When Mozilla released Firefox 3 as a public release candidate, it was supposed to fix a bunch of memory leaks and use less memory. In fact, it reads:
Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.
Technical, yes. Real? Not really. While I have heard from others saying that Firefox 3 is running lean and mean for them, I have heard from many others saying it is just as bad in the memory department as Firefox 2.
Check out this screenshot from my own Mac Pro running Firefox 3:
Yes, that’s 550 MB of RAM in use.
Now, I’m fully aware that the plug-in functionality of Firefox can lead to this issue. It is non-Mozilla code which is in use in the browser. But, I used pretty much the same selection of plug-ins with Firefox 2 as I am now with Firefox 3 and this is about 150 MB more memory than I had ever seen Firefox use previously.
Plus, if you have to steer clear of plug-ins to keep Firefox running correctly, then that is a stupid tradeoff. One of the primary “selling points” of Firefox is the ability to use plug-ins.
I have tried the RamBack plug-in. It shaved maybe 12 MB off the memory usage, but who cares. For all essential purposes, it doesn’t work.
I’ll continue to use Firefox, but thank God I have a bunch of memory in this system. Looks like I’m going to need it.
David Risley is the founder of PCMech.com. He is the brains, the thinker, the writer, the nerd.
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Something that has helped me, is to start with a fresh install (with all bookmarks moved over – tip, once you replace the bookmarks.html and the bookmarks backup folder, you won’t see your old bookmarks return, until you go to the Bookmarks menu, choose “organize bookmarks” and choose restore).
Then selectively reinstall your most important add ons. Be selective, and disable all add ons that aren’t needed constantly.
Then make sure all of your flash/shockwave/realplayer, etc. add ons are using the absolute latest versions.
I have 2GB of RAM.. I only use about 1.2GB or it, but my firefox3 generally runs at about 150-200MB with only one window and one browser.. it probably starts off at about 80GB after a clean reboot, but it only takes a little surfing before it’s idling at 200MB.. no plug-ins. Glad to hear I’m not the only one.
[...] Firefox 3 Hogs Memory Like Crazy (PCMech) – Firefox 3 is Still a Memory Hog (The NeoSmart Files) – Firefox 3 Beta 1: The Memory Use [...]
HUGE MEMORY LEAK ON MAC OS 10.5.5 AND FIREFOX 3.0.5
Mac people are not making this up; neither are we crazy. I have a brand new mini-mac, brand new operating system, brand new copy of FF and am only running 4 extensions (Tabmixplus, History menus, scrapbook, and Adblockplus). After running FF for 12 hours with only 5 tabs open I used 800MB of Ram! Yes that’s megabytes not kilobytes. I am beside myself and rather than snide comments, can someone offer something constructive please.
[...] crown, but no longer, recent releases have been comparatively slow and worse still, subject to excessive memory [...]
I am running Kubuntu 8.10 w/ ff3. It was doing fine w/ resources and then wacked out. It stayed under 100 w/ as many tabs open as I desired with no prob, now I have it hitting 5-600 MB w/ 3 tabs open – yahoo mail, iGoogle and Livescience.com, on a little laptop w/ only 750 MB mem – froze it up as stiff as ice. This I tried on Gnome, KDE and XFCE, as I use all three. So in reviewing previous comments I think OS has nothing to do with this piggy, as OSX is unix based also as many are prone to forget. I have another laptop here with XP on it let me take a look too. Well fellow FF users it is only pulling 40 MB w/ the same pages open. What the heck happened to my Linux install? I am back on Opera due to FF locks my Linux laptop now. Dear google when are you going to give us Chrome for Linux! PS I like Chrome due to you can kill a tab w/o killing the app. I did not care for IE8’s “features” Still like IE7 though. Don’t hit me for that one. I tried Safari on my Linux laptop and would use it if it would let me get to my yahoo email! Nothing but security issues. Well enough from me. I am just pleased that misery loves company as I was dismayed with the performance of FF on the linux laptop. It does not do this on any of my other computers. I have Win2k server w/ 4 xeon processor for BU of all my systems and it works fine on that one. I have SUSE 11 on an old turd of a computer and all works fine there too. I just don’t get why FF is different on each computer and install. Some one @ FF needs to PUSH a usage survey out so we can respond. Little intrusive but maybe it would do it.
