7 memory usage was 130 MB.
That's basically what the browser memory benchmark does. When I run the test, Firefox 2 uses significantly less memory than IE 7, similar to the posted results in the forum thread I linked to.
I tried this in IE 7 (I don't have IE 6 on my computer any more). I opened google.com, abc.com, cbs.com, nbc.com, cnn.com and nytimes.com each in a different window. Memory usage went up to 135 MB. After closing all but the window with google.com, memory usage went down to 57 MB. After opening the same pages in tabs, memory use went to 130 MB. After closing all tabs but the one with google.com, memory usage went back to 60 MB.
I tried the same operations in Firefox 2. It uses 99 MB of memory when the pages are opened in new windows. After closing all windows but the one with google.com, memory use went down to 51 MB. After opening the pages in tabs, memory use went to 97 MB. After closing the tabs except the one with google.com, memory use went back to 59 MB.
You're right. Firefox gives back less memory than IE 7. But that's only because Firefox 2 takes up less memory than IE 7 to begin with! I would rather that Firefox developers not fix this "problem".
I tried Opera 9 when it first came out and it hit 100 MB within the day. Even after using Firefox 2 for days, it is often still below the 100 MB level. If you could simply describe what you do when you see "Firefox chewing up more and more memory over time," the problem could be fixed.
Whenever I close tabs, I see the memory freed up. If you really want to, you can completely turn off the bfcache feature.
Dozens of memory leaks have been fixed in Firefox 2. A memory benchmark shows Firefox 2 consumes less memory than IE 7 or Opera 9.
If you're still seeing a memory problem in Firefox 2, what you should do is describe steps to reproduce the problem so the bug can be reported and fixed.
I'm saying I don't see the memory leak that others are reporting. Most other Firefox users never see it either. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. However, people who complain about the problem need to explain in detail what the problem is so we have an idea what they're referring to. Remember that even if only 0.1% of the tens of millions of Firefox users see a problem, that's still tens of thousands of people seeing the problem. Just because many people are complaining about the problem, that doesn't mean that we have any clue what they're referring to.
Bug 213391 does have some example pages that use lots of memory in Firefox. This is because Firefox stores all images on the page uncompressed in memory. For pages that have lots of large images, that can take quite a bit of memory. But when you leave the page, the memory is released. If you can demonstrate a way in which the memory is not released, causing a large memory leak, be sure to describe step-by-step how to see the problem, and it can be fixed.
Firefox 2 fixes lots of memory leaks. There is no big, obvious "the memory leak".
It appears that the more common leaks are fixed in Firefox 2.
You can easily find instances of Opera using more memory than that: 1, 2, 3, 4.
65 MB of memory usage is normal for a browser. I tried Opera 9 when it first came out, and it was using over 100 MB on the first day. I wouldn't consider either browser a "memory hog".
I can't see a pattern that regular in the historical record of browser usage. But IE posting a gain one reporting period only to lose share the next is common. The trend still seems to be IE usage decreasing and Firefox and Safari usage increasing. To verify that there's a new trend in browser usage share, we'll need to see more than just one data point from one stats source.
You're looking at startup time, not script execution speed. Please be careful to read the posts to see what we're discussing before jumping in with an irrelevant observation.