Firefox memory leak

I realize that slowly but surely Chrome is starting to pass Firefox in popularity. However, it’s not completely open source like Firefox, and although it supports extensions, it’s not quite as customizable like Firefox.
Personally, I prefer Firefox over Chrome or IE. However, even in safe mode with all extensions disabled (which defeats the purpose of using them in the first place) Firefox is horrible when it comes to effectively manage memory, even if you have a huge amount of RAM on your system.
I have a few questions if anyone can help me solve them.
1. Which version of Firefox should be used for the best results? x86 or x64? (there is a functional x64 flash plugin now). Stable, beta, or nightly? 3.x? 4.x?
2. Are there any extensions that are known to make Firefox sluggish and slow or freeze up? If so, are there alternatives to popular extensions using about:config or similar?
3. Are there any extensions, about:config settings, or other known tweaks to make Firefox make effective optimal use of a broadband connection?
4. Is there any effective way to play flash games, i.e. FaceBook games, which are notorious at eating memory like a stoner looking for a pizza, be capable to fix issues so Firefox won’t become sluggish and slow or lock up entirely?
I realize there are a number of sites that suggest this or that for improving Firefox behavior and functionality, but most have not been updated for 3.6.10 and/or 4.0b8. I’d greatly appreciate to find solutions that work the most effectively.
Some extensions that I find to be almost essential:
TabMixPlus
AutoCopy
CopyLinkText
FlashGot
GreaseMonkey
AdBlock Plus
Xmarks
SkipScreen
FEBE
Thanks for your time.
Answer #1
Firefox uses only about 250mb of ram for me. not much. I can play any facebook game fine.
Answer #2
lucky you.. mine is always ~680mb up to 1gb. okay, gotta admit that I have atleast 10tabs opened but seriously.. I expect ff to be able to handle this, it ain’t that much :/
Answer #3
Most facebook games eat memory regardless of the browser. They’re just designed poorly.
Right now with 5 tabs open, 2 playing videos and 1 playing frontierville on fb, firefox is using 148Mb and the flash plugin container is using 435Mb.
These values don’t change much for me using firefox, chrome or even ie.
Answer #4
The more extensions you have the slower FF becomes. The more tabs you have open, the more memory FF uses and the slower it gets. You list 9 extensions, but how many do you have installed in total?
I used to have 100+ tabs open but FF ground to a halt, I removed some extensions and installed BarTab and it’s been better since. BarTab can unload tabs if they are not used after a set time. That frees up memory. I currently have 126 tabs on TabMixPlus and FF is using 305MB with the help of BarTab. BarTab also speeds up FF start because it doesn’t open or reload every tab at startup, it only opens one, all the rest are greyed out ready to be selected.
Answer #5
You could give this a go http://www.browsermemory.com/
Answer #6
About Firefox version x86 or x64 version, I’d say that the x64bit version is under developed so I’d suggest the 32bit version.
Answer #7
thank you very much
it really helps a lot.
Answer #8
Try Pale Moon. It’s an optimized version of Firefox. I find it a bit snappier