Firefox Users - Give This A Try
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The debate on why Firefox uses large quantities of RAM or seems to suck up CPU cycles has been going on for way to long. I usually steer clear of the arguments, since when I do mention the topic, I am reprimanded for being anti-Firefox, a Microsoft shill and other unkind names. 
But I am a big boy and usually let this name calling just slide off of my back.
But I also know that for some of us who do still experience high RAM usage by Firefox that the problem is real. I have also tried disabling all of my add-ons which didn’t do anything. So the add-ons theory of causing high RAM usage goes to the way side, though in some cases could be the cause for some of you. But I want us Firefox uses to try something for me and to report back your results.
Here is what happened. During the day I normally leave Firefox open using 5 tabs which are my web site The Blade, Lockergnome, Google Adsense, Google homepage and a blank tab used for searching for stuff. This works well for me and I normally will hover around 100 MB of RAM usage with zero CPU cycles. So the other day when Lockergnome was down, both The Blade and Lockergnome itself were replaced with Chris’s site pirillo.com. I didn’t give it much thought.
So while I was waiting for Lockergnome to come back up, I left the tabs open and continued to another chore. About an hour into using the system, it starting to experience a severe case of hard disk thrashing, slowed to a crawl and basically was on the verge of being useless. I opened task manager and noticed Firefox was using 99% of the CPU and a whopping 237 MB of RAM and still climbing. I closed down Firefox restarted and all was well, so I thought.
I opened up the same sites, which included pirillo.com and wham! CPU and RAM went off the scale. So here is what I would like you Firefox folks to try. Go to pirillo.com and open two tabs for the site and let us know what happens. Your time is appreciated and please share your thoughts.
Comments welcome.
PS I don’t think it is the site. Or is it?
10 Comments
Nicolas LaBarre
September 2nd, 2008
at 6:12am
This is what I got Ron. Off a fresh start I opened 3 tabs on my schools site, Google Reader, and Your Blog. I am already using 120,000K of memory.
But then I went to live.pirillo.com and WHAM! Memory shot up to over 130,000K and growing. It has been about 1 minute and the memory usage is slowly shrinking to 125,000K
Georgios Kasselakis
September 2nd, 2008
at 6:14am
There was a posting about IE8’s ad blocking. If the post was retired, shoudln’t there be at least a notice about it ?
mike
September 2nd, 2008
at 6:59am
I tried and my memory increased only slightly and this is with 6 other tabs already open.
I am using FF3.0.1 with only one add-on PDF download. No problems on my machine or browser.
I still think all this “memory usage” is caused by some of the add-ons, themes & extensions that people use.
Just my .02….
earle.allen
September 2nd, 2008
at 7:03am
opened Firefox:
CPU:: 0%-2%
memory:: 593MB to 599MB
processes::64
physical memory:: 58%
Pirillo site drove the CPU up to 28%
Florian
September 2nd, 2008
at 7:04am
Hello,
Just tested it and went from 60Mo of RAM and 8% of CPU (a dual-core at 2.2Ghz) browser just launched (on yahoo) to 100Mo and a CPU usage of 40% on average while the two tabs finished loading. Now i’m back at 10% but my memory is still at 100Mo for firefox (with these two tabs and this page), and if I refresh the two tabs fixed on Chris’s site it climbs up again to 40% CPU (and eat up some more RAM…). So i think the site may be a reason, maybe because it seems to like flash…and firefox+flash doesn’t seem to be a good combination in terms of CPU and RAM usage (I noticed it with some flash ads on other sites which ate up my CPU way too much…good thing adblock plus for these). On an hour, the little memory the automatic reloads of the two tabs of Chris’s site eat (4Mo by reload for me) may sum to a significant amount ( I don’t know what the automatic reload delay is on firefox but I suppose it to be a matter of seconds, and in that case, in an hour, that makes a lot of reloads and 4+4+4+4+…. may make a whole lot of RAM…). Considering CPU usage, no idea though other than the cost of flash for that matter.
snowboarder72992
September 2nd, 2008
at 11:07am
After reopening Firefox after it crashed i noticed that all of my bookmarks, etc. were missing. Upon investigation i figured out that Firefox was listed 3 times in the task manager. I’m guessing that the reason it takes so much ram is that every time you open and close it creates an extra task in the task manager. eventually that builds up and you loose ram.
Mike Staples
September 2nd, 2008
at 11:58am
I saw little change in CPU usage and only a normal increase in RAM consumption. At the time I had 6 other sites open in tabs.
Ron Schenone
September 2nd, 2008
at 12:20pm
Thank you everyone for taking the time try this experiment and for reporting your results. It is appreciated.
Georgios Kasselakis,
My apology. I inadvertently included in the article information that was prohibited by a NDA. When this was brought to my attention, I removed the posting. I can not say anymore than that.
Gavin
September 3rd, 2008
at 5:13pm
I notice spikes in my firefox sunch as 100% cpu usage and huge memory when the sites have too much animation or even something like watching a video. I don’t know if its flash related.
George D
September 5th, 2008
at 10:38am
I didn’t seem to have any adverse reaction to the pirillo site ,but I HAVE had the problem with Firefox 2.x.
Before I built this new machine, I was having a nightmare of a problem with FIrefox and Explorer. Firefox would gradually build up memory until things would break down. Explorer would suddenly go to 100% CPU utilization and I’d have a hell of a time getting Task Mgr to kill it. I’m still in the habit of having Task Mgr open and ready.
The problem is one of the reasons I pulled the trigger on the Q6600 - that & I hadn’t looked at HW prices for 3-4 years and was blown away at what I could buy at retail prices on the ‘net. I’ve NEVER bought ‘puter parts retail before.
A year or two ago I had a bad memory eating FFox problem and someone on the FFox forum suggested a relationship between it and long boot time.
I wrote a macro that would time FFox starting with boot. I did a fresh install and added one plug-in at a time, documenting the boot time. I didn’t get to the point of having to combine two plug-ins as I found the culprit(s) that were dragging boot-time down. I didn’t install them and the memory eatage went away.
Just a thought.
GeoD