Firefox admits CPU heat problems
The Mozilla support pages are now admitting what many of us have known for some time: the popular Firefox browser has a tendency to over-utilize the CPU and cause heat build-upproblems, especially in ultra-portable laptops.
The support pages say “Firefox consumes a lot of CPU resources. … At times, Firefox may require significant CPU [central processing unit] resources in order to download, process, and display Web content.” That statement will fail to surprise anyone who has been paying attention to the performance monitor on their system. As these words are being typed, my system has 11 open Firefox tabs in two windows and that browser is currently using between 18 percent and 28 percent of my processor resources.
It seems to this observer that the problem gets worse with a greater number of tabs. Add to that that there are people that regularly have hundreds of open table on their systems and it is not difficult to see why people are beginning to complain about the issue. According to a CNET article, this problem has become a staple subject on computer-related forums. Constant CPU usage at a high level can cause heat-related problems in the confined spaces of a thin laptop, so laptop users often know which program is using the most resource. Very often, that’s Firefox.
The smaller the laptop, the greater the problem. Although Mozilla wants to tie the problem to Flash usage, that explanation does not wash in many cases. Running the same windows and tabs in Safari, as an example, results in far less CPU usage, in the neighborhood of 6 percent on my MacBook right now, about a quarter of what Firefox was using. Maybe it’s all those animated ads running in all those background tabs or maybe Firefox is simply using the CPU less efficiently or just differently. Whatever the cause, it seems to be a Firefox issue.
Most users of computers are heavy users of the Web, so this can become a significant problem for many of us, especially users of ultra-portables like the MacBook Air and other similar machines. There was a lot of buzz while Firefox 3 was under development about its efficient utilization of memory. Now it seems that Mozilla may wish to consider a similar project aimed at the efficiently utilization of the CPU.
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November 22nd, 2009
My past two Dell Latitude’s hve suffered horribly at the hands of Firefox. And nothing like the 18 to 28 percent you state, more like 88 to 98 (more often 100%). on XP Pro, Vista Ultimate, and Win7 in both 32 and 64 bit.
Long gone from my machines. I would rather suffer IE8 than 100% CPU utilization.
From my BlackBerry Storm…
November 24th, 2009
I switched over to Opera because of this very problem. Right now, running 40 tabs on Opera 10, CPU utilization is hovering at less than 5%.
I will usually run with at least 50-80 tabs at a time, and Opera is the only browser that can handle it easily (both memory wise and CPU wise).
January 1st, 2010
I’m finding that I’m using Google Chrome (even though it’s not perfect either) more and more. It makes perfect sense to have a separate process for each tab, and to (at least I *think* it’s doing this) set a low priority on every process except the one whose tab is currently visible. I don’t think Firefox does any of this kind of intelligent task management — Every tab and window runs on the same process, and that creates a lot of problems, not just with CPU heat, but also overall system performance. And if there’s a “problem” web page that’s hogging the CPU, there’s no way in Firefox to pinpoint the culprit and close it, as you can in Chrome.
January 7th, 2010
My laptop shut down because of overheating, so i investigated and found out that it is firefox that overheats my dual CPUs. My CPU usage was not neccesarily as high. What i have noticed is only certain sites like forums, or sites that have heavy flash content or java, and maybe some very specific sites “poorly” built, make the difference. Once i closed a problemtaic tab, my CPU heat went down from TJ Max – 2 degrees to TJ Max – 35 degrees (centigrade)!!. Cant really do without the added functionality of firefox, so i open the problematic urls in IE or chrome.
January 30th, 2010
V Useful. My MacBook has recently been running hot – it never used to – I was wondering why (and a bit worried). Now I know I think I’ll use Chrome or Safari more.
thanks!