Thanks for you site.
Matt
Firefox 3 open… 1 tab (this site). Memory usage: 196mb. Only 2 plugins installed: FoxMarks and Cooliris. This is horrid. My 3D game engine I’ve been developing uses less memory than this in debug mode, with physics, rendering, etc running in a populated scene.
Plenty of talk around about absolute crap for Flash rendering performance, but I do have to chime in that this has pissed me off for a long time. Sometimes I have to shutdown FireFox via Task Manager because a site has 2 Flash ads and a game. I’ve even emailed webmasters about this topic, pushing them to tone down Flash content to better support FireFox users.
At any rate, I see FireFox going down the bloat path. I’ve been all over the net the last hour reading various topics on FireFox 3 memory usage, and the ratio of good vs bad performance seems to be hit and miss. Though, in my opinion a majority are most likely unhappy about the memory usage.
I say that in my opinion FF is going down the bloat path, because… well… it is. Lumping on new features, changing stuff around majorly, introducing more memory usage, etc. without making the previous version run pristine seems like something a boat on bloat river would do.
How long has the Flash rendering been an issue? Even without addons installed, why does FF3 use 100mb+ of memory with only 1 page (in my test, Google) open? I love my FireFox, but I’d love to tell the developers to go suck an egg with the latest version’s memory BS. Yeah, I’ve read their article on how they “improved” things, and understand it for the most part. But I think it’s rubbish.
It’s nice that random people don’t have the memory issues with FF3. I’d bet they had vanilla (or near) OS installs, and at least 1GB of RAM, nifty CPUs, etc. Well wait a minute…
I have a vanilla install of WindowsXP Pro SP3. Well, almost vanilla. I have Visual Studio Express 2008 installed, and a few tools like Blender, FX Composer, etc, but nothing that has services running, and none of these apps were open during my “tests”. 1.5GB of RAM, AthlonXP 64 3200+, GeForceFX 7600GS 512mb OC.
Many can argue, point fingers at David and say he’s a loon… but the fact is, FireFox 3 hogs more memory than it should. Like a bad reflection of prom night that results in you waking in a screaming sweat, punching a flamingo that shouldn’t even be in your state, let alone your bed.
Hi guys, I think I might have found the culprit on this memory issue but I kind of need a confirmation. Any facebooker here?
Oh well, just confirmed my suspicion. I did a test 3 times. Looks like I may have found a sure-fire way to replicate the mem leak problem.
Jay——Give me the secret of the memory leak. Derjyn I never thought of the flash as being a reason. Duh to me, It does appear the the more flash content a site has (and ajax) the weirder the browser behaves.
On one of my PDA’s I have Iris Browser for test and now it is the default on all my little PDA’s. Now if they could port that one we might all be happy. Such a tiny footprint with a big browser bang.
I type this from my Opera as I have resigned myself to it’s usage. Not bad but I don’t like some of the features. BTW on the last pushed update to FF3 my XP laptop now wacks out on RAM now and then too. I do have one comment on browsers. TOO MANY FEATURES. Almost makes me want to go back ot lynx. But then the world has changed.
Lord today keep your arm on my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.
Matt
Well, if you have a facebook account, go add “Owned!” application. Then, go the application and click on “Owned!” tab (next to “Buy L$1 Friends”). Next, just keep pressing “Next” to view the next images. Just watch how the memory goes from an initial 169 Megs with 5 tabs open to a whopping 500+ Megs. AND, it won’t even go down!! Also, right clicking on an image and opening it in another tab then closing it also adds to the increasing mem. It’s ridiculous.
I just tried the Firefox Ultimate Optimizer that Brian suggested.
It’s a very simple .NET taskbar application that runs every 10(!) milliseconds. It makes Windows API calls to clean unused memory pages.
Sadly, there is no option to change the delay. It is hard-coded. It does the trick though!
The original website is gone so I might decide decompile it and realease my own version.
I experience this on Windows XP. FireFox is using up around 600 megabytes. It is a lot and I am wondering why? Last time it happened I only had meebo open. Ever since Firefox 3 I have been having memory issues and my computer is good enough to play games on (LOTRO, Age of Conan, World of Warcraft, etc).
