[Firefox] Had to resort to 64-bit variant permanently

[MrXidus]

​

Had to dump the 32-bit variant of Firefox in favor of 64-bit Firefox Nightly because browsing high resolution image galleries severely hurts Firefox crashing it just after hitting a 2.3gb memory usage mark.

Funnily enough even with this ridiculous high memory usage with Nightly 64-bit one would expect instability when actually it performs excellent and shows no visible signs of bad performance or slow down.

Figured my browser add-ons were causing it or a corrupt profile but it wasn't.

Amusing memory leak/bug I'd say but I'll continue to use Nightly as I require the add-ons.
(other browsers don't have them or they do and but just aren't as great)
(Also I didn't pick Waterfox as it just doesn't receive updates as much as I'd like to see)

Web searching for other users with my issue or similar is futile at most, Only finding BugZilla threads dating from 05 - 08. Quite a bad reputation Firefox has for memory issues.

I'm sure there is a proper explanation for this and maybe even a solution or remedy of some sort. (certainly not this)
It doesn't bother me as I have the memory to spare (might as well use it) and I only noticed after I checked Task Manager to see how much Disk Usage my media server was using.

Thanks.

 

[illumination]

​

Had to dump the 32-bit variant of Firefox in favor of 64-bit Firefox Nightly because browsing high resolution image galleries severely hurts Firefox crashing it just after hitting a 2.3gb memory usage mark.

Funnily enough even with this ridiculous high memory usage with Nightly 64-bit one would expect instability when actually it performs excellent and shows no visible signs of bad performance or slow down.

Figured my browser add-ons were causing it or a corrupt profile but it wasn't.

Amusing memory leak/bug I'd say but I'll continue to use Nightly as I require the add-ons.
(other browsers don't have them or they do and but just aren't as great)
(Also I didn't pick Waterfox as it just doesn't receive updates as much as I'd like to see)

Web searching for other users with my issue or similar is futile at most, Only finding BugZilla threads dating from 05 - 08. Quite a bad reputation Firefox has for memory issues.

I'm sure there is a proper explanation for this and maybe even a solution or remedy of some sort. (certainly not this)
It doesn't bother me as I have the memory to spare (might as well use it) and I only noticed after I checked Task Manager to see how much Disk Usage my media server was using.

Thanks.

Doesn't that beast of yours have 16 gig? Im using firefox, and do not think i have ever consumed that much ram doing so lol.. Good thing too, as i only have 6 gig on my rig...

 

[Jaspion]

I'm using Pale Moon 64 on a 2GB machine and it performs very well.

 

[Littlebits]

I have not tried the Firefox Nightly x64, but I have tried Pale Moon, Cyberfox and Waterfox x64 browsers and my system did not appear to give any performance differences. I got tire of too many add-one not work correctly also, so I went back to Firefox x32. Maybe the difference depends on your CPU. I have AMD x6 core processor on Windows 7x64 8GB of RAM.

Thanks.

 

[MrXidus]

Doesn't that beast of yours have 16 gig? Im using firefox, and do not think i have ever consumed that much ram doing so lol.. Good thing too, as i only have 6 gig on my rig...

A while back when I only had 4gb of memory I remember being shocked seeing Firefox take up a whole 2gb of memory for itself and causing my system to choke a little. I've always known it to be a greedy memory hungry slob.

Luckily I do have a above decent laptop with 16gb of memory and an i7 to keep the hungry beast tamed.

I'm using Pale Moon 64 on a 2GB machine and it performs very well.

Good to see, I assume Pale Moon isn't as hungry as it's half brother Firefox with just 2GB of memory? Each system is different.

Does Pale Moon run a background process all the time still? Haven't tried Pale Moon in a long time and didn't like that it did that.

I have not tried the Firefox Nightly x64, but I have tried Pale Moon, Cyberfox and Waterfox x64 browsers and my system did not appear to give any performance differences. I got tire of too many add-one not work correctly also, so I went back to Firefox x32. Maybe the difference depends on your CPU. I have AMD x6 core processor on Windows 7x64 8GB of RAM.

Thanks.

Yet to try CyberFox, I think it depends on what you do on a day to day browse where the 4gb+ 64-bit flag for memory steps in and help as with my case being a heavy browser user with a ton of slash objects running, very high resolution images and a whole load of opened tabs, 32-bit just could not handle it for me in the end. As for everything else yes there really isn't any noticeable performance differences I agree with you, I believe there are some reviews done putting 64-bit browsers to the test to see if there is any worthy performance.

 

[Jaspion]

I see a difference in performance in Pale Moon compared with Firefox. Videos go better for me, also complex pages load faster; and on another, much more powerful computer, there's an improvement in the performance of Facebook games (and I suppose browser games in general) with PM vs FF.

Pale Moon runs only one process, plus the plugin container when it's fired up.

 

[indra11tng]

I use Nightly x64 and have never been exposed to the incident

 

[Deleted member 178]

for what i know, FF memory usage depends of the RAM available; higher your RAM, hungrier FF is; it allocate more RAM for itself in the supposed purpose to make it loading faster.

 

[Littlebits]

Memory usage may have very little to do with performance on modern Windows OS.
Some programs will use more memory and still perform better than programs that use less and vise versa.
Unless you are still using Windows XP and older, memory usage is not a good way to determine how well a program will perform.

Thanks.

 

[Detection]

Umm 8GB RAM usage with any browser is just wrong, you need to sort your system out, I've never seen that, ever, and I have used just about every flavour of FF for years,

Look for an addon called "Install me to see stupid RAM use" and uninstall it

12GB RAM here and I rarely see FF use more than 500MB, and I have a load of addons / extensions installed

 

[MrXidus]

Look for an addon called "Install me to see stupid RAM use" and uninstall it

[...]
Figured my browser add-ons were causing it or a corrupt profile but it wasn't.

System is in top notch shape by the way.

The cause has come down to high resolution images that don't get unloaded after closing them, they stay in Firefox's memory which over time increases (in my case it reached 8GB), So this is a Firefox bug in my opinion and nothing to do with an addon or ones system.

The problem I have with using a 32-bit Firefox is it has memory restrictions unlike its 64-bit counterpart which supports more than 4GB of memory usage and because of that I no longer get crashes like I did using Firefox 32-bit.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/958439

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=658604
(Says "Resolved" but I'd say otherwise or this is a new form of this bug introduced)

Thanks.

 

[nimd4]

[..] unlike its 64-bit counterpart which supports

.. and doesn't have support for *many* 64-bit plugins.

http://s0.uploads.im/Upz1v.png

*screenshot of 32-bit about[:]plugins :: pls remove "[]", as I couldn't find a way to disable smilies && was getting this

*use about:about in the Address Bar, to display list of Firefox config pages.