which one(s) do you use? I've been using waterfox and its pretty cool. I'd like to see a 64 bit version of chrome but don't know when that's coming.

9/29/2013 2:08:30 PM

I remember when Opera made a 64-bit version that could even run 32-bit plugins

then they switched to a Chromium backend and R.I.P.

9/29/2013 6:21:50 PM

the ones that have existed for awhile in linux

9/29/2013 6:56:20 PM

good point, the only platform that 64-bit Chrome isn't available for is Windows

9/29/2013 7:22:58 PM

firefox is the only way to roll bruh, but why do you want a code base that doesn't terribly benefit from 64bit extensions and gets bug tested less?

9/29/2013 9:43:50 PM

I was about to recommend moving away from Waterfox because it hadn't been updated in months (specifically, since Firefox 18), but then a preview of Waterfox 24 became available: http://www.overclock.net/t/975626/waterfox-24-preview-1-11-september-firefox-64-bit
Also FYI here's the project page for Waterfox: http://www.waterfoxproject.org/

Anyway, if htguard.info starts building again (last version so far was Firefox 22), that's another decent option: http://htguard.info/
I've also seen XhmikosR, one of the people behind MPC-HC and SumatraPDF, release the occasional x64 build of Firefox, but he hasn't updated since Firefox 21: http://xhmikosr.1f0.de/firefox/
I saw pcxfirefox just started releasing x64 builds, claiming to include all the optimizations that tete009 (who only does 32-bit builds) did: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pcxfirefox/
There's also lawlietfox, which I just learned about, which claims to one-up pcxfirefox: https://code.google.com/p/lawlietfox/

If you want to live on the edge, here are x64 Nightly builds optimized for particular processor architectures: http://fbuild.com/
If you don't, this guy prefers to build x64 ESRs: http://rayflood.org/mozilla/
Also there's a browser based on Firefox that uses a wholly different profile (and comes with a portable variant, both 32- and 64-bit); like Waterfox, this one tends to lag behind the release schedule of Firefox, but by choice, preferring to apply the same security patches as in the new major versions in a scheme similar to that of the ESRs (but upgrading to new major versions more quickly than the ESRs): http://www.palemoon.org/palemoon-x64.shtml


As for 64-bit browsers on Windows that aren't based on Firefox, well we have Internet Explorer (lol) and versions of Opera up to 12.16 (released on the 4th of July this year).

[Edited on September 29, 2013 at 11:57 PM. Reason : BTW if you see talk about a "Cyberfox" from when Waterfox development stalled, it's shitty.

9/29/2013 11:54:02 PM

firefox needs 64 bit addressing to increase the maximum memory it can leak

9/30/2013 10:15:06 AM

firefox hasn't leaked for almost 2 years now. IE leaks the worst, chrome isn't leaking, just spying and precaching everything in your history to make it seem faster, grabbing 6x the memory space of ff

9/30/2013 10:19:51 AM

Firefox hasn't fixed any leaks ever. they've only created new ones. IE also doesn't leak at all unless you've installed some garbage like chrome frame.

webkit is total shit though and the only way chrome can get it perform close to IE is if it renders everything at maximum priority on every core you have.

9/30/2013 10:28:25 AM

open 4 tabs, leave the browser open, watch it balloon to a gig. I have >300 tabs open and I'm just under 1.7gb. compare that to chrome with 7 tabs open (>12 processes) and 1.2gb consumed. no plugins for IE, using noscript, flashblock, and abp in FF, abp and no script in chrome

9/30/2013 10:39:52 AM

I have a bunch of tabs in ie open w/ under 200mb of usage. you've got some spyware or something installed.

9/30/2013 10:52:11 AM

i currently use waterfox

no idea if stock firefox/waterfox have memory leak issues, but i definitely have to restart my fox sessions every couple of days once memory gets past 1.2GB...i've got a fair number of add-ons installed, though, so it could be any of them

i just restarted this morning...2 windows with 8 tabs between them at 509MB, which doesn't seem too bad for now...we'll see how many windows/tabs are open on friday and how much memory it's using

9/30/2013 11:16:54 AM

I also use TPLs which decrease the 3rd party javascript I have to run so that helps.

9/30/2013 11:29:41 AM

Who cares how much RAM your browser uses. My work laptop has 8GB, my desktop has 16GB. Chrome is using like 1.3GB right now with 5 windows and like 30 tabs open. That's still practically nothing compared to my total pool. If your browser feels slow to you, get an SSD.

[Edited on September 30, 2013 at 12:08 PM. Reason : :]

9/30/2013 12:08:23 PM

your browser should only be hitting disk if it's paging.. which could be a good thing, but it's unlikely because that would mean your browser is running as root and has hardware subsystem access.

9/30/2013 12:30:42 PM

How/why does one have >300 tabs?

80 inch monitor?

9/30/2013 12:54:48 PM

I was going to post that Shaggy had the gem of a comment in this thread, but then I saw this horseshit:

smoothcrim said:

Quote :

"your browser should only be hitting disk if it's paging.. which could be a good thing, but it's unlikely because that would mean your browser is running as root and has hardware subsystem access."

This man has no concept of how memory management works.

