Ken’sTechnology Blog

Web-browser memory usage can not be that much a problem these days with a gigabyte of memory built into modern computer systems. However, there is also the low-end market is determined by the success of the Netbook, and other low-end hardware. An examination of memory usage popular Web browser can not therefore be extended to all computer users, but it could be interesting for those who are low-end hardware or want to make sure that the use of an efficient Web browser.

A Web browser memory usage comparison was recently one of the Dot Net Pearls website that compared the memory usage of the Google browser, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera 10 and Safari. The Web browser have been configured, 30 tabs on the command line, which is then closed when manually by the author with one exception. A script in the background, recorded the memory usage of all processes, which during this time were in the comparison.

The results of the Web-browser memory consumption in the benchmark were then three letters with the maximum, average and last reminder that each of the tested Web browser. The Mozilla Firefox Web browser used, the lowest amount of computer memory of all tested Web browser, while Google’s Chrome browser showed very high maximum and average memory usage.

And here is where the tester did it wrong. To calculate memory usage of all processes, which take into account that actually counted twice to the shared memory for each process. As the Chromium blog points out:

If you measuring memory in a multi-process application like Google Chrome, do not forget to take into account shared memory. If the size of each process on the Windows XP Task Manager, you will be a double counting of shared memory for each process. If there were a large number of processes that can be counted twice for 30-40% more space.

To make it easy to summarize multi-process memory, Google Chrome offers the “about: memory” page, including a detailed breakdown of the Google Chrome, the memory usage and basic compared to other browsers that are running.

Google Chrome outcome would still be higher than that of Firefox, even after the adjustments, but this is one of the trade-offs of a multi-process browser (Chrome, the Google). You would do the same thing with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, when the testers would mean that Web browsers will be tested. This was obviously not possible, because the technical difficulties.

Another aspect that should be mentioned is the test result of the Opera Web browser. The opera is equipped with an automatic setting called Automatic RAM cache is enabled by default. This means about 10% of computer memory by default and should be disabled in the memory benchmarks. Opera would probably still have been beaten by Firefox, but the gap would probably have been lower.