Wow YouTube is a Hog

[theFOoL]

I Run Firefox on my 775 build but wait... YouTube is the only site that uses so much cpu/ram. Not that I'm Mad but uhh this is just crazy. Hulu /twitch is totally playable without any lockup/pause. YT I have to wait for things to load and even while playing it tends to hang as my cursor hides through the player and not letting me pause

 

[dgianstefani]

Use Greyjay.

 

[eidairaman1]

I Run Firefox on my 775 build but wait... YouTube is the only site that uses so much cpu/ram. Not that I'm Mad but uhh this is just crazy. Hulu /twitch is totally playable without any lockup/pause. YT I have to wait for things to load and even while playing it tends to hang as my cursor hides through the player and not letting me pause

They are owned by google is why...

 

[Macro Device]

Well, yeah, it's really uncommon for corps as big as Google to account for what's effectively a 20 year old platform.

 

[mclaren85]

Maybe Youtube has so many ads buried/integrated into its videos and pages.
Try to use pre-arranged hosts file and ublock origin for blocking the ads. Will definitely work to some degree.

 

[theFOoL]

I use unlock ofc but still it's just madding ah ha

 

[mechtech]

Use Greyjay.

? Grayjay ?

I think we have a trademark on our bird name, have to change names sorry.

Canada jay - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Dr. Dro]

Firefox is a very slow browser, and you're using the heaviest, least optimized browser to browse one of the most media-heavy websites on the planet... on a system that, if it's the one you have on your signature, has a 18 year old processor and system memory with a throughput slower than your average SSD today.

Right now the remedy is to use a Chromium-based browser with h264ify extension to help your old Kepler GPU decode video, as that will force YouTube to serve AVC video instead of more efficient vp9 or av1 formats that your machine is not compatible with. But don't expect this system to be snappy in any manner.

 

[theFOoL]

Confirmed... Ehh I love Firefox though

 

[Dr. Dro]

Confirmed... Ehh I love Firefox though

So do I... have used it for almost 20 years. but unfortunately it is going through some pretty trying times. Mozilla seems scattered and disorganized as well. I'll give it another shot once I hear some news. Currently moved to Opera.

 

[Assimilator]

If you are running uBlock Origin that may be the issue. I had to disable all my Firefox extensions a while back while troubleshooting one of them that was causing random crashes, in the course of it disabled uBo, and wow was YouTube browsing noticeably snappier, plus the YouTube tab processes used waaay less RAM.

But of course, YT with ads is unusable, so my "solution" is that when my YT browsing experience starts to degrade, I just go into Process Explorer and kill whichever tabs are using 3+ GB RAM. That generally sorts it out for a couple of days.

Currently moved to Opera.

How is it? I'm leery of anything (a) Chromium (b) advertising that heavily, but I'd be interested to know what your experience has been so far. I do know that they've baked in an exemption for uBo such that it won't be nerfed in 6 months when Google kills off the WebExtensions v2 API in Chromium.

 

[unwind-protect]

Did you verify the size in Task Manager?

In general it is true, Youtube tabs are the second largest (behind Facebook).

 

[Dr. Dro]

How is it? I'm leery of anything (a) Chromium (b) advertising that heavily, but I'd be interested to know what your experience has been so far. I do know that they've baked in an exemption for uBo such that it won't be nerfed in 6 months when Google kills off the WebExtensions v2 API in Chromium.

It might not be for you, I like it, convenient and supports Chrome extensions in addition to its own. It's pleasing to the eye, offers a decent built-in dark mode (but you can install dark reader too if you want), generally very compatible and snappy. The built-in ad blocker is respectable, but more in the vein of Adblock Plus than uBlock - with the whole "nonintrusive" ads enabled by default, and even if you turn those off too, some still seem to come through, unlike uBO.

However, Opera is very much commercial software. Fortunately, the advertisements in its "Speed Dial" functionality (which is basically shortcuts under new tab), "cashback feature" for partnered shops and the sort can all be disabled in settings and the browser will never bother you with them again. If they did I'd not have stuck with it.

The gaming version (GX) has some gamer-themed tweaks, like Cyberpunk 2077 inspired theme, changes some of the advertisements in speed dial to gaming news and sales on key sites and the sort (which can also be entirely disabled) - adding an option for aggressive resource management, like, you can intentionally limit the amount of RAM and CPU that the browser can consume, although it does make it load things considerably slower if you enable it. So to that end, Opera GX is interesting if you have a low end PC and needs to ensure the browser won't hog all system resources.

It's a viable option in my opinion, it embraced the whole "AI browser" farce without managing to bog down the experience or make the entire thing about it - in fact, even the button to summon Aria (their AI chatbot) can be disabled or tucked away. it's not focused on crypto like Brave or force feeds you the Microsoft ecosystem like Edge, though it has little love for "free and open source" at the same time.

You might be interested to know about Opera Norway AS's affiliation to Beijing Kunlun World Wide Technology Share Co., Ltd., though. I don't really have anything against China, but it's worth keeping in mind. Vivaldi is a solid option, it's from one of the web developers that created the very first Opera browser in the 1990's.

 

[Wirko]

That generally sorts it out for a couple of days.

Good rebooting habits are important for the mental health of anything with an OS. **Days**??

 

[remixedcat]

Supermium is meant for older systems might wanna try it

 

[theFOoL]

I may go back to opera but ATM using chrome for YT but FF for Twitch/Hulu

 

[TumbleGeorge]

I Run Firefox on my 775 build but wait... YouTube is the only site that uses so much cpu/ram.

