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There are isolated problems with current patches, but they are well-known and documented on this site. |
Have you noticed this too? Chrome sucks RAM like…. well it reminds me of what my Dad says about one of his cars — it can’t pass a gas station. Bo
[See the full post at: Patch Lady – Chrome is out…what’s in?]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
I switched back to Firefox a couple months ago. Last time I used it regularly was in 2012 I think. But it just kept getting slower, and Google Chrome kept getting faster. So I naturally switched. Then in 2017 they announced Firefox Quantum, however I stuck with Chrome, but when it was announced that Chrome was ditching ad blockers, I decided to switch back to Firefox. My only regret is not switching sooner. I’ve fallen in love with Firefox again, and don’t miss Chrome one bit. I feel very confident in recommending Firefox over Chrome once again.
In my latest test, I pitted Firefox 68.0.2 against Waterfox 56.2.13, both the current versions as I write this. I used my Dell G3 laptop, with its i7-8750H hex-core (HT on) CPU, 16GB of RAM, nVidia GTX1050ti GPU, and NVMe SSD, is my fastest PC overall for decently parallelizable workloads. In previous tests, I’ve found that testing on my slow PC (the one named “Swift”) nets the same relative results, just with lower numbers. I’m running Linux for the test now, but I have previously tested Linux and Windows versions of Firefox and Waterfox on the same machine and found that they perform the same.
As the goal of the test was to determine browser speed as I would see it, I tested both of them with the full complement of extensions that I would usually use. Most of them are the same on both browsers, as Waterfox works nicely with most Webextensions addons (which are the only kind that work in Firefox proper).
I used Browserbench.org’s example of SpeeDOMeter 2.0, which was the same benchmark Mozilla used to make the “twice as fast as Firefox was before” claim about Firefox Quantum. I’ve used this one a few times to chart Firefox’s movement relative to Waterfox 56, which being based on the last Mozilla build prior to Quantum, is relatively static in performance.
In the past, Firefox has maintained a slight edge in performance over Waterfox, but it was on the order of 7 percent or so. Mozilla had told us that the legacy addons were holding back the speed, and that was why (among other reasons) the old addons had to go.
So here we are, two years down the road. Both browsers stand ready to duel!
The results were interesting.
Firefox 68.0.2 scored 50.2, plus or minus 1.3. That was with OpenGL compositing; using WebRender, the score dropped to 49.7, plus or minus 1.9).
Waterfox 56.2.13 scored 50.1, plus or minus 1.2, for a statistical tie. That result also used OpenGL. Waterfox 56 doesn’t have the ability to use WebRender.
Two years later, there is zero performance benefit (in this benchmark) to having gotten rid of the classic addons. This is the first test I have done that showed no performance benefit for Firefox proper. Firefox evidently could have kept the classic addon APIs and still had Firefox be “Quantum” fast, and the stability and security advantages of the Webextensions, for those who prize that more than infinite customizability, could be realized by having a switch to turn on or off the classic addons, as they had in the first few builds of Quantum Firefox.
It’s only one benchmark, but it’s the one Mozilla chose to show off how great Quantum was.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11 for maintenance)
(quoting b)
Click “Continue with Adblocker” and all will be revealed.
Using uBlock Origin and uMatrix in Waterfox, there was no such option presented… there was merely a “disable adblock” page with nothing else on it (no buttons or links).
I had recently switched to uMatrix for its greater granularity of control compared to NoScript… but…
Or, better yet, use Firefox with NoScript and Adblock Plus. With that combination you can click on Susan’s link to the TechRadar article; and you’ll never even see that pop-up window … or any of the ads.
After reading this, I decided to give NoScript another shot. I enabled NoScript and disabled uMatrix, and tried again. The article just came up as you said, with no adblock naywall appearing. Interesting… I will have to see what one’s doing that the other isn’t.
Inside the actual article, once I could read it:
Whilst many of Google’s recent changes to Chrome have annoyed users, Mozilla’s changes to Firefox have been met with broadly positive reactions from its community
We must be looking at different neighborhoods within the Firefox community. The one I’m in has been busting Mozilla’s chops for several years for trying so hard to be Chrome, which for those of us who use Firefox because it’s Firefox, is a serious downgrade. I’m not trying to denigrate Mozilla… I’m trying to wake them up! If I wanted what Chrome has to offer, I would be using Chrome. Their market share has been in freefall for the same length of time that they’ve been trying to be Chrome, yet they persist.
