This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/browsers by /u/traumatic_totem on 2023-08-11 10:22:48.

I used to be on 8 GB of RAM and using an HDD while using Firefox. Unfortunately, since I don’t have a dedicated GPU, 2 GB of RAM is allocated towards video memory. Windows 10 uses about 3 GB of RAM, so I had 3 GB of disposal RAM. The experience was functional, but it quickly ran out of memory at around 15 Firefox tabs and when the committed memory is around 12 GB and 5.5 out of 6 GB of RAM had been used. Once it does that, switching tabs or even using Task Manager to check on memory usage took like 5 or 10 seconds. After I upgraded to 16 GB of RAM those issues completely stopped.

Now, I can have like 15 tabs open, while easily having room to open 5 more. Task Manager now says that Firefox occasionally uses 4.5 GB, but that nary causes a problem now. Before, the maximum amount of RAM is 3.1 GB, but at that point, there is immense hard drive thrashing. When I close tabs now, the HDD doesn’t get activated, since the memory just gets deleted from RAM and doesn’t require rewriting and deleting from the hard drive.

The committed memory size has remained about the same, but a larger portion of it is now directly allocated in RAM. Hence, there is less thrashing.

My point is that 16 GB of RAM seems necessary for a seamless browser experience and 8 GB will require you to aggressively close RAM and other processes. I just don’t see how 8 GB would suffice, especially when Firefox can easily use 2.0-3.0 GB of RAM just by opening like 10 YouTube or Reddit tabs, along with a Discord tab.