Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

If I want to be able to have more tabs open while browsing faster, do I need more CPU power or more RAM?

  • 1 reply
  • 1 has this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by John99

more options

I have a MacBook Pro. I like to use firefox and have a lot of tabs open at once, which can be demanding on my computer and slow it down a lot. firefox freezes from time to time from this. I was wondering, if I get more memory, will I be able to have more tabs open and quicker speed/less problems? Is this more of a RAM issue or a CPU issue?

I have a MacBook Pro. I like to use firefox and have a lot of tabs open at once, which can be demanding on my computer and slow it down a lot. firefox freezes from time to time from this. I was wondering, if I get more memory, will I be able to have more tabs open and quicker speed/less problems? Is this more of a RAM issue or a CPU issue?

All Replies (1)

more options

A Mac user will probably give you a better answer. Does a Mac have utilities to show you Memory and CPU use. It will depend not only on what number of tabs but also what the tabs are, video will be using memory and CPU, web-mail is probably surprisingly heavy on memory.

  • How many tabs do you usually have open at once and how many do you want to keep open ?
    (you could instead handle tabs in groups of bookmarks and keep less open)
  • How much RAM is on your system?
    (You probably need to know whether your system is being forced to page the memory and use the HDD for swap files, that causes the big slow down)


See also

Note also Firefox shows where your memory is being used. The feature about:memory is relatively new and still being developed, key into the location bar about:memory