For at least five or so years, ever since the horrible Chrome-like Australis UI was inflicted upon the Firefox users, each new version of Firefox (they come frequently, as Mozilla also copied Chrome’s fast release schedule) arriving has been a lot like receiving Windows updates… hunker down and get ready to be exasperated at what they did to us this time. It seems that every new version lops off more important features, generally with no other justification than that Chrome also happens to be lacking in that area, so it must be a good idea not to have that feature. Most notably, that included (with v57) the defining feature that made Firefox “Firefox”, its powerful addon API, with Firefox instead adopting Webextensions, based on (you guessed it) the Chrome addons.
Mozilla seems to be trying hard to alienate every last Firefox die-hard out there while trying to court those users who are already happy with Chrome (and least likely to switch) by making a browser that is as indistinguishable from Chrome as possible. I see a lot of people saying they are considering going back to Firefox, but those of us that never left the Firefox ecosystem (and I include Waterfox within that) are finding it increasingly hard to find a reason to prefer Firefox to any one of the de-googled Chromium variants out there. It’s still an improvement on Chrome, but for how long?
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11 for maintenance)
Try Pale Moon Project…
Just like Classic Firefox. It even has plug-ins support if you still need Flash or Java and old extensions (e.g. my favorite, TAB MIX PLUS).
TechRadar asks that you disable ad blocking software, or pay $.99 for a week of unlimited views… but also offers, below those two choices, to let you continue reading as is…
That gets readers thinking about the value of the information, but still allows choice.
Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter
I’m negative to all things Google, and I’ve never used Chrome. I used IE pre-Windows 10, then Edge, until Microsoft announced they were going to gut Edge and wrap it around Chromium. I immediately switched to Firefox, and haven’t looked back. It was a shallow and swift learning curve, and I’m enjoying it.
Yes, Chrome uses a lot of RAM. But it does so because it’s there to be used. It functions perfectly fine if you have lower RAM, too. I run it on a 3 GB machine, sometimes even with a VM taking up 1 GB of that, leaving me with only 2 GB. And Chrome still runs just fine. The only downside is that it unloads tabs more often.
That said, it does unload tabs rather indiscriminately, so I replace the built in dicarder with an addon Auto Tab Discard, which gives me the option to set certain sites not to unload. While it is restricted to unloading tabs based on how long they’ve been inactive, I find that works well enough. So I go to chrome:flags and disable the built in tab discarder.
But that’s largely due to how unloaded tabs can lose your place in videos (and how Gmail is set up with a long loading time that fails Google’s own criteria for pages). If they fixed that, I wouldn’t even need an extension.
My point is, Chrome works fine with lower memory, and trying to get a lower memory browser isn’t really all that useful. The only reason Firefox can be lower memory is that it limits the number of processes–which means it doesn’t do site isolation as well as Google. You’re trading security for reducing memory usage. Since Chrome degrades gracefully with lower RAM (as described above), I do not find that an acceptable tradeoff.
In other words, I say to stick with Chrome, and treat the memory issue the non-issue it really is. Chrome will automatically reduce its memory usage when necessary. Idle RAM is useless RAM.
Actually, in the article mentioned in Susan’s comment there is no explanation of why Chrome uses too much RAM, or what is meant by too much RAM. All it is written that touches on the overuse of RAM (besides “lots of people say so already on the Web”) is a couple of paragraphs (see below) to the effect that “I open a zillion Chrome screens and this does not work really well for me even when I have 32 GB of RAM”, something, I think, quite irrelevant to people who use Chrome and do not open a lot of screens at the same time. If one ever needed to do that, then one should use a different browser that is compatible, by design, with the kind of very intensive use one intends to make of it. But this does not mean that it is not fit for use by anyone else, period, as the writer states: “Chrome’s resource intensive nature is unacceptable“. Chrome is a tool, and as with every tool, its appropriateness depends on what one wants to do with it. Maybe it is a bloated tool? Well…
I am not saying Chrome is great, only that this article is not. A more significant issue with Chrome is, in my opinion, the users’ data snooping Google is notorious for and that already preoccupies a considerable number of people, both on the Web and out in the real world.
