08.27.07
Memory Usage
A couple of months back I bought a new computer.. (Althon64 X2 3800+ w/ 1GB RAM running Vista). This was a big deal for me... my first computer with 1GB RAM (well the first one that wasn't work provided). I've been hearing good and bad things about Vista resource utilization, and my past experience with it had been that it was fairly good. On this computer though, from time to time, things started to slow down. I've been poking around and I've realized the cause of most of my problems... Firefox. My 1GB RAM loses some because my 128MB Dedicated Video Card uses another 128MB of Shared Memory to make it a "256MB Video card"... so of the remaining 896MB RAM is all I have... With ~200-300MB to DWM, Explorer and various Windows services, that only leaves ~600MB RAM for me to play with. I'm using Pidgin for instant messaging, probably a bad choice but it's commit memory is 160MB (16MB in it's working set though)... That drops me down to ~450 that can be commited. Outlook 2007 uses ~100MB which leaves me with ~350MB... Here's where something interesting happens. Firefox's commited memory is ~365MB... It's working set is ~250MB... that's a LOT of RAM... Let's compare that with Internet Explorer:
FF 2.0
Commit Size: 365,864K
Working Set: 259,904K
Private Working Set: 243,976K
IE 7.0
Commit Size: 89,284K
Working Set: 84,460K
Private Working Set: 53,000K
Needless to say, Firefox has been shutdown and IE7 has been opened... My memory usage is looking quite a bit better and my page file has gone from 1.9GB / 2GB down to 1.5GB / 2.0GB... All by closing Firefox.
For those of you wondering about pages open. Each browser had GMail, Bloglines, My webhosting control panel and a personal website.
While I know I need another GB or 3 of RAM for this computer... I also know that Firefox won't find itself open again on this computer for quite some time.
dre said,
August 27, 2007 at 5:28 am
I use AIM Lite, so try it out as a Pidgin replacement.
For Firefox, I suggest setting an environmental variable MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1. Then run firefox -ProfileManager and create 5 profiles (GMail, Bloglines, cPanel, personal, and a general one). You can then start each profile with firefox -P profilename. Each firefox instance is now it’s own process, and I’d be willing to bet that the memory footprints would be much smaller. As an added benefit, you can load different add-ons and each profile is protected against attacks which cross the same-origin policy (XSS, CSRF, HRS, etc).
Ryan Poppa said,
August 27, 2007 at 9:18 am
http://element14.wordpress.com/2006/07/11/firefox-does-not-have-a-memory-bug-but-heres-how-you-improve-mem-usage/
–FYI
Claus said,
August 27, 2007 at 9:59 am
Hi Tyler,
I’m a Firefox advocate and use it almost exclusively, but I have to admit, what you report is (unfortunately) one of the headaches of current Firefox builds.
Some extensions (Add-ons) are more memory hungry than others.
I have found that by making a few tweaks to the settings for Firefox, memory usage may be managed a bit more (although it still might not be a great as one would like).
I posted a few (detailed) here on this post:
Firefox Memory Leak Solutions - http://grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com/2006/07/firefox-memory-leak-solutions.html
I’ve made some recommendations of settings that I found helpful (and not so much) on that page, along with links to the Mozilla pages they reference. You might want to try some of them to see if it helps a bit–nothing I’ve yet found will completely stop the problem, but they seem to make it a bit more manageable.
I’ve found that in testing Firefox 3.0 (Gran Paradiso) in both the Alpha’s and the nightly versions (Minefield) that while memory management is much improved…it still has some issues I hope the Mozilla team is working out.
On an unrelated note…what version of Vista are you running the x64 or x32 bit version?
Also, are you using ReadyBoost with your system? The Vista laptop we have at home runs Vista Home Premium (x32) with a 1GB RAM as well. I’ve added a 2 GB USB stick and dedicated all of the space on it to ReadyBoost caching. It doesn’t make it magically faster, but does seem to add a bit of pep to the system.
Love the blog and check in via the RSS feed daily! Thanks for all your advice and posts!
Cheers
Tyler Reguly said,
August 27, 2007 at 8:51 pm
@Claus
I’m running x32 Vista (Home Premium) as that’s what the system came with… I’m not sure if I set up ReadyBoost or not, I’ll have to look into that… The extra RAM is definitely something I want to pick up..
I’m glad you enjoy the blog… I also enjoy yours.
Tyler.
Bryan Choate said,
August 28, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Hi Tyler,
I work at Kingston Technology. I would definitely drop another 1GB of RAM in there given that you are using Vista–especially if you are using the Aero Visualizations. ReadyBoost is cool, but it is no substitute for RAM. If you keep your eyes open you can pick up 1GB of RAM and a 2GB ReadyBoost Drive for around $60.
DRAM prices are expected to rise, so now is a good time to buy!
Bryan
Tyler Reguly said,
August 28, 2007 at 7:14 pm
@Bryan
Thanks for the suggestion… I setup 4GB for ReadyBoost last night and I’ve actually noticed quite the improvement, but as I said… another 1 or 3GB of RAM is in the cards… I just haven’t had time to get out and pick the RAM up…
Abhijit Shylanath said,
September 4, 2007 at 2:54 am
Hey, Tyler. Found your page when I was googling for Firefox memory leaks. What you’re saying is definitely true. I’m having the same problem myself, but thankfully, I’m on XP and have 2G, so it’s not that much of a hassle for me. After a little tweaking, I was able to get FF to be a little more conservative about memory.
You may also want to give Opera a thought. With only this page of yours and Gmail open:
IE: 56M
Opera: 57M
FF: 71.5M
Think it’s worth the peace of mind.
Cheers.
Abhijit Shylanath said,
September 4, 2007 at 2:56 am
And yes, Pidgin, too, is a bit wasteful. Check out Miranda and Trillian. Don’t know about Trillian, but Miranda is quite spartan about these things. Sorry for the double.