Firefox vs Chrome resource usage

[A/C]

I haven't used firefox in ages now but because chrome annoys the crap outta me trying to be a platform more than a browser recently with it's desktop notifications and all it's desktop apps I decided to give good ol' firefox a shot.

 

What I noticed is that Firefox accually uses quite a bit more RAM than chrome with all of its tidbits. That comes to me as a surprise as I remember Firefox from back in the day as a pretty lightweight browser, and I expected firefox to be quite a bit heavier on the RAM side, I know chrome was praised to be a lightweight browser but I thought that changed substatnialy with all of their recent addons like desktop notifications and google now, (which I hate seeing pop-up btw, why can't chrome just be a simple browser with no frills). I gotta say I have about the same amount of addons installed in both browsers (4-5 max).

 

 

BTW this is the PC in my office.

 

[qwertywarrior]

firefox still uses a lot less ram that Chrome odd .....

 

i also i would like to add if you closed firefox and restored your session it would load every website and youtube video like chrome does

 

firefox is still the best web browser in my opinion

[Tr3vor]

If you add up the ram that Chrome is using, its less than Firefox in your situation there. (200MB or so compared to Firefox's 231.5MB)

 

whoops, read but didn't comprehend. That's actually surprising since everyone was complaining about Chrome's ram usage...

[Akolyte]

Firefox is like Windows 7.  Its great and rich in functionality, a favourite amoung enthusiests, however its hard on resources and runs slower.    Chrome is like Windows 8.1  Its good in functionality, super fast and speedy, however it lacks certain functionality, support.

[ShadowCaptain]

Try opera, I really like it, and its very fast like chrome

[A/C]

firefox still uses a lot less ram that Chrome odd .....

 

firefox is still the best web browser in my opinion

 

And yet I have a screenshot pointing otherwise. Firefox dissapointed me a bit, it's a bit slower, not that much slower, but slower enough for me to notice, and higher RAM usage despite fewer features doesn't speak in its favour.

 

Try opera, I really like it, and its very fast like chrome

 

Opera is a good browser, but Chrome and firefox are better IMHO. opera kicked ass way before Chrome and Firefox tho', but we're talking about Firefox V Chrome, and I expected Firefox to use less ram, which it apparently doesn't.

[Yoann Craniumz]

Try opera, I really like it, and its very fast like chrome

Agreed, it's rather under rated. Doesn't it share some of the code or something. (Platform?)

[UselessBread]

firefox still uses a lot less ram that Chrome odd .....

 

i also i would like to add if you closed firefox and restored your session it would load every website and youtube video like chrome does

 

firefox is still the best web browser in my opinion

Why the fuck are there no seperators in those numbers, that makes it really hard to read.

Would be better to have them in either of these formats: 4*10⁵ or 400,000.

Also there is no unit on that axis, now we will never now how much that actually is.

Who the fuck is responsible for that shitty chart? Seriously...

[ShadowCaptain]

Agreed, it's rather under rated. Doesn't it share some of the code or something. (Platform?)

 

Uses blink which is an engine developed as part of chromium by google, with help from Opera too. Uses some of the chrome/android webkit

[Yoann Craniumz]

Uses blink which is an engine developed as part of chromium by google, with help from Opera too. Uses some of the chrome/android webkit

that's what I meant

I noticed that it tends to use less ram than chrome and performs better. Many less apps from what I can tell. Most laptops/ desktops should see much of a performance difference right?

[ShadowCaptain]

that's what I meant

I noticed that it tends to use less ram than chrome and performs better. Many less apps from what I can tell. Most laptops/ desktops should see much of a performance difference right?

Its about as fast, seems less of a resource hog

 

Also great for people with slow internet, you can enable a dithering option so it renders websites with less detail but much faster 

[Yoann Craniumz]

This right here is a good analysis, but you also might want to look into http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202006. Its similar in pricing and performance to the 670.

Yeah. My brother had this horrendous netbook with a gig of ram and I had to look up for more RAM optimized browsers. Landed on 'green browser' which is similar to ie.

[UselessBread]

And yet I have a screenshot pointing otherwise. Firefox dissapointed me a bit, it's a bit slower, not that much slower, but slower enough for me to notice, and higher RAM usage despite fewer features doesn't speak in its favour.

 

 

Opera is a good browser, but Chrome and firefox are better IMHO. opera kicked ass way before Chrome and Firefox tho', but we're talking about Firefox V Chrome, and I expected Firefox to use less ram, which it apparently doesn't.

That screenshot doesn't really say anything because we don't know what addons and tabs you have in Chrome, what version they are in etc...

[Rorgash]

i like how inter connected Google + is, keeps my bookmarks and stuff on any device i use and easy access to google docs and drive and such, and the youtube comment system now that they fixed it works amazingly better now those things no one else does

[A/C]

That screenshot doesn't really say anything because we don't know what addons and tabs you have in Chrome, what version they are in etc...