As to the article, please read this excerpt, and you shall be the judge:
“These days, Chrome is just as bloated and resource-hungry as its competitors were. There’s a reason why Chrome’s lust for RAM has become such a popular meme on the internet.
I’m lucky enough to have a PC that boasts 32GB of the stuff. Now, that amount of RAM is – to be honest – overkill for most things I use my PC for. However, after a few hours using Chrome, gigabytes will have been swallowed up by Google’s web browser.
Yes, I admit that my shoddy tab organisation is partly to blame here. Because of the nature of my job (and the ultra-wide aspect ratio of my monitor), my browser can end up the distressingly high number of open tabs.
Even so, Chrome’s resource intensive nature is unacceptable. And, while a growing number of available extensions has helped make Chrome a more useful – and versatile – piece of software, it is led to Chrome becoming far too bloated.“
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV
The number of open tabs is only part of the equation in Chrome’s RAM usage. Per tab Chrome uses more RAM than Firefox. This is partly due to how video is handled, but it’s also as stated in this thread partly due to greater isolation of processes per tab. Firefox and Chrome both use containers, but Chrome’s container scheme is less RAM-efficient than the one used by Firefox. Overall, there appears to be no security disadvantage or disadvantage to either scheme. There may also be less process unloading when a Chrome tab is in the background than the amount of process unloading Firefox does.
Even on my Chromebook running Fedora Linux, I have to get to about ten tabs before the system even hesitates due to insufficient RAM and other system resources.
I see no reason to stop using Chrome as long as it is understood that Google does a lot more tracking than Mozilla does. But this has always been a complaint, and is nothing new.
-- rc primak
There is a rather big security disadvantage: Firefox does not have site isolation. They’re working on it, but expect memory usage to increase if you turn it on.
The primary way Firefox keeps memory down is simply by limiting the number of open processes, which inherently means you can’t have full site isolation. (If you have too many sites open, then at least one process will have to handle two sites.)
This is changing. Firefox is working on both site isolation (which will increase memory usage) and tab unloading (which will reduce it). However, currently, Chrome has these features, while Firefox does not.
That said, I’m hoping that Firefox will implement them better, and force Chrome to go back and fix their tab unloading. If Firefox can just keep track of where videos are, and allow you to easily make an exception for a site that takes a long time to reload, then it will be superior.
However, I do expect both to use similar levels of memory–i.e. all it currently needs or all it has available, whichever is less.
Chrome has never been shown to have any sort of “memory leak”. However, the same cannot be said of popular Chrome and Firefox extensions. Firefox extensions seem to get fewer complaints now that the API is Webextensions, no longer NPAPI. Some Chrome PPAPI extensions still may have memory leak issues.
-- rc primak
NPAPI is a plugin API, not an extension API. Webextensions replaces XUL/XPCOM.
FWIW, most of the extensions I use in Waterfox are Webextensions, but the few that are XUL do a lot of heavy lifting.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/16GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11 for maintenance)
Used Chrome until I got tired of having to manually flush all the tracking goop a few times a day*; coupla weeks ago switched back to Firefox with two extensions, uBlock** and Adblock Plus. Results:
Chrome: 547 MB of RAM
Firefox: 447 MB RAM
Firefox uses 27% less RAM on my system.
System stats below. Also keep in mind the more extensions you add, the more RAM it’s going to take up.
*Firefox has this wonderful little switch in it that blows it all away when you close the browser.
**Tried NoScript, but had to abandon it-uBlock uses lists, and just about every site you hit needs JavaScript to run properly… whitelisting every site. uBlock seems to have fairly large and correct lists.
Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", 12GB RAM, Group "0Patch", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations. Linux Mint Greenhorn
--
"Nine out of 10 doctors say Acid Reflux is mainly caused by computers."
Chrome: 547 MB of RAM
Firefox: 447 MB RAM
Saving 100MB of RAM on a PC with 8-32GB is insignificant.
