Why is firefox 7b using a lot more memory and cpu on my computer?
I'm trying firefox 7 beta in a debian squeeze box. It is using a lot of RAM and CPU compared to previous releases of firefox(I've tried disabling all plugins and add-ons, not a big improvement). In the follow link here is a summary from about:memory, websites tabs opened at that time and the usage of % mem and cpu of my system: http://pastebin.com/8ji1gmLk I'm using firefox on all my computers for a while now. So changing the browser is not an option for me now. It did crash few times when loading a lot of tabs. Please let me know if there is another information that would be useful for fixing this. Thanks
Modified by wicem
All Replies (4)
Is it using a significant amount more resources than 6.0 did?
I noticed 6.0 is a VAST resource hog over 5.0 and earlier. It's a very bad flaw in the new version, and has a lot of people upset.
What has me curious is whether this is a new resource problem or whether it was present in 6.0 and you are just not noticing it.
One suggestion: Don't run BETA versions of ANY software on "all your machines". Not when rolling back the version is not an option. That's generally a bad idea, since beta versions are likely to have bugs.
With FF, now, I would never let it automatically update. I don't trust their new update policies, so I would suggest you turn "auto updates" to OFF, and do it manually, only after you hear the new release is stable, which we know 6.0 is NOT.
Of course I'm not running Firefox 7 beta on all my computers but it was just for testing. I was excited to see that +30% improvement and all I ended up with is the complete opposite. Firefox 6 was just like firefox 5, didn't see a noticeable improvement. My biggest concern on this, is that with the final release of the next firefox stable version, it won't be fixed so I can't update my browser and steak with a non-supported one.
Modified by wicem
Where can you even go to find out which versions are stable? Or better yet, a comparison of stability of each version?
I'd also very much like to find out what resources each version is expected to use - I'm on an old MacBook Pro OS X 10.5.8 w/ 2G memory, and yet memory always seems to be a problem. My only other option are PC's with LESS memory.
It would also be helpful to see the most commonly reported major user problems for each version...
Is there anywhere to check these sorts of things?
I have another thread just like this, and will post this there too.
I installed a NEW version of firefox portable 7.0.1 - completely empty- and tested with it. (I followed a document I found on dhdaily.com on how to install it in parallel.)
I made the following discovery: Firefox runs normally IF you only open up one tab. If you open up more than one tab at a time, EACH TAB must complete IN ORDER before the next one works. So site 1 has to load to completion before site 2 can complete etc. If any site is slow, then the rest of the chain is slow.
As a test, I opened up my EBAY account and, while it was loading, opened up my feedback in a second tab. The second tab would not even start until the first tab page completed.
I then closed and restarted Firefox and opened up three different webpages in three tabs: www.google.com www.refdesk.com www.microsoft.com. Again google had to finish before refdesk would load. Refdesk, being large, stopped Microsoft from completely loading until it finished.
So it seems to be some sort of thread balancing issue involved where the first tab is not playing well with subsequent ones.