Firefox recently upgraded itself to v27 and it appears that it's hogging up a bunch of memory. Has anyone else ran into this? If so, what did you do to correct? I tried turning off hardware acceleration but it still seems extreme. Currently i have one tab open (this one) and it's taking up about 500k memory.
this is on windows 7 ultimate 64 bit
It is hard to compare RAM usage - especially in browsers. You might only have one tab open, but it is easier to compare using a blank page - never having surfed anywhere.
The way that I lower the RAM usage was to remove 7/8ths of the computer's RAM
In other words, the more RAM that is available, the more RAM Firefox will ask for and get from Windows memory management system. You have 8GB. Is it really a problem if Firefox takes up even a full GB?
How much RAM does Firefox take up if it is set to show a blank page at start up?
Does your install of Firefox give up RAM to other apps as they request it?
The amount of RAM that a browser will use will vary widely. It depends on how much RAM you have, what the browser is doing, what other processes are doing, activity earlier in the session, and more. 500 MB RAM usage with a modern browser and 8 GB RAM is not at all unusual. In fact with 8 GB RAM I would be surprised if it didn't exceed that under some situations. With 4 GB RAM I often see usage over 500 MB, sometimes quite a bit more. The more RAM you have the more it will use.
The memory usage of Windows processes is always under the control of the memory manager. The goal is always to maximize performance by assigning memory where it will do the most good. This is very complex. The goal is maximum performance, not to minimize memory usage.
Based on the limited information provided I see nothing wrong or unusual.
A quote from the mozillaZine Knowledge Base article on reducing memory usage:
"Normal Firefox memory usage reported by Windows might be as high as 100-150 MB. These numbers will vary because Firefox is configured by default to use more memory on systems that have more memory available and less on systems with less. If you experience substantially more usage than this, there may be a problem, or you may just be viewing pages with large amounts of data."
You do not have a memory-use problem with Firefox.
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