I am staying with Chrome with many extensions on my laptop with 16GB of RAM
Bypass Paywalls
Checker Plus for Gmail™
Extensions Update Notifier
Google Dictionary (by Google)
Google Docs Offline
HTTPS Everywhere
Imagus
Magic Actions for YouTube™
Password Alert
Password Checkup extension
Save Image As PNG
Send from Gmail (by Google)
uBlock Origin
uBlock Origin Extra
UltraSurf Security, Privacy & Unblock VPN (disabled, enabled when needed)
WOT Web of Trust, Website Reputation
Chrome extensions can do the same flushing out of cruft which Firefox can do natively. I use HotCleaner’s Click and Clean. It also gets at some system areas where Local Storage takes place. Very customizable.
-- rc primak
Browser memory use is based on each web page, and has increased because the amount of stuff web pages are doing – scripts, images/animations, movies, etc. The worst offenders are the web pages that are endless – instead of splitting stuff up onto separate pages, you continually scroll down forever until you reach the end of the content.
I’m not sure of the sheer quantities involved. Acceleration and selective fetching of only the elements which are currently needed reduce the use of local storage and temp locations. So we can’t say that just because an element is coded into a page, it is necessarily loaded, stored locally and not released quickly when no longer in use.
-- rc primak
I am inclined to imagine that, to see a picture in a Web page, the picture must be downloaded to one’s computer first and is likely to be left there, along with other debris, “for a quick reloading of the page”. I also assume that people that put up ads in Web pages want those adds to be seen and even heard. And the more colorful, animated and noisy the ad, the better. All that has to be downloaded or streamed, as well as the high resolution pictures that illustrate the ads. That must take time and slow down loading the page. I have noticed considerably faster loading and less clutter left behind when I use the ad blocker, compared to when I don’t.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV
This is a silly discussion because unused RAM is wasted RAM. The whole point of having it is to use it, and the more you have, the more SHOULD be used. If you think keeping your RAM 90% free at all times makes your computer faster then you are wrong. How about sharing some articles that educate people on how computers use RAM rather than adding to the confusion and hysteria. A good example is Android OS. It always uses most of the available RAM to keep your most used apps feeling nice and snappy.
It is not entirely silly. It depends on your normal workload. If any program routinely uses an inordinate amount of RAM based on what you are doing then it could be slowing down your PC if your RAM usage is 80% or higher on a regular basis. If your normal RAM use is high then Windows will have to spend time using your swapfile. That definitely will slow down your system. When Windows or any OS has one or more components overloaded it begins spending more time managing requests to do something than actually doing what is requested.
--Joe
If you’re not interested in pictures/video, etc, and just want text only, there’s options! You can use a Text Only Browser (Lynx), or you can use extensions for Chrome/Firefox that enable the same thing!
https://merabheja.com/12-text-only-browsers-for-browsing-in-slow-internet-connections/
You’ll not only get a speed boost, but it’s safer as well!
If you’re not interested in pictures/video, etc, and just want text only, there’s options! You can use a Text Only Browser (Lynx), or you can use extensions for Chrome/Firefox that enable the same thing!
https://merabheja.com/12-text-only-browsers-for-browsing-in-slow-internet-connections/
You’ll not only get a speed boost, but it’s safer as well!
But what’s the purpose of “saving” memory? What does it get you? Intentionally deciding to have a significantly worse browsing experience in order to keep some of your RAM completely unused is not a sensible trade-off. A RAM chip requires the same amount of electricity whether it’s all being used or not…. so you might as well use all of it.
Bottom line if you still have a SATA drive, it’s time to upgrade to SSD.
This can be a bit confusing to some people as SSD drives can still be SATA drives…
Due to the RAM thing, I don’t use Google’s Chrome since months anymore (as a poor blogger, my Win7 machine has 4 GB RAM and a SATA HD 😉 …
Because I’ve open always 10 and more tabs, Chrome eats up to 90 % of my RAM and the machine starts to become unuseable – so I’m forced to kill all Chrome task to free the wasted memory.
Firefox eats 100 – 200 MB more RAM per Tab compared to Chrome.
I currently use Iron browser portable – a Google Chrome clone – uses lesser RAM per Tab, compared to Chrome, and don’t have all the Chrome Google related privacy stuff.
Ex Microsoft Windows (Insider) MVP, Microsoft Answers Community Moderator, Blogger, Book author
https://www.borncity.com/win/
The Chrome habit should be broken anyway. Resource use aside, it snoops. If people value their privacy, Chrome (or any google product) is the last browser to use. Ditto IE.
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