Solution: use alternatives of youtube. If today you needed to play advertise blocking apps for to use something, hmm close to normally how to was used before few years. Just ignore this platform called youtube and use alternatives

 

[lexluthermiester]

I Run Firefox on my 775 build but wait... YouTube is the only site that uses so much cpu/ram. Not that I'm Mad but uhh this is just crazy. Hulu /twitch is totally playable without any lockup/pause. YT I have to wait for things to load and even while playing it tends to hang as my cursor hides through the player and not letting me pause

The problem isn't YouTube needing a fair amount resources, nor is FireFox the problem. It's that you're on a C2Q type CPU. It's a very dated CPU at this point and even with plenty of system RAM and your Xeon quad OC'd to 3.6ghz, it's just not enough anymore. It might be time to jump forward to an X79 or X99 based system with a Xeon 8core. If you'd like we can explore prices, which I assure you are not expensive. Open to that idea?

 

[theFOoL]

For now I'm fine thanks. I have parts on my ebay to get sometime soon

 

[chrcoluk]

Code is much heavier these days. h264ify, and a bit of javascript blocking may help you.

Also YT seems to be doing some a/b testing at the moment, those who get the new code on FF makes it a lot less pleasant. But fixable blocking youtube comments from loading.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Code is much heavier these days. h264ify, and a bit of javascript blocking may help you.

Also YT seems to be doing some a/b testing at the moment, those who get the new code on FF makes it a lot less pleasant. But fixable blocking youtube comments from loading.

Again, the problem they're having is not just YouTube, it's the system they're running. It's a socket 775 Xeon Quad core. It's held it's usefulness like a champ and proven a very long-lived platform, but it's at the end of it's useful lifespan for modern tasks. That fact sucks, but it's how tech works.

 

[mechtech]

It might not be for you, I like it, convenient and supports Chrome extensions in addition to its own. It's pleasing to the eye, offers a decent built-in dark mode (but you can install dark reader too if you want), generally very compatible and snappy. The built-in ad blocker is respectable, but more in the vein of Adblock Plus than uBlock - with the whole "nonintrusive" ads enabled by default, and even if you turn those off too, some still seem to come through, unlike uBO.

However, Opera is very much commercial software. Fortunately, the advertisements in its "Speed Dial" functionality (which is basically shortcuts under new tab), "cashback feature" for partnered shops and the sort can all be disabled in settings and the browser will never bother you with them again. If they did I'd not have stuck with it.

The gaming version (GX) has some gamer-themed tweaks, like Cyberpunk 2077 inspired theme, changes some of the advertisements in speed dial to gaming news and sales on key sites and the sort (which can also be entirely disabled) - adding an option for aggressive resource management, like, you can intentionally limit the amount of RAM and CPU that the browser can consume, although it does make it load things considerably slower if you enable it. So to that end, Opera GX is interesting if you have a low end PC and needs to ensure the browser won't hog all system resources.

It's a viable option in my opinion, it embraced the whole "AI browser" farce without managing to bog down the experience or make the entire thing about it - in fact, even the button to summon Aria (their AI chatbot) can be disabled or tucked away. it's not focused on crypto like Brave or force feeds you the Microsoft ecosystem like Edge, though it has little love for "free and open source" at the same time.

You might be interested to know about Opera Norway AS's affiliation to Beijing Kunlun World Wide Technology Share Co., Ltd., though. I don't really have anything against China, but it's worth keeping in mind. Vivaldi is a solid option, it's from one of the web developers that created the very first Opera browser in the 1990's.

I think Brave browser is another chrome engine browser as well?

Also thought this was an interesting read

Choose your browser carefully

unixdigest.com

edit - although might not help much, as others have mentioned probably have to find right codec decoder. Sometime for FF it gets worse and disabling HW aceleration works better although it forces the cpu to work more.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I think Brave browser is another chrome engine browser as well?

Also thought this was an interesting read

Choose your browser carefully

unixdigest.com

edit - although might not help much, as others have mentioned probably have to find right codec decoder. Sometime for FF it gets worse and disabling HW aceleration works better although it forces the cpu to work more.

I generally don't go much further into absolutely "private" browsers because I somewhat think it's a waste of time, the entire internet fingerprints your activity in a way - I just take steps to muddy the waters a little bit. Once you've passed into the realm of browsers that are openly advertised as libre, privacy-minded or have anything to do with GNU, you're actively trading in functionality for a sense of privacy, on browsers that are often poorly maintained, often with years between updates if that, which is entirely counterproductive given how the internet works.

I used to like (in concept) a browser called Lunascape. It was a small Japanese browser that had the unique ability to render pages on three different engines, Gecko (Firefox), WebKit (Safari) and Trident (Internet Explorer), and you could switch between web engines seamlessly. Last I looked, it had been acquired by one of those "Web 3.0" blockchain companies, which kinda soured the deal for me. It's moves like these that make me the wariest, and only the largest browsers are technically immune to that. Even open source browsers can eventually suffer a major change in direction.

 

[Assimilator]

Good rebooting habits are important for the mental health of anything with an OS. **Days**??

The only restarts my Windows 10 PC gets is those it absolutely needs, i.e. Patch Tuesday updates and hardware swaps; the rest of the time it's sleep and resume. It's 2025 not 1998, hardware and software are far more reliable now, and y'all need to move on from this "Windows needs a reboot every day" and "Windows needs a reinstall every 6 months" nonsense.

 

[Bomby569]

using YT in firefox here, no pauses, no resource hog, everything smooth and fine. Use adblock cof cof as soon as i open YT ublock has already 50+ stuff blocked. Sponsorblock is also nice. It's the free premium version.