Firefox is crash happy too =[.
Phew! I was facing the same problem on my Windows XP with 512 MB RAM and FF 3 eating up all space.. since the last 2 weeks….. whether it was opening multiple tabs (3 to 10) or going to streaming sites or just opening a single tab with any one site – yahoo / MSN / google on.
FF3 usage hit the roof most of the time and no other apps / programs were running… My grouse with FF 3 is that it is no better than FF 2 in this area as claimed by them…
Will try some of the options to reduce RAM usage given by the posters here…
My FF3 eats memory over time. The longer I have it running, the more it eats. I’ve had mine up to a system crippling 1.9GB with just 3 tabs and 8 plug-ins. PLEASE, Firefox developers, fix Firefox or it might become Firedfox! I don’t want to have to use another browser, but it’s bringing my system to it’s knees.
I have been having a horrible time with Firefox this past month. my memory usage after 15 mins browsing is 1.5 and up. if I am using a facebook app for too long I it gets really slow and have to restart the browser to finish what I am doing. the same happens in IE, but I expect that from “THEM” I may have to switch to Opera if there is not a fix for this.
Try Firefox 3.5 RC2. It’s been tested to be the most memory efficient browser in the current scenario.
I’m running Firefox 3.5 under Windows 7 with 6 GB memory. I had FF running for about 24 hours and when I checked the Task Manager FF was at about 1.2GB. Horrors!
I might make Chrome may default Browser, although I’ll be missing some of those extensions.
It seems what ever memory leak is causing this is getting worse with new updates. At first I didn’t hardly notice a difference with the initial release. And I tried 3.5 RC2 It was peaking at 1.5GB, closed all but one tab and it remained and climbed higher. This might sound odd, but after upgrading to a better memory and processor, it just seems to use as much as it possibly can, including processing power.
So I take back my original post. The load time is worse that FF2, and much worse than Chrome, FF3 is way too bloated.
Get this. Addon of Ad Blocker Plus. NOW the memory hog is gone. I have 6 tabs open and it stays @ about 100. Now that is tolerable. I am wondering when the page is autorefreshing if it calls EVERY server that is connected to that page. As a non-programmer does anyone know? It appears (to me) that the adservers connections may be it. But that still needs work if it is constantly restreaming all data on the page when autorefreshing. This is on Ubuntu. I have not looked at the XP install in while how much memory is being blocked due to I just have not fired it up in awhile.
Also as a plus with the Ad Blocker Plus, pages load VERY fast due to no adserver connection calls.
My 2 cents.
matt
@Matt B: As a developer, it would seem to me that the underlying problem is the Flash plug-in. Almost all ads are Flash these days and while I don’t know enough about the FF plug-in architecture to speak intelligently about it I do notice that if I leave the browser idle but loaded with pages with Flash ads on them it will spin out of control — resource wise.
It does this with Flash game sites too. Leave a Pop Cap game up for a while and come back. It’s not Pop Cap’s code that does it, but something tied to the browser plug-in architecture or the Flash plug-in itself. My gut says the former.
@Andy M. I understand your intent you are conveying to me. This would make utmost sense due to the install of the ad blocker plus blocks almost ALL the flash banners and ads. I also have flashblock add on due to I did notice awhile back that a flash page will keep cycling forever. I thank you for your input. I have to tell you flash is used much too heavily on the web anymore, just as elife has too many darn exclamation points. Kudos to you and continue the threads with your input.
I’ve been experimenting with removing different addons and, so far, Google Toolbar seems to make the biggest difference. FF is running at 145KB right now, but I’ll have to check it after 24 hours have gone by.
Well, without Google Toolbar running FF has not exceeded 185K of memory, even after running continuously for 2 days. Outlook over three days is up to 286K and 4 Chrome Processes total about 130K. I expect modules to consume much memory since my box has 6GB and Vista/Win 7 tries to make use of it all, so nothing running now is unsatisfactory.
I have also run quite a few Youtube videos in FF and it doesn’t seem to be suffering from a memory leak now. I’ll try to add Google Toolbar back in tomorrow to confirm how the memory usage pattern differs but Google seems to be a major memory culprit.