Web browser memory usage
Couple of days ago I found the interesting article - “Reduce your Linux memory footprint“, the author writes how to reduce the amount of memory used by applications working on Ubuntu.
For me the most interesting part was about the web browsers. The results form “Comparison of Web browser memory usage” table are not very good for Firefox.
I decide to make same test on Windows XP with the latest version of the browsers.
This is what I did:
I launched the browser, then I opened the page, when loading was done I checked the memory usage with Process Explorer (browser was maximized),
then I closed the browser.
Each test I did three time.
And the results:
BLANK PAGE
| Browser | Average memory use |
| Firefox | 36MB |
| IE7 | 27MB |
page: www.digitalinsane.com
| Browser | Average memory use |
| Firefox | 41MB |
| IE7 | 25MB |
page: www.google.com
| Browser | Average memory use |
| Firefox | 39MB |
| IE7 | 31MB |
page: www.yahoo.com
| Browser | Average memory use |
| Firefox | 45MB |
| IE7 | 43MB |
page: www.msn.com
| Browser | Average memory use |
| Firefox | 45MB |
| IE7 | 44MB |
three tabs with all above pages
| Browser | Average memory use |
| Firefox | 53MB |
| IE7 | 66MB |
It’s not hard to guess that the Opera uses less memory than the other browsers. Internet Explorer is a little bit better than Firefox (in these tests), but it ate more memory when more tabs were open.
And the verdict is:
- Opera - first place! (fast and less memory usage),
- IE7 - second place (very interesting),
- And at the last position, The really hungry Fox!
While I’m writing this post Opera and Firefox are lunched, so lets see the actual memory usage:
Opera (6 tabs opened/6 pages loaded) uses 32 320 Kb,
FireFox (5 tabs opened/5 pages loaded) uses 77 924 Kb
Hmm… Nothing else to say…
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