9/30/2013 1:02:54 PM

Quote :

"Who cares how much RAM your browser uses. My work laptop has 8GB, my desktop has 16GB. Chrome is using like 1.3GB right now with 5 windows and like 30 tabs open. That's still practically nothing compared to my total pool."

that's all well and good for you, but it doesn't scale...sure, if your browser is using 8% of your overall physical memory, that's fine...but almost 33% (1.3GB/4GB) is a different situation altogether

it's easy to say "get more memory", but my work laptop only has 4GB, only has one slot (so no adding), and it's a bitch to access even if it weren't for the fact that i'm not allowed to open it up

yeah, it'd have been great if they'd gotten me the 8GB version that i asked for, but they didn't...so identifying a more efficient browser isn't an unreasonable goal

Quote :

"If your browser feels slow to you, get an SSD."

i have an SSD in both my laptop and desktop and the laptop (4GB) gets slow when more than 25% of that is the browser...it's true that i never think twice about the desktop (16GB)

in any case, it's silly to excuse poor design/efficiency simply because you can add more memory to make up for it...not saying firefox/waterfox is poorly designed, necessarily

[Edited on September 30, 2013 at 1:10 PM. Reason : .]

9/30/2013 1:07:43 PM

I dunno man, I haven't used Firefox in ages so I can't say. I use Chrome because it syncs tabs between the 2 machines i use the most and my phone. It's fast and never loses my tabs due to a crash or restart. I can't imagine ever using IE again by choice.

9/30/2013 1:24:09 PM

Oh, remember when I said that Cyberfox was shitty? It was because it came with an intrusive and poorly designed updater, but now that you can download zipped or Portable App versions, it's okay...

Zipped: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cyberfox/files/Zipped%20Format/

Portable App: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cyberfoxportabl/files/

From the shady-sounding description: "Cyberfox Is Compiled With Microsoft Visual Studios 2012, Windows 8 SDK & Intel Composer XE 2013.
Making It Faster Then Other Browsers."

Be sure you download the version for your processor (Intel vs. AMD); at least it's not as specific as fbuild.com's Nightly builds, where you have to additionally check whether your processor supports AVX.

9/30/2013 1:24:42 PM

Quote :

"This man has no concept of how memory management works."

if your app isn't running as root, while you COULD cache stuff to disk and then free the memory pages you were consuming, no browser is going to do that in lieu of using the memory management presented by the OS, which will behave like I said, unless your app is running as root and has access to page what it wants, which is a much bigger problem imo.

[Edited on September 30, 2013 at 4:17 PM. Reason : or if your app isnt a container/vm type thing like java or .net]

9/30/2013 4:00:14 PM

Okay, sure. The operating system's memory manager never thrashes, and only processes running with elevated privileges can write to disk. That's how computers work in Bizarro World, which is where you are posting from.

9/30/2013 4:19:52 PM

I didn't say write to disk, I said page, as in invoke the OS subsystem to move data from memory to the page file. That does require root access (and in many cases there is no direct way to do it - no external API) if you aren't relying on the OS to do it for you.

9/30/2013 6:18:59 PM

You said the browser shouldn't be hitting disk unless it's paging, which right there is wrong. All the major browsers store a cache of files from recent requests on disk. Moving your cache to a faster drive is an ancient technique for improving browser performance, which is what Shrike was referring to.

You also said that a browser would only page memory out if it's running as root, which is ridiculous. The browser is just as much a slave to the OS's memory manager as any other process. It doesn't know or care when memory is being paged out, and the memory manager is just as prone to thrashing under high memory pressure for a browser as it is for any other program. That has nothing to do with what privileges the process has. I would never assume the browser's running as an elevated process just because I hear my hard drive working.

10/1/2013 7:05:42 AM

So on the windows 64 bit platform, waterfox is the clear winner?

10/1/2013 5:07:37 PM

no, IE10 is the best if you do other stuff while browsing w/ ur computer. Chrome is best if you have a ton of cores and you don't mind it using all of them even while idle at the expense of other programs.

I guess a firefox derivative is ok if you need to do a slow memory test or something

[Edited on October 1, 2013 at 6:06 PM. Reason : a]

10/1/2013 6:05:43 PM

really, IE? I find that very hard to believe, as they have sucked forever.

10/1/2013 6:38:07 PM

IE10 is pretty much the fastest until 11 comes out. get yourself TPLs for adblocking and you're good to go.

10/1/2013 7:04:49 PM

i have a hard time giving any version of IE a chance since it's sucked so hard for so long

i check compatibility of my sites in IE and then move on to pretty much anything else without a second thought

10/1/2013 8:08:08 PM

do a benchmark representative of your browsing habits and see for yourself.
chrome takes up my entire machine while it spies on and doesn't respect my do-no-track settings
IE has a ton of memory leaks if you leave it running
firefox crashes from time to time (but I am in the beta stream), but is very fast, has the best add-on support (though many of these addons are shitty and ruin the experience), and uses the least memory

(for me)

10/2/2013 8:26:06 AM

Quote :

"firefox needs 64 bit addressing to increase the maximum memory it can leak"

10/2/2013 10:38:32 PM

looks like waterfox 24 was released as a stable build today: http://www.waterfoxproject.org/download.php

looks like some pretty significant changes: http://www.waterfoxproject.org/development.php?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=60

10/7/2013 3:57:23 PM

really liking waterfox.

10/8/2013 8:19:18 PM