Was trolling /g/ recently and got in an argument regarding the memory-efficiency of different browsers. Another trolling Anon directed me towards a “Firefox 3 Memory Benchmark“, in which Firefox 3 is compared to other browsers including Internet Explorer and Opera. The author claims that the results are irrefutable and clearly show that Firefox is superior. I beg to differ.
There are several flaws regarding both the benchmark itself and the results. First of all, the test is conducted on a single computer running Vista. That means these results are most likely only valid on a machine running Vista, with similar specs to the computer in question. Second, the tool used to monitor memory usage is written by the author himself. I’m not saying he’s cheating, I’m only saying that he could have. Results are not 100% reliable, not even 50% reliable if the tool used can’t be verified. The author has made it available for download, but we cannot be sure it hasn’t been modified.
Furthermore, I would like to say that the results presented probably won’t match the memory usage on any other PC. On my system, for example, a semi-old HP running Windows XP, Opera never exceeds 80MB memory usage. Firefox 3, which i rarely use, consumes significantly more memory and often exceeds a memory usage of 130MB.
