Ever since Firefox 3.0 Beta 1 was released to the public, people have been wondering whether or not memory usage was any better. An independent tester decided to take it upon himself to investigate. Running a Windows Vista Home Premium system with 2GB of RAM that had never had Firefox installed on it before, the man put each browser under three different testing scenarios (that were equivalent between the two systems). First, he loaded five web pages into the browser. Then, he loaded a single page and let the browser idle for 10 minutes. Finally, he loaded 12 pages and waited five minutes. The results are very interesting.

Firefox 2.0.0.9 used 35,640KB of RAM on the first test, 47,852KB on the second test, and a staggering 103,180KB on the last test. Firefox 3.0 Beta 1 at first did not seem to be doing much better, using 38,644KB and 63,764KB of RAM on the first and second tests, respectively. However, on the final test, Firefox 3.0 Beta 1 required only 62,312KB, over 40,000KB less than what Firefox 2.0.0.9 required. For comparison, Internet Explorer 7 used 89,756KB on the final test. Please check out the source link for screenshots and more detailed test results.