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680°

3 Hacks for Firefox That Will Double Your Internet Browsing Speed

There are many people out there complaining about the Firefox RAM Memory Bug. Lets get it straight. It's not a bug. It's part of the cache feature. This 'feature' is how the pages are cached in a tabbed environment. To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all page navigations are renavigations to pages visited less than 10 pages ago, usually using the back button), Firefox implements a Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last five session history entries for each tab. This is a lot of data. If you have a lot of tabs, Firefox's RAM memory usage can climb dramatically. It's a trade-off. What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web.

Now a lot of people have found the 'secrets' on how to manipulate settings in "about:config" to drop the memory usage as long as possible and to increase the speed at which Firefox loads sites. Read on to find out how to do this.

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Scudd5572d ago

Seen these before many times

Proxy5572d ago

I'm always impressed by the skill of those who are able to "hack" OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.

Super-Brad5571d ago

I hate the word hack being used here as it's not a hack.
the author could off used the words:
Optimize
Improve
Speed Up
but hack was not needed.

SaiyanFury5571d ago

I just tested this myself and WOW. I opened 5 tabs and went to various sites and I watched my Task Manager as I did so. The article is right, the memory consumed does increase every single time. I started with Firefox taking up 10MB of RAM but after going to 5 separate websites in 5 tabs, it climbed to 50MB. I minimized the browser and it dropped to 4.75MB. Restoring the page, it only loaded back up to 28MB.

Very nice tweaks and thanks to the author for posting this very useful guide. I also notice that Firefox DOES load pages much faster. Kudos and much thanks, my friend.

phosphor1125571d ago

you can buy more ram that is cheap dirt these days and play a game windowed while browsing the interbutts at the same speed.

I even use ram thats at 400mhz when most these days are about twice the speed..

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Sev5571d ago

Did any one do this part? I am wondering if the performance increase is worth it...

"Optionally (for even faster web browsing) here are some more options for your about:config (you might have to create some of these entries by Right Click –> New– > Interger or String

network.dns.disableIPv6: set “false”
“content.notify.backoffcount” : set “5“; (Five)
“plugin.expose_full_path”: set “true”.
“ui.submenuDelay”: set “0; (zero)"

Should I bother?

I did the first thing easily but this part seems more complicated

Final_Rpg5571d ago

I couldn't be bothered either, not in the mood to do anything that makes me think.

IzKyD13315572d ago

I used one of these before, they're really useful

Teh-Venom5572d ago

Indeed it is dude, just tried it right now and already see the difference. thanks to Op i just bookmarked that site for future reference. :)

SiLeNt KNighT5572d ago

yeah i used some of these before also. its nice for a refresher. since i installed windows 7 ive been doing a lot of downloading programs and updating software. while ive done this hack on two of my other computers before i forgot to do it on this computer so its a good reminder.

a couple side notes. the fist one (listed below) regarding saving ram is a little ify for some. while it will dramatically reduce the amount of RAM being used it CAN also slow down your browsing experience.

browser.sessionhistory.max_to tal_viewer refers to the pages that were recently visited and are stored in memory in such a way that they don't have to be re-parsed (this is different from the memory cache). This improves performance when pressing Back and Forward.

This preference limits the maximum number of pages stored in memory.

For those of you that aren't too concerned with the use of 120mb (about what Firefox uses), leave the default setting of: -1. It automatically determines the maximum amount of pages to store in memory based on the total amount of RAM.

Here's a reference for what all numbers will do in this category:

Auto = -1
32MB = 0
64MB = 1
128MB= 2
256MB= 3
512MB= 5
1GB = 8
2GB = 8
4GB = 8

Lowering theses values causes less memory to be used but also causes more previously visited pages to have to be re-parsed (thus increasing their load time). Raising it has the opposite effect. One page will on average take 4MB of memory.

And last the FREEWARE 'Advanced Windows Care' [AWC] has a function built in that changes most of this for you along with some other things that will really speed up FireFox. You can get [AWC] for free from cnet.com. Really its one of the best pieces of security/Maintenance software I've ever used.

CryofSilence5572d ago

Heh, I tried it and it actually works. Sweet :)

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160°

Fallout 4's 'next gen' update is over 14 gigs, breaks modded saves, & doesn't change much at all

We were expecting problems with mod support, but there are a lot of other issues.

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Community2h ago
isarai7h ago

Wow what the actual hell 🤣🤣🤣

just_looken6h ago

This is why you get the GOG version on gog you can select the version of the game to download.

On pc fallout 4 fallout new vegas and skyrim are all broken on steam because they all got the same "next gen" update.

Skyrim dec 2023
https://www.pcgamer.com/sky...

Can not find new vegas but anyone that modded it knows the script extender there was also broken

Valkyrye5h ago

Not accidental, they want modders to stop modding their older games to force them to mod Shitfield.

just_looken3h ago

There doing the same on starfield with a mods store and blocking mods

There goal is like blizzard and what they did with fallout 76 you make mods they can sell and you become a slave.

On skyrim they have "trusted" mod devs now basically a badge that lets your mod on the store you get a crumb of the sale when someone buys it.

Inverno1h ago

lol to the disagrees, the last Skyrim update broke mods too. They've been trying to kill mods to monetize them in creation club for years, it's not a stretch that they purposely put out patches just to break free mods.

porkChop32m ago

The disagrees are from people who have common sense. They aren't trying to kill mods. Most mods for any game will break with a new update because they rely on files/code that have been changed. This isn't new. Even with Bethesda this would happen way before the creation club. Mod support is literally one of the things that got Bethesda to where they are, and they're one of the only devs that releases comprehensive mod tools for each of their games.

Chocoburger1h ago

Over 14 GBs and doesn't change much at all? What? Taking up that much drive space for a pathetic 'remastering' is shameful.

Par for Bethesda.

Aussiesummer20m ago

It's not a remaster, it's a next gen update.

90°

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A voice actor from The Coalition's third-person shooter series, Gears of War, has hinted at a new game announcement coming in June.

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Ra303029m ago

Hopefully Microsoft will go back to the original story line and get away from that woke nonsense from the last Gears game Gears of Woke! But were talking about Microsoft so all the betting money is on more of the same woke nonsense.

70°

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