64 bit or 32 bit web browsers?

demonic186

demonic186

demonic186

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Been faffing around trying to find a decent web browser that doesn't hog RAM and rise over 1Gb and is preferably 64 bit but not having much luck.

what is the major difference between the two other than the obvious - 64 bit being able to use more RAM when needed, is there any other benefits?

I've tried Chrome 64 Bit but found it didn't support Flash, Java or Unity so that was a no go - tried firefox and cyberfox but both hog SO much RAM with just facebook and youtube open they were up to 800Mb+

Opera don't currently offer 64 bit.

any suggestions?

right now I'm using 32-bit chrome and it seems to work fine with flash/java/unity (weird I know) considering 64 bit didn't, it uses around 500-600Mb of RAM.

I've got 16Gb of RAM installed but it just seems a bit silly that having two tabs open used close to 1Gb.

I've been googling/reading but can't see the main differences or benefits listed anywhere.

any thoughts? stick to 32-bit until there is a decent non-beta 64 bit version available or... ??? :confused:
 
I switched to 64bit. It's the version that Google are pushing when you go to download Chrome by default and the biggest advantage the 64bit version has over the 32bit version is security enhancements.

It will use a little bit more ram as a consequence but that is because it can address more ram as it's a 64bit native application.

No reason to use a 32bit browser now if you have a 64bit operating system and 4GB+ ram.
 
demonic186 said:
I've got 16Gb of RAM installed but it just seems a bit silly that having two tabs open used close to 1Gb.
Click to expand...
This doesn't seem that excessive given you have 16GB installed - Windows will allocate RAM dynamically according to demand and availability, in order to maximise your system's overall performance (which is presumably why you bought 16GB as opposed to 8GB or 4GB in the first place). It's only a problem if a badly-behaved app goes on gobbling up RAM to the point where it interferes with other running apps or the system as a whole, or if it fails to release used RAM when told to do so.

Unless you're actually seeing excessive paging activity or other performance issues, I wouldn't worry about it.
 
demonic186 said:
tried that one and it doesn't support the older versions of flash, unity or java - works on youtube but try other websites and it doesn't work, tried all the fixes listed across various websites with no such luck at all..
Click to expand...

Flash is built into Chrome so it should work, latest one has 22.0.0.209. Java won't work as it uses NPAPI which is no longer supported due to security/performance reasons, and Java is a massive security mess. Even Firefox 64-bit blocks Java. Unity uses NPAPI which means it was killed off by Chrome as well. But it shouldn't be working with 32-bit Chrome in that case...
 
demonic186 said:
tried that one and it doesn't support the older versions of flash, unity or java - works on youtube but try other websites and it doesn't work, tried all the fixes listed across various websites with no such luck at all..
Click to expand...

Why are you trying to use older versions?
 
There are a few misconceptions here.

First of all it's not necessarily a problem if the browser is using a lot (GBs) of memory, as long as the machine has plenty of memory free. E.g. if it's using 1 GB of memory but there's 10+ GB free, then it's not an issue. You might think it's excessive but the OS is just assigning resources as it sees fit.

Second many (maybe all) the main browsers use multiple threads which has the advantage that hitting the 32bit max memory limit is unlikely. I suspect that's why Opera still defaults to downloading a 32bit build.

If you specifically want a low memory browser I think you'll have to seek one out (e.g. midori).
 
On the two issues you raise

- plenty of memory I would say is the degenerative case, most of the time with mutiple applications running personally memory reserved by all the processes is exceeding the physical memory and extending into the paging file,
so windows will then give its low memory message when you start a new application and may even refuse, also context switching between applications may take longer.
Applications (browsers and anti-virus) often seem to make un-necessarily large reservations when you start them and then have poor garbage collection so they continue to grow their reservation because they do not liberate space

- Did you mean multi threaded or multi processes ?
Explorer 11 uses multi processes for tabs, so they are independent and do not corrupt one another and total can then exceed 32 bit limit.
fierefox is multi-threaded and as far as I am aware from my s/w development experience (this was only reference I could find) the threads share the same address space, so a 32 bit ff could be limiting.


[I only have 8GB and am often out of physical memory, I have just swapped to an ssd, which will have the paging file, and am waiting to see if this gives faster context switching, I chose not to upgrade the ram instead/as well, due to additional power consumption ]


Update adding an image (from an earlier post) showing memory requirements of IE11 and 2 FF's about 30 tabs open in ie11 and all of ff's .
The ff is a 64 bit - debatable if a 32 bit would work

stupid_explorer_zpskubtrzhe.png~original
 
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