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Internet Explorer v Firefox major discrepancy in memory management (see attached images)

TheWagmeister
TheWagmeister
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I fully understand that Mozilla is created by volunteer staff and programmers. Therefore I'm not comparing like for like however I thought Mozilla development people might like to see the following two images. They are screen grabs from my old Windows XP desktop system loading a sports web site.

One image shows the processes and load required to run the site using Windows Explorer (which i dont normally). The other image shows more or less the same loading and processes using Firefox Mozilla.

Unfortunately, as the images show, Mozilla needs far more memory and commit charge than Internet Explorer does to load the same site. (400Mb v 190Mb) Can anyone suggest why ?

Unfortunately the images wont upload for some reason so if someone can mail me at I will happily send the comparitive images via email.

Thank you.


edited email from public and spambots

I fully understand that Mozilla is created by volunteer staff and programmers. Therefore I'm not comparing like for like however I thought Mozilla development people might like to see the following two images. They are screen grabs from my old Windows XP desktop system loading a sports web site. One image shows the processes and load required to run the site using Windows Explorer (which i dont normally). The other image shows more or less the same loading and processes using Firefox Mozilla. Unfortunately, as the images show, Mozilla needs far more memory and commit charge than Internet Explorer does to load the same site. (400Mb v 190Mb) Can anyone suggest why ? Unfortunately the images wont upload for some reason so if someone can mail me at I will happily send the comparitive images via email. Thank you. edited email from public and spambots

Modified by James (doing minimal support)

All Replies (3)

TheWagmeister
TheWagmeister Question owner
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Attached images

James (doing minimal support)
James (doing minimal support)
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IE is a part of Windows so what memory amount IE is supposedly using can be misleading.

Also it appears Firefox is using 287 or so and not 400.

TheWagmeister
TheWagmeister Question owner
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"Also it appears Firefox is using 287 or so and not 400"

The two images may not be very clear as I reduced them in size when I found I couldnt upload them initially.

However the key figures are that in both cases the Windows Explorer process comes in slightly over 7K.

However the difference between the two browsers is quite remarkable

"iexplore.exe 16,084K iexplore.exe 109,360K" giving a total of 125,444K

"Firefox.exe 287,872K plugin-container.exe 109,884K"giving a total of 397,756K

Please dont misread this as me having a "Explorer is better than Firefox" pop at the guys and gals of Mozilla, it's just my way of highlighting an area where Firefox could improve.

As a general rule I find Plugin-container.exe often reaches figures of 300-400K and then my browser becomes unmanageable until I shut the process down.

Thanks