 

Latest version, as they both self-update of course, chrome has ABP, ad block premium, calendar and pdf reader extensions. As you can see on the screenshot Firefox had 3 addons installed and 1 pending restart. Both browsers had 1xLTT tabs opened. Ofc I coordinated the programs to the same conditions, else this thread would be pointless, wouldn't it?

 

 

i like how inter connected Google + is, keeps my bookmarks and stuff on any device i use and easy access to google docs and drive and such, and the youtube comment system now that they fixed it works amazingly better now those things no one else does

 

This is the main reason I accually use Chrome, I got used to the seamless connections with services and other devices - no setup needed. Of course, you could make almost all of that in Firefox, but you'd have to set it all up yourself. Chrome is more like fire and forget

[UselessBread]

Latest version, as they both self-update of course, chrome has ABP, ad block premium, calendar and pdf reader extensions. As you can see on the screenshot Firefox had 3 addons installed and 1 pending restart. Both browsers had 1xLTT tabs opened. Ofc I coordinated the programs to the same conditions, else this thread would be pointless, wouldn't it?

Those aren't really the same conditions. Different pages and addons. not really comparable.

[Lyons]

Chrome is like Windows 8.1  Its good in functionality, super fast and speedy, however it lacks certain functionality, support.

Like what? I can't think of a single thing FF does better.

[Akolyte]

Like what? I can't think of a single thing FF does better.

addons? programming and web development? customization?  I think FF does those better. 

[Lyons]

addons? programming and web development? customization?  I think FF does those better. 

 

For the average-intermediate user I don't think FF is any better. Chrome is certainly more stable and overall more polished than FF in my experience, plus as a Fairly heavy Google service user I really enjoy its syncing capabilities.

 

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter all that much, but I don't get the people who say, 'Chrome annoys me' or, 'I'm fed up with Chrome'...

[Akolyte]

For the average-intermediate user I don't think FF is any better. Chrome is certainly more stable and overall more polished than FF in my experience, plus as a Fairly heavy Google service user I really enjoy its syncing capabilities.

 

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter all that much, but I don't get the people who say, 'Chrome annoys me' or, 'I'm fed up with Chrome'...

Chrome is good too.  I just dont like it when people say FF is bad.

[A/C]

Those aren't really the same conditions. Different pages and addons. not really comparable.

 

I'm not even gonna try and explain... Just read my post again and think if any of those addons really uses 50+ megs of RAM.

 

Accually, don't, instead of arguing here with me, anyone could download and install fresh vanilla installations of both Chrome and Firefox and see for himself. That would accually save you a lot of time, and you'd see for yourself instead of trying to convince me I didn't see what I saw...

 

 

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter all that much, but I don't get the people who say, 'Chrome annoys me' or, 'I'm fed up with Chrome'...

 

I didn't want to imply Chrome annoys me or anything like that, accually I like Chrome just as much as Firefox, but If I have 2 or 3 gb of RAM in an office PC  I kinda want to get the best out of it, and somehow I thought ff would use less resources as it has less features than chrome out of the box.

 

Chrome is good too.  I just dont like it when people say FF is bad.

 

Firefox isn't bad, but it seems to me that Chrome is doing better right now.

[UselessBread]

I'm not even gonna try and explain... Just read my post again and think if any of those addons really uses 50+ megs of RAM.

 

Accually, don't, instead of arguing here with me, anyone could download and install fresh vanilla installations of both Chrome and Firefox and see for himself. That would accually save you a lot of time, and you'd see for yourself instead of trying to convince me I didn't see what I saw...

Actually I did download Chromium, and wrote scripts to measure the memory usage for both the browsers for tabs from 2 to 50, I am not completely done benchmarking, but I thought this might interest you:

By the looks of it chrome only really has an advantage over Firefox when using less than 4 tabs.

I did not disable the addons on firefox yet, they might be changing the results slightly. (might be that noscript saves on memory)

I will create a lengthier post outlining the testing methodology later.

[A/C]

snippity snip

 

 

Accually this is most helpful. looking forward to the rest of your tests...

 

Kudos!

[samuel]

In a Machine with 8+ Gb of memory, more ram usage means a faster browser without slowing down everything else.

[colonel_mortis]

In a Machine with 8+ Gb of memory, more ram usage means a faster browser without slowing down everything else.

No, more ram usage means that the browser is less well optimised. The problem with chrome is that it splits each tab into a separate process, which is great in that if one tab becomes unresponsive the rest of the browser still works, but it also means that it uses more resources because the rendering engine has to be loaded multiple times.

On Firefox, to see where the memory is being used, go to about:memory (I think, if not, go to about:about and find it from there) and have a look. On chrome, shift+esc (I think) opens its task manager.