Firefox 3.0 beta 3 memory usage

Posted by Jim on March 9th, 2008 filed in internet

I am sure everyone and their dog  knows about Firefox 2’s severe memory issues. Version 2.0 was meant to use more memory than previous versions, as it was designed to cache pages in ram dependent on the amount of ram in the machine. Now this was all well and good, but something went wrong and Firefox 2 decided it didn’t like to give memory back — thus, our friendly browser turned into a memory hog.

It’s good to see that Mozilla have targeted the memory issue with Firefox 3, and beta 3 fixed over 350 memory issues:

Memory usage: Over 350 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation. Beta 3 includes more than 50 improvements to memory use over the previous beta.

I’ve done a little test, by running both Firefox 2.0.0.12 alongside Firefox 3.0b3 for about 20 minutes to see how each handled memory under Ubuntu Gutsy. I think this image shows some quite conclusive results:

Firefox memory comparision

That’s around half the memory usage for Firefox 3.0b3! Quite remarkable, I am sure you may have different results, after all Firefox is designed to use more memory if you have it — secondly, you will be browsing different sites and using different extensions to me. In this test both browsers had Adblock Plus! and NoScript installed, but turned off.

I’ve noticed Firefox 3 is much more responsive and I do like the extension searching function (sorry Mozilla, I’ve been around since 0.6 so I’ll keep on calling them extensions.) The only problem I have with the browser is the new UI, the Linux look is sub-par — Firefox 2 has a much nicer interface. Whilst the Windows ‘keyhole’ button looks horrendous and so does the attempt at a keyhole on the Mac. Mozilla should provide the old interface with the browser, as the new one fails to deliver. The idea behind the keyhole based button is all well and good, but it needs to be implemented much, much better to be effective; I can see many users simply downloading a Firefox 2 based theme to get rid of the ugly button!

Netbeans 6.1 looks to be another fine product

If you could Only Choose Four Firefox Extensions

Some different Firefox extensions


3 Responses to “Firefox 3.0 beta 3 memory usage”

  1. Schubsta Says:
    March 9th, 2008 at 5:03 pm

    True, I also noticed an increase in performance when using 3.0. When playing Everquest 2, or games of equal hardware-demands, every byte of ram can make your life easier.

  2. Bong (JB) Says:
    March 11th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    He, he, we know for sure FF2 is a memory hog, we can almost see cobwebs as we wait for it to fire-up. :D

    We’re waiting for FF3 to get stable so we can dump it’s older sibling.

  3. If you could Only Choose Four Firefox Extensions | 406 Not Acceptable Says:
    March 16th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

    [...] It seems to be a widely known face that the real strength behind Mozilla’s Firefox browser is in the wide range of extensions available. Whilst Opera might have more core functionality, Firefox has the potential to be the superior browser, especially now the memory issue is fixed. [...]

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