NeoTifa

November 25, 2009 at 6:46am

Just this morning I was exclaiming via Twitter how my Vista laptop only installs updates and restarts when I'm in a hurry and have to do something in the morning, so that also means I have to restart FF. Not only does it take 10 freaking minutes to start up, it pulls up like 3 instances of the browser. :( It also lags everything out, and even after starting it, it doesn't respond half the time. I thought it was just my computer or that it was redownloading all the temp files I deleted. :/

foamcup

November 23, 2009 at 8:29pm

Try a different browser, you have Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, Chromium, and Iron that you can try out.

SURF2DI4

November 23, 2009 at 2:47pm

I had to switch my spouse's dual core for a quad core. Just so she could get work done on her computer. i would slow to a crawl even with an E6300 core 2,  it now has a q6550 quad.

 

karl

aviaggio

November 23, 2009 at 2:22pm

I always have lots of problems with Firefox on my 3-year old laptop. CPU usage is all over the place, many YouTube videos are hard to play, and it consumes a ton of RAM. Page rendering often shoots CPU usage up to 80%+ and it's almost impossible to scroll down while a page is loading. I have to wait for it to finish before Firefox becomes responsive again.

I could probably trim it down if I disabled all the add-ons, but then what's the point? The reason I use Firefox is because of the functionality from the add-ons. Otherwise I'd probably be using Chrome.

jhaygamba

November 23, 2009 at 2:05pm

Yes, Mozilla uses and had problems with CPU Usage. I used to open more than 20 tabs in a row (each FF window). Sometimes I noticed, when it reaches for about 40 tabs, Firefox stops responding for more than a seconds or a minute. As I check the task manager, it uses more CPU usage more than Photoshop CS4. About 1GB of memory usage.

But, I still love using Firefox more than any browser. :)

firesoul1

November 23, 2009 at 2:03pm

Im using firefox right now with 10 open tabs. Maximum PC, ESPN, FOX Sports, Adobe, BBC, Google, Youtube, Newegg, The Consumerist, and Ars. Also im running AMD's Power Monitor with Cool and Quiet enabled and Task Manager (WinXPPro). Both show at the very minimum of 2% CPU usage. at the time of this writing i have monitored both progams and none have shown to exceed 10% CPU usage. this is may hardware.

AMD Phenom 8450 Tri-Core 2.1 Ghz

OCZ Reaper 4GB DDR2 800 @ 1.90V

ATI/VisionTek HD 3650 512MB PCIe 16X

Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB @ 7200RPM SATA

Zazubovich

November 23, 2009 at 1:56pm

No matter how you slice it.  Nothing makes me feel like I'm using a hayes modem on dialup with a 386 than having a lot of Firefox tabs open.  Except trying to do it with Explorer or Chrome.  Firefox gave us the ability to do something (tabbed browsing), now they have to refine how it is done to stay on top.

routine

November 23, 2009 at 1:48pm

I have a solution:

Use Chrome instead; you click the icon and Chrome pops right up, no waiting. When I click Firefox I wait, and wait, and wait, and finally it opens up. IE8 is faster than Firefox.

immersive

November 23, 2009 at 1:47pm

What good is a high end cpu and ram if you dont get to use it? Now if your overheating I could see switching though. I still love firefox and I think it will be a long time before I switch to something else.

WFUJay

November 23, 2009 at 1:44pm

She's whining about CPU usage with 20+ tabs open on Firefox constantly??  Seriously?  What does she expect.....it's a Dell Mini, not an i7 ffs.  Most Mini's have single core ATOM processors...this lady can't be serious.

Is it really necessary to run that many tabs anyway?  Considering what's running on each tab (flash, scripts, adobe reader possibly among others) it's not surprising that the CPU usage is that high on such a limited system.

Obsidian

November 23, 2009 at 1:33pm

As a web developer I use FireFox a lot, my whole team does. But it also causes a LOT of memory and CPU usage. It's probably responsible for 70% or more of the (user-induced) reboots we do just to entirely clear out the memory and process tree.

Task manager shows FireFox is eating up over 313 MB of memory right now, and that's EASILY the largest usage on my list. IE, with just as many windows open is at 230 MB.

Some of this is due to the plugins I like to use for FireFox, like ColorfulTabs, FireFTP, ColorZilla, Adblock Plus, and probably a few others I have turned off for speed, but I'm sure they still take up resources :P

It's impossible to know exactly but it could be partially user-induced because FireFox is more friendly for what I actually WANT a browser to be like, and lucky for a lot of us we can load nice plug-ins/ add-ons very easily.

But yes, to answer the question, it's a resource hog sometimes, and a memory hog ALL the time.

 

 

V-mateika

November 23, 2009 at 1:09pm

I've had 68% plus usage from firefox before, I have 5+ tabs open at one time, sometimes simultaneous loading, but Google Chrome never does that for me. I have a Core 2 Duo 3GHZ dual core in my notebook it should not ever hit 68%. I'm switching to google chrome, it's very fast, much more than firefox for me, and I don't need to bother with tweaking like I do with firefox.