Immediately After Closing 39 Tabs

After immediately closing 39 of the 40 tabs, Chrome for Windows drops down to 140 MB, which is just over twice its single-tab total. Opera places second at 415 MB, followed closely by Safari using 453 MB. IE9 only drops down to a half of a gigabyte, earning fourth place, while Firefox 9 retains more than 600 MB to place last.
In OS X, the order remains the same, though the totals are substantially higher than in Windows 7.
Two Minutes Later

Waiting an additional two minutes sees Internet Explorer drop down to only 57 MB, just 10 MB more than its single-tab total. The extra two minutes don't help Chrome's memory usage, although the browser retains second place. Firefox releases another 400 MB to Windows, taking third place. Safari lets go of another 100 MB to take fourth, and Opera stays at around 400 MB, finishing last.
In OS X, the additional two minutes does nothing to shake up the finishing order. Chrome still hovers around 140 MB and Opera hangs around 575 MB. Safari drops 200 MB to an ominous 666 MB and Firefox sheds another 300 MB to stabilize at just over 700.
Interestingly, throughout memory testing, the OS X-based browsers use a substantially greater amount of RAM than their Windows-based counterparts.
- Web Browser Grand Prix VIII
- Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, And Safari
- WBGP VIII Test Setup
- Startup Time Performance Benchmarks
- Page Load Time Performance Benchmarks
- JavaScript Performance Benchmarks
- DOM And CSS Performance Benchmarks
- Flash Performance Benchmarks
- Java And Silverlight Performance Benchmarks
- HTML5 Performance Benchmarks
- Harware Acceleration Performance Benchmarks
- WebGL Performance Benchmarks
- Memory Usage Efficiency Benchmarks
- Memory Management Efficiency Benchmarks
- Page Load Reliability Benchmarks
- Standards Conformance Benchmarks
- Benchmark Analysis
- Crowning Two Champions In Windows 7 And OS X
I think add ons are much easier to find with FF, and there seems to be a wider variety. Then again I do realize this article wasn't about browsers with add ons.
Yes, we're using everything stock. There is no one-size-fits-all combination of plug-ins to standardize on, and every browser might not have the exact same plugins available. So that throws out a fair comparison between browsers - wouldn't work for the WBGP. Perhaps an article concentrating specifically on Firefox (or another Web browser) with and without various plug-ins would clear that up?
Why do people seem to forget Chrome has this built in. All you have to do is go into the options menu and disable JavaScript.
i know i know, chrome is faster, has market share, ie 9/10 are coming up, blah blah. but ff can still fight. google's benevolent (read: to antitrust-pacifier) fund injection should help ff. besides, chrome is a sneakware bundled with numerous softwares. ff has scriptblockers that block statcounter.
Thanks for the feedback, and good catch. I must have goofed and started making the graphics with an older file when I already had the newer one. Doh! It's all fixed now, and it should update momentarily.
Firefox can do the same with tab mix plus. I couldn't live without scrolling though my tabs.
Just like VHS vs Beta, NTSC vs PAL or Gasoline vs Electric... just because the public likes something does not mean it is the best solution.