# My firefox was using 967MB of RAM last night
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [March 18, 2008, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851 "2008-03-18T22:25:37Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@zeno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zeno)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2008, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/1 "2008-03-18T22:25:37Z")
That is the highest I have ever seen it. In fact, it is the single largest use of RAM I have ever seen in my live. Thank you.
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### Author:  [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2008, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/2 "2008-03-18T22:29:49Z")
Sorry everyone. I’ve been posting a lot today. Consider today one of the peak days.
Anyway, Whenever I look at my task manager the thing that is invariably using the most memory, (far more than the second-place item) is the internet browser (in my case IE7) I’ve seen it as high as 300mb .
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### Author:  [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2008, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/3 "2008-03-18T22:37:22Z")
976MB? [That’s nothing.](http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Software-Bloat.aspx)
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2008, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/4 "2008-03-18T22:50:26Z")
Why would you ever need more than 256k?
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### Author:  [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)
#### Post date: [March 18, 2008, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/5 "2008-03-18T22:55:20Z")
[QUOTE=Larry Mudd]
Why would you ever need more than 256k?
[/QUOTE]
Surely you mean 640k?
My Firefox seems to max out around 350MB - after a week or so; I usually tend to reboot around that time. I have, however, seen SQL Server using 14GB of RAM on a 16GB machine when some very, very heavy querying was going on. That’s the most I’ve ever seen a single application use.
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### Author:  [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/6 "2008-03-19T00:27:19Z")
Right now, Firefox is using 102,770 K. I’m reading the dope and streaming Sirius radio.
Fascinating stuff, I know…
Joe
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### Author:  [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/7 "2008-03-19T00:42:10Z")
Doesn’t Firefox 2 have a memory leak? Did they fix that with Firefox 3 (we got any Dopers running the beta)?
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### Author:  [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/8 "2008-03-19T00:44:33Z")
Firefox starts off nice and streamlined when you first install it. This is to try and make a really good impression which it usually does. Its AI gets more and more bold over time as it tries to feel for your limits as to hour many resources it can consume undetected. Most people aren’t savvy enough to ever notice and Firefox just keeps going. Once it reaches a certain point, it installs itself AS your operating system. All you can do after that point is to use Firefox as your only application. It deletes the rest of them and even low-level hard drive formatting won’t overcome it. The only recourse is to buy a new computer and emoliate the old one BEFORE you bring the new one into the house. No one knows exactly Firefox is trying to do but many scientists suspect it is warning extraterrestrials about the SETI project and was, in fact, planted for that purpose.
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### Author:  [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/9 "2008-03-19T00:55:03Z")
About 205MB on my browser (Opera 9.23). There’s 23 open tabs which looks about typical.
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### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/10 "2008-03-19T01:02:01Z")
Mine’s running about 249 MB (out of 512 MB RAM) with around 60 tabs open. I can’t imagine what would cause it to use nearly 1 GB.
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/11 "2008-03-19T01:28:14Z")
I’m trying the new Safari update that just downloaded, but I opened Firefox to see how much memory it was using on startup.
:: opens Termina, gets shell wndow ::
:: issues **top** command ::
Hmm.
:: opens another shell window ::
:: issues **man top** command ::
Okay. Firefox binary is using 281 megs of memory in total. Safari is using 273 megs. 646 megs of memory in total is being used; 1392 megs are free.
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### Author:  [@Juggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Juggler)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/12 "2008-03-19T11:06:44Z")
I’m using Firefox 3 beta 4 and for me the memory handling has improved greatly. It’s using 123 megs right now after an hours use. Firefox 2 was greeeeedy with the memory.
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### Author:  [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 11:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/13 "2008-03-19T11:16:42Z")
Interesting. I’ve noticed my machine at home is a real dog recently. Maybe I should bump the memory some.
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### Author:  [@Paintcharge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paintcharge)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/14 "2008-03-19T12:30:31Z")
Has anyone tried [this?](http://firefox-ultimate-optimizer.en.softonic.com/)
I haven’t. Just curious if it works.
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### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/15 "2008-03-19T16:30:13Z")
[QUOTE=Paintcharge]
Has anyone tried [this?](http://firefox-ultimate-optimizer.en.softonic.com/)
I haven’t. Just curious if it works.
[/QUOTE]
It seems to work pretty well. The application itself uses about 1700 K of memory, but the Firefox memory usage dropped by a factor of 25 fold. I was running about 239 MB of memory previously. Now, Firefox runs at a high of about 9000 - 10,000 K without even needing to restart my browser. A huge difference.
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### Author:  [@Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Man_With_a_Cat)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/16 "2008-03-19T16:45:28Z")
[QUOTE=cochrane]
It seems to work pretty well. The application itself uses about 1700 K of memory, but the Firefox memory usage dropped by a factor of 25 fold. I was running about 239 MB of memory previously. Now, Firefox runs at a high of about 9000 - 10,000 K without even needing to restart my browser. A huge difference.
[/QUOTE]
Holy crap, that’s an amazing thing. It cut mine from 134K down to under 5K with only two tabs open.
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### Author:  [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/17 "2008-03-19T16:47:35Z")
[QUOTE=Shagnasty]
Firefox starts off nice and streamlined when you first install it. This is to try and make a really good impression which it usually does. Its AI gets more and more bold over time as it tries to feel for your limits as to hour many resources it can consume undetected. Most people aren’t savvy enough to ever notice and Firefox just keeps going. Once it reaches a certain point, it installs itself AS your operating system. All you can do after that point is to use Firefox as your only application. It deletes the rest of them and even low-level hard drive formatting won’t overcome it. The only recourse is to buy a new computer and emoliate the old one BEFORE you bring the new one into the house. No one knows exactly Firefox is trying to do but many scientists suspect it is warning extraterrestrials about the SETI project and was, in fact, planted for that purpose.
[/QUOTE]
Have you been licking toads again?
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### Author:  [@Man\_With\_a\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Man_With_a_Cat)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/18 "2008-03-19T17:33:46Z")
[QUOTE=Lobsang]
Have you been licking toads again?
[/QUOTE]
Between that post and the captions he put to the jesus pictures, I’ve been thoroughly entertained.
Pass me a toad, would ya?
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### Author:  [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/19 "2008-03-19T18:07:32Z")
[QUOTE=Mr Bus Guy]
Holy crap, that’s an amazing thing. It cut mine from 134K down to under 5K with only two tabs open.
[/QUOTE]
I’m currently running 63 tabs and several extensions such as Cool Iris, Ad Block Plus,
Forecastfox, Greasemonkey, IE Tab, and Plain Text to Link. Firefox is using less RAM than Windows Explorer.
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### Author:  [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)
#### Post date: [March 19, 2008, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-firefox-was-using-967mb-of-ram-last-night/441851/20 "2008-03-19T18:19:58Z")
Wow, thanks for the tip about the FF optimizer. Now my adobe products can be my big resource hogs, not my browser–as it should be!
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