[SOLVED] Why has firefox become such a memory hog?

[ChrisAB]

I've been using Firefox since V3.6 and recently have given up on the latest version due to it using so much system resources. With all my extensions and addons disabled firefox uses almost a gig of ram on my PC. I have switched to Opera and with 7 extensions running it uses between 800-900mb of system resources.

My Question is why has firefox become such a memory hog and can anyone suggest a fix for this?

Thanks.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I have switched to Opera and with 7 extensions running it uses between 800-900mb of system resources.

You do realize, that 900mb of system resources IS the same as "almost a gig of ram", just like Firefox, right?

With one tab open Firefox uses about 500mb on my system.

With the same tab open (tomshardware.com) Google chrome uses about 200mb of RAM.

Microsoft edge, same tab, uses anywhere from 300-500mb.

Opera used between 450-500mb.

I think your extensions, disabled or not, are loading into memory and causing your issues OR there is something else going on.

Opera doesn't use any less RAM than Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Waterfox and it uses a good deal more than Chrome for the same exact web page.

 

[ChrisAB]

I do realise that its almost a gig of ram but thats with extensions and add ons installed and running where as Firefox was using more than that with no extensions running.

 

[Darkbreeze]

All these browsers these days are ridiculous in their use of resources, threads, etc.

It's pathetic really. Extensions and add ons obviously make it worse. Try Chrome. I personally don't use it except on my phone and android tablet, but, it uses less resources than any of the other browsers that I've tested so far. Thing is, most of them all use the Chromium source code to some degree or other, so it's getting hard to find real differences in how resources are used. Most differences are simply in additional features or aesthetics. Firefox obviously doesn't use it. I'm not sure about Vivaldi. I'll have to check it out and see how far that has come. Haven't tried it for a while.