Why is my Firefox using insane amounts of ram?
 

Ok... it's getting ridiculous. Why is Firefox using upwards of 120,000 k memory?

Is there some settings I'm not aware of, something I can do. It seems unessecary for it to be using so much. My comp is only 256 ram, so this is a big problem for me. I'm going to be getting a new laptop with 1gb in the next few months but I'm still puzzled by why Firefox rapes Ram in this fashion.

Any ideas?

Same problem... it's "heaver" than IE... but I still like it more

This happens to me occasionally as well, usually restarting firefox fixes the problem.

This is a known problem with Firefox, though to my knowledge they don't know how to fix it; if I recall, doesn't it relate to Firefox not releasing RAM if pages are closed (someone who knows more about it will need to correct me)? This is why I dumped Firefox (and reccomendations of it) some time ago--it never released RAM properly, until the browser was terminated.

Needless to say, having to do this every few hours to keep my computer non-laggish got tiring.

I now wholly recommend Opera 9. Really awesome browser without that annoying leak.

There are a lot of combinations to Firefox using up so much RAM.

First, there's how Firefox stores background tabs (Firefox stores tabs in RAM,) so if you have a lot of tabs open, it will take up a lot of RAM. This is different than Opera, which I beleive stores them in a cache on your hard drive.

Then there's any extentions you may have. They, when running, will be factored into it's RAM use.

Then, there's any memory leaks that may be exposed in Firefox and any running extensions that can increase the RAM.

A good, quick fix is enabling trim_on_minimize and minimizing Firefox and then bringing it back up when it's RAM usage gets too high.

Actually, I have found IE to use just as much, if not more RAM than Firefox. One window, at about:blank was just taking up about 35MB of RAM, while Firefox, with 3 tabs (with content) open was using about 47MB.

The new version (1.5.0.2) has many new bug fixes; among them include several RAM leak fixes. Try updating and see whether it's any better.

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/404...xmemory2ov.jpg

This is using Firefox 1.5.0.1. I had about 4 windows open with dozens of tabs beforehand; I closed all but one window, leaving only 2 tabs. The memory usage dropped by a whopping 20mb.

Having 2 .gif animations (they're from one of Acerbandit's journal entries) showing also caused CPU usage to shoot up, as you can see.

Firefox is a broken program.




Edit: After upgrading to 1.5.0.2 and applying Merv's trim_on_minimize fix the memory issue seems to have improved greatly, but .gif animations still bring it to a crawl, hogging most of the CPU.

Wasn't part of the issue supposed to be due to a feature in Firefox itself? That is, the feature that makes history navigation (in essence, the forward and back buttons) insanely fast, because the pages and accompanying content are stored in RAM.

Yeah, this is supposed to be a "feature" in Firefox, much like what Opera has. I've recently begun to use Opera as well, and both are taking up about the same amount of RAM with my usual browsing (~190 MB). Firefox at least has a bunch more extensions and stuff installed. Opera is clean. Opera is definitely a faster experience though. Nevertheless, the feature for Firefox was explained here a couple of months back: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html

You can turn it off, but...

Stick with Opera, or IE 7, and scrap Firefox.

For me, Firefox uses about 66K, whereas Internet Explorer, tweaked and everything, runs at a low 15k. Opera runs at 20k.

A feature that takes up over 400mb of memory, unchecked, is what I'd call "bloat".

I hear a lot of stuff about how IE and Opera use less RAM (under normal circumstances), but I've tested this out and found that Firefox uses less RAM, although the difference is minimal. This could be just me of course, I don't usually have over 3-4 tabs open at once ever, unless I'm at 4chan or something, which is slightly off topic.

I do have this issue, but like I said, I just restart firefox.

I have 128MB of RAM and Firefox doesn't slow down for me much. I usually keep only 4 tabs open at the same time, really it doesn't matter how much RAM it uses, as long as it doesn't dip into the page file, that's when system performace takes a hit.

For me, if I open up alot of tags, and therefore make my memory usage go up, then I close them, the memory usage doesn't go back down. It's like firefox has a ceiling that stays as high as you push it. Though typically I never get over 100Mb usage, and ani gifs don't seem to task my firefox much.

?_?

I tried IE7. I wasn't impressed. It certainly doesn't have memory leaks, but the second I open it it's already using about 40MB of RAM. Firefox uses less than that initially, but as we all know it can greatly increase and furthermore refuses to dorp.

Opera doesn't cut it for me either, as it lacks options regarding extensions, themes, and options. However I think it's rendering engine is superior to Firefox and Internet explorer.

Furthermore I've read Firefox isn't even as secure as it's said to be. Perhaps more secure than IE6, but supposedly there are a decent amount of security holes that have gone unpatched for quite a long time. This is not the case with Opera, or so I've read. I really couldn't know for sure.

Bottom line, I feel that all browsers suck equally for various reasons. I chose Firefox only because of the wealth of extensions, search engines, themes, etc, but I wish I didn't have to be stuck with it.

Firefox always seems to use about 120,000 megs. I have a bunch of extensions loaded, and I always keep a whole ton of tabs open with the pages I need for my various interests, and projects. I'd like to get another gig in my machine, since I always have no less than half a gig of RAM "in use".

It's a trade-off I'm willing to make. The various extensions I have installed for Firefox make my browsing experience that much better. I just wouldn't be comfortable with another browser straight away. There'd be a period of adjustment, and I don't see any need to put myself through that right now.

mine is apparently only using 51 Megs I guess you would say.