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Excessive RAM usage

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by Pepe21

Pepe21
Pepe21
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Hello everyone! I'm using Firefox 79 (64 bit on Windows 10). It happens that FF consumes a lot of RAM compared to any chromium browser. For example: just launched, FF consumes 400/500MB, Chromium 200/250. And it happens with every kind of sites opened. I tried to disable the extensions (I use only ublock and bitwarden), but nothing changed. I saw a difference when launching FF in safe mode, the RAM usage is lower. In fact, in the windows task manager, I saw a process of FF consuming a lot of RAM, I closed it and... the browser was still working! I don't know what to think, I tried all the troubleshooting procedures reccomended by Mozilla. Any ideas? Thanks!

Hello everyone! I'm using Firefox 79 (64 bit on Windows 10). It happens that FF consumes a lot of RAM compared to any chromium browser. For example: just launched, FF consumes 400/500MB, Chromium 200/250. And it happens with every kind of sites opened. I tried to disable the extensions (I use only ublock and bitwarden), but nothing changed. I saw a difference when launching FF in safe mode, the RAM usage is lower. In fact, in the windows task manager, I saw a process of FF consuming a lot of RAM, I closed it and... the browser was still working! I don't know what to think, I tried all the troubleshooting procedures reccomended by Mozilla. Any ideas? Thanks!

All Replies (2)

Patrick Weiden
Patrick Weiden
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I would suggest to open about:performance next time to inspect which element is causing the amount of memory being used.

Nevertheless, I also got to known that the multi-process architecture will require some non-negliable amount of RAM (about:preferences -> General -> Performance): I manually set the "Content process limit" successively from 8 to 1 and ran several "RAM minimizing actions" (unloading of all tabs except one, using the "Minimize memory usage" button in about:memory). And as Firefox tells you in the Performance section: "Additional content processes can improve performance when using multiple tabs, but will also use more memory." Furthermore, it could be that using hardware acceleration also adds some amount of memory on top as the handling metadata has to be stored somewhere...

Pepe21
Pepe21 Question owner
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Thank you in advance for your answer.

Opening "about:performance" does not helps me, because all the process listed use an amount of RAM inferior compared to those listed in the windows 10 task manager.

I forgot to write that all the RAM values I indicated in my question are the result of Firefox still set with a content process limit=1 and "hardware acceleration" enabled. I disabled it and I noticed an improvement in terms of memory usage, although I'm not totally satisfied.

Is it a common problem on Windows 10 or is it a peculiar case?

Thank you again for your availability.