Are you using Firefox 64 bit or 32 bit?
If 64 bit, try 32 bit.
Directory Listing: /pub/firefox/releases/105.0/win32/ The EN folder is English. US: United States, GB: Great Britain CA: Canada.
Alternatively, and as a test, download portable Firefox. There's no installer, it's portable or as they say "stand alone." If in portable Firefox you don't have the same memory consumption, then we can assume it's Firefox 64 (if that's what you have installed).
Mozilla Firefox, Portable (browser) | PortableApps.com
Edit- It appears the portable version auto selects 32 or 64 bit mode. To force 32 bit mode do the following:
In the portable version of Firefox go to the other/source folder path. Find the file FirefoxPortable.ini in the source folder. Copy this file to the main folder of Firefox where there are only the App and Data folders along with the FirefoxPortable.exe file and a help.html file. Now open the newly copied over FirefoxPortable.ini with a text editor (double clicking should open by default) and add or edit the following values:
Code:
DisableSplashScreen=true
AllowMultipleInstances=true
AlwaysUse32Bit=true
More Info. on these values are in the Readme file in the Source folder. Note: It seems caps matters.
Disable
Splash
Screen.
What extensions do you have? That too will eat up memory.
Unfortunately, there's little in the way of curtailing this Firefox behavior. I've looked and there are some minor config Prefs that can be changed to
help but I doubt it'll be very significant.
The heck of it is, I maxed out my parent's Dell Optiplex with 4GB of memory and they use Firefox and I never saw an issue that I know of. I can prove it, too. While in this day and age 4GB seems mediocre, it's a good amount, trust me (or don't trust me. I don't care) Lets put it this way. There are many manufactures of small form computers like the Intel NUC just as an example so you might know what type of hardware I'm referring to. Well, many of these, especially the older mini PCs only use 4GB of memory. And believe me when I tell you there are many people that use these machines as their everyday driver. Probably with the aforementioned Firefox.
Lets look at something else. Most motherboards now-a-days support at least a max of 32 GB of memory. While that may sound nice, I have yet to run a game that needs anything close to that. I currently use 16 GB and never had an issue. Why anyone thinks they need more than that I don't know. Just like having a 1000 watt PSU! LOL! It's understandable that there is a need for it, but most people aren't the market for that. I can assure you the Photoshop/video editing market is no where near the gaming market... In this sense you only need 16 GB of memory currently if you game. Even if you stream to Twitch with your game play and whatnot I doubt you'd need more than 16GB. I've ran OBS Studio while playing GTA V for example. Again, I only have 16 GB of RAM.
Anyway,
1) Check if you're running a 64 bit version of Firefox instead of a 32 bit version due to your RAM limitations.
2) Keep your extensions in check.
3) You can try Firefox safe mode to temp turn off all extensions and whatnot just for testing. Just don't commit the changes per the pop up option you'll see. To run Firefox in safe mode press and hold the Shift key and launch Firefox while holding the Shift key.
Addendum:
Firefox portable should in no way be considered a private means to browse the Internet on someone else's computer. It WILL splatter data on the hard drive beyond your USB drive or what ever drive you use to launch Firefox portable. Well, if run in a live environment and the hard drive is disconnected that's different... Think TAILS et al. And by this, Tor is NOT a secure network. Only for some anonymity with a configured Tor bridge. Anyone can create an exit node... anyone can read the logs of that exit node. The FBI, NSA and God knows who has their mitts in Tor. Believe me (or don't LOL). You'll wanna learn about IPFS...
Firefox (en-GB) (mozilla.org)