Pale Moon forum

My ram consumption ranges from 150 MB (once I start Pale Moon) to 550 MB or so (after I've been doing lots of browsing and have opened lots of tabs). 550 MB may seem like a lot to some of you, but I use lots of add-ons.

Anyway . . . what's it like for you?

I keep clear of Add-ons to a great extent, I use system-wide settings to block annoyances like adware and bad sites, I also primarily use Pale Moon x64, which probably uses 20-30% more memory than x86. If I start a new session, PM kicks off well under 100MB, currently I'm using some 2.5GB - but I do have a tendency to begin with sessions of 60+ pages and over a few days, I do give the 'net a good workout ^^

I'm running the 32-bit version of PM. Right now, with no tabs open, PM is using 97MB.

satrow wrote:. . . currently I'm using some 2.5GB . . .

My god.

I've heard of peoples ram use going past 1 GB but I can't recall ever going close to that. Then again, I never keep my browser open for more than two hours and always start a fresh session with no tabs open when I launch my browser . . .

I just closed that session - it had reached over 4GB. By the time I'd noticed it, I was partway through a long and involved 'phone call so I just killed it. It would have been good to have tried to work out where the leak was, as it's pretty rare for me to get over about 1.8GB, the 2.5GB was exceptional!

UPDATE: looks like Gmail was the #1 candidate for the memory leak.

Night Wing wrote:I'm running the 32-bit version of PM. Right now, with no tabs open, PM is using 97MB.

Interesting. When I start up PaleMoon 12.3, it starts off using 55-65MB and 25% CPU, then drops to between 30-40MB and 0-2% CPU and stays there. If I open this thread in a tab, it goes up to 59MB (and 57-58MB if I have ImageBlocker2.1 on). This is on Windows 7 Starter 32-bit with no addons and 1GB of RAM. I think the browser might make use of more memory for speed if you have more RAM (like Windows 7) but I'm not sure. How much RAM does your computer have Night Wing?

Also, when I type "about:config" in the URL then search for "cache", these are the default numbers it assigns me:



Does anyone have anything different?

satrow wrote:UPDATE: looks like Gmail was the #1 candidate for the memory leak.

Just curious, in what way does Gmail "leak"? Do you mean your memory grows and grows if you leave your Inbox open in a tab for a long time, or it grows more than it shrinks if open it in a new tab then close the tab? In both cases, mine seems to go up and down in a pretty balanced way over time so far (tried opening and closing Inbox 10 times in a new tab, then leaving one Inbox tab open for around 20 minutes).

ninaholic wrote:

satrow wrote:UPDATE: looks like Gmail was the #1 candidate for the memory leak.

Just curious, in what way does it "leak"? Do you mean your memory grows and grows if you leave your Inbox open in a tab for a long time, or it grows more than it shrinks if open it in a new tab then close the tab? In both cases, mine seems to go up and down in a pretty balanced way over time so far (tried opening and closing Inbox 10 times in a new tab, then leaving one Inbox tab open for around 20 minutes).

In my case, I was composing an email and I'd had the tab open for several days - most of the content won't be of use until probably March/April of next year, so I was in no rush to finish it - it was probably the regular auto-saving of that draft email that caused the memory usage to keep creeping ever upwards.

You are correct about programs using more memory if the computer has memory to spare, it's the way Windows is programmed, unused memory is a waste - I have 6GB so if my main program uses 2GB or more, that's not a problem to me, especially if it works more efficiently that way.

ninaholic wrote:I think the browser might make use of more memory for speed if you have more RAM (like Windows 7) but I'm not sure. How much RAM does your computer have Night Wing?

My main computer installed with Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit has 24 GB of memory. My backup computer installed with Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit has 16 GB of memory.

Both computers have Pale Moon 32-bit installed on them.

Pale Moon in itself also uses dynamic allocation of memory for caching web content. If you have less available, it will use less.
This is why making straight up comparisons is a little moot. Ninaholic has 1 GB, and Pale Moon uses obviously little memory in that scenario. My development machine has 16 GB and a clean startup tends to allocate 200-300 MB. That's just normal since it has the space to use.

Pnume wrote:My ram consumption ranges from 150 MB (once I start Pale Moon) to 550 MB or so (after I've been doing lots of browsing and have opened lots of tabs). 550 MB may seem like a lot to some of you, but I use lots of add-ons.

Anyway . . . what's it like for you?

hopefully this will be alleviated by PM 15. A new patch for leaky addons has been added.

I'm really looking forward to PM 15. Things have been slow recently; I suspect memory leaking add-ons are the culprits.

stravinsky wrote:hopefully this will be alleviated by PM 15. A new patch for leaky addons has been added.

Overall I don't think there are all that many add-ons that are leaky in the way that would be helped by the zombie-container fix, but I guess it'd help
Pale Moon with a lot of add-ons will still consume a good chunk of memory, it's just the way it is. Can't have the cake (super-extended browser with loads of extra functionality) and eat it too (fit it in 100 MB)

Speaking of PM 15: Do you have any release date estimates, Moonchild?

Firefox 15 is at beta 2 right now (as you probably already knew).

Pale Moon with a lot of add-ons will still consume a good chunk of memory, it's just the way it is. Can't have the cake (super-extended browser with loads of extra functionality) and eat it too (fit it in 100 MB)

yes. But to make addons use less memory isnt the aim of this patch, AFAIK. Its to allow the browser to reclaim the memory after the addon has done its work and the windows has been closed.

stravinsky wrote:yes. But to make addons use less memory isnt the aim of this patch, AFAIK. Its to allow the browser to reclaim the memory after the addon has done its work and the windows has been closed.

No, the patch is to forcefully reclaim allocated objects that "bad" add-ons don't release after the page/tab has been closed. It only applies to add-ons that don't do good housekeeping, to clean up after them. It's actually a rather rigorous method but considering the add-ons don't have any business trying to access what should have been released, from a browser point of view, it's safe. You can expect a lot of add-ons to need updates for v15 though as they may simply break. In fact, some of the internal Firefox UI code broke in major ways because of the patch (It's why I couldn't back-port it to v12).