Memory Usage – Firefox, Chrome, Safari & Opera – The Winner Is?
During my roaming around the Internet, I stumbled upon Dot Net Perls site that had an interesting profile on the memory usage for several browsers. The browser tests included Firefox 3.5RC, Chrome 3.0, Safari 4 and Opera 10b. The testing is described as follows:
Here we note that the previous study of browser memory usage on dotnetperls.com was performed by monitoring a user’s actual interactions with the browsers in a memory tabulation program. Due to the burden of having to use certain browsers for three hours in a row, this experiment automates all URL visits through the command line. This means that each browser was tested for exactly 150 remote URLs, using the same command-line arguments for different executables.
And also:
Because every user has a different selection of sites he uses, the sites tested programmatically in this examination were taken directly from the Alexa top sites CSV file at http://s3.amazonaws.com/alexa-static/top…. This list is the property of the Alexa service and will not be made available on dotnetperls.com. The CSV used was downloaded on June 19, 2009.
And now for the winners:
Here we see the results of the experiment when performed as described above. During the experiment, 384 memory checkpoints were taken, which amounts to 1152 seconds or 19.2 minutes. Google Chrome posted the highest maximum memory usage when all chrome.exe processes were summed, reaching 1.18 gigabytes, while Firefox posted the lowest maximum memory levels of 327.65 megabytes. This means Firefox used 73% less memory during peak periods.
With this chart comparison:
Peak memory usage measured during experiment. Chrome: 1216.16 MB [Largest] Firefox: 327.65 MB [Smallest] Opera: 554.11 MB Safari: 517.00 MB
There is one thing missing. What about Microsoft’s IE?
Comments welcome.
15 Comments
quesomanrulz
June 22nd, 2009
at 8:53am
Thats why I have always used FireFox and always will. Very interesting information!
P.S. IE shouldn’t even count as an internet browser.
Mr. Gecko
June 22nd, 2009
at 8:55am
Nobody should use Internet Explore do to the insecurity and slow javascript engine, so why test IE?
Rambling Johnny
June 22nd, 2009
at 8:57am
Chris we talking about testing serious browser for power users! I.E is the crap peoples run when they don’t know any better!
Brandon Paddock
June 22nd, 2009
at 8:59am
Personally, one of the reasons I prefer IE and Chrome is *because* of the security advantages they offer.
djeddiej
June 22nd, 2009
at 9:00am
Before you rule out IE, remember that most people new to internet browsing will start with whatever’s installed on their operating system. And if that is Windows, that’s Internet Explorer. So it should be considered into the surveyed mix of browsers. Just because it has security issues (who doesn’t) and a slow javascript engine (although its improved in
does not mean you exclude it. its a browser, and has widespread usage. get a better excuse than the one provided.
iMandie
June 22nd, 2009
at 9:01am
I laughed that you didn’t even try I.E in this test
Hayden
June 22nd, 2009
at 9:39am
Meh I personally don’t enjoy I.E. but it is true that they should test ALL the major browsers.
Kamakazy
June 22nd, 2009
at 10:47am
I.E is the most used internet browser, it should have been included even though i doubt it would use less memory than Firefox…
Ron Schenone
June 22nd, 2009
at 2:58pm
Thanks for all of the comments everyone and for sharing your opinions with us. It is appreciated.
Richard Smith
June 23rd, 2009
at 2:00am
The reason IE isn’t on the list is simple. It crashed the PC every time, so there were no obtainable numbers… Either that or they just didn’t feel like it.
Ryan Farmer
June 23rd, 2009
at 7:15am
Who cares about IE? It loses every test that Microsoft and Friends haven’t rigged. Probably just didn’t consider it important enough to bother with.
Tom
July 30th, 2009
at 12:58am
I’m a Chrome user myself, but IMHO any browser comparison test that doesn’t include IE shows an apparent bias and hence should not to be taken seriously. For all its faults, IE is only the browser that by far the majority of users on Earth are using. 66% market share as of May 2009:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=124
Tom
July 30th, 2009
at 1:23am
Somehow I missed this disclaimer at the bottom: “IE 8.0 was omitted from the test because the author could not find a way to prevent it from opening a new window on each invocation of the command. The article has enough context for useful conclusions because it shows the new process architecture in Google Chrome as well as the older architectures of Opera, Safari and Firefox.” OK, fair enough, I take back my earlier comment about the author being biased. If the author had used a shell scripting language such as AutoIt instead of C# then they would’ve been able to simulate Ctrl-N.
Gina
September 5th, 2009
at 1:59pm
The dotnetperls test site has been updated as of August 11, 2009. It appears IE8 was tested this time around.
http://dotnetperls.com/browser-memory
Ron Schenone
September 5th, 2009
at 2:45pm
Thank you Gina.