Ever since installing Firefox version 2, I’ve noticed a steady deterioration in my computer’s performance, but I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. Since installing the 2.0.0.1 update, it’s been even worse. For some reason, I decided to try and figure it out yesterday, and I think I’ve managed to stumble on the reason. Please note that isn’t to say that I’ve fixed the problem – only that I know the cause.
I typically keep 10-12 tabs open in Firefox. Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I do. It’s just the way that I use it. I almost constantly keep Firefox running. I just have little reason to close it, and with 1GB of memory, it’s usually not a problem. Even when Firefox gets up to a couple hundred MB of memory, it’s rarely an issue. If it is, I simply close the window and restart it with the tabs intact. I maybe do this every week or so and life goes on. But still, the performance was getting worse.
I mean it was really bad. I couldn’t even operate the browser. I would click on a field and start typing and it would be seconds before the text would appear. Or I would highlight text and it would take a while for it to appear. Or I would click on a field and start typing and by the time it started, the text would appear in an entirely different field (or on a completely different tab because it clicked elsewhere on the screen). Performance was horrible. The CPU load wasn’t generally bad, but every once in a while, I would notice it burst to a high level.
Often, those 10-12 tabs I keep open are the same, and there isn’t anything fancy on them. A lot of times there isn’t even much scripting on them. Simple pages. So there isn’t a lot going on there. But there was one page that had all sorts of action on it. So I decided to close it down, restart the browser and see what happened. Once I did, performance returned to normal immediately. The page? Google Reader.
If you’ve been reading for a while, you know I left Bloglines for the Google Reader a while back. I’ve been happy with the change. But most days I’m on the computer for hours at a time, and a lot of what I do is in the browser, so I just couldn’t deal with this sort of performance hit. So after a couple days of testing, I have to say that I’m pretty sure it’s the Google Reader (combined with Firefox 2) causing the problem.
The solution at the moment is that I’ve got a window running IE7 that contains only the Google Reader, and my Firefox window that runs everything else, and it seems to be running fine to this point. I’ll see how that goes. I don’t like it, but at least it doesn’t slow down the rest of my operations. Anyone else having this sort of problem with Google Reader and Firefox?
Comments
30 responses to “Firefox CPU Usage and Google Reader”
Like many here, I suffer from the high CPU utilization. This happens to me on two different systems: At work and at home. One’s a dual core and one a single core.
Both Firefox installations are identical with regards to plugins.
What’s odd is that in both cases the CPU utilization stays at 50%-56%. Because there’s CPU available, I don’t notice it right away, even when though I do a lot of compilation at work and gaming at home.
I realize the situation when I browse and some div’s don’t hide anymore (like comments on flickr pictures). My quick workaround, as others pointed out, is to restart the browser.
I too have the same issue.
If you look at my CPU load graph, it wold be as looking at some mountain spikes…and sometimes a mountain with a flat top shows up.
I have this problem too; when I leave a Google Reader tab open for a long period of time Firefox’s CPU utilization grows to a significant proportion (it’s currently at a consistent 50%) until I shut down Firefox.
I do not use the FireBug extension, but I do use AdBlock+.
I also use FireBug, and have just updated, so I’ll keep an eye on it too. I hadn’t noticed it before, so perhaps it was one of the betas that caused it. We’ll see…
I got the same high CPU usage while working on a heavy page (flash video + Ajax calls + lots of text and graphics).
I suspect that it’s the XmlHttpRequests that use lots of CPU. And the FireBug extension actually boosts this CPU usage while monitoring those Ajax calls.
In safe mode was not a noticeable problem.
Funny thing that when I entered safe mode I got a prompt to update the FireBug to a new version. So I did, tested in safemode and returned in normal mode.
Issue was gone so maybe the last FireBug release fixed exactly that.
Nevertheless FireBug is a must so my Athlon XP 1.4 ghz will have to go 🙂
Sounds about the same here, though my primary PC (laptop, actually) isn’t dual-core, and it doesn’t go into suspend mode. Eventually I have to restart Firefox to get it to clear things up. Or I can’t leave the Reader running.
I do have a dual-core system, and on that one I can generally get by with it, though the behavior seems similar, as you describe.
I have been observing similar slow-downs associated with the combo of 2.0.0.1 and Google Reader. I noticed that if I leave my PC on for a while, then after a number of “sleep” and “wake ups”, then Firefox start to consume more CPU cycles, even though it is not trying to update the screen or anything. Maybe this is a barrage of expired timers, or something similar to that, I just don’t know.
The annoying thing is that the CPU stays up (5-15%) and that prevents the “auto suspend” mode from kicking in (luckily, I have a dual core, so FireFox doesn’t eat all CPU cycles).
The previous scenario happens on my XP Professional box. But on my older Windows 2000 box, the browser can get really slow that I have no other option of restarting it.
As you have said, I don’t have scientific evidence about the root cause of the problem. At first, I thought that it is an isolated problem, but now that I ran into your post, I started to think that it is a real issue.
I hope that this will be looked at by Google Reader team or FireFox. I would love to debug this thing myself, but I don’t know where to start. There is no real log to look into (I used the -console switch, but that didn’t provide a lot if insight).
Yesterday I installed Firefox 2.0.0.1 and I haven’t been able to load my Google reader at all?? keep getting a Error 400 Bad request?? No Display at all?
Thanks,
Tom
Yes, though to a somewhat lesser degree. I only have one extension installed that I use with any regularity (Firebug beta8), so disabling them isn’t a huge deal. I also have Google Browser Sync installed, but it’s not a hardship if it’s not running constantly. I do have coComment 0.2.3.0 and Scuttle 0.3.1 installed, but I rarely use either, so I can disable them indefinitely.
With the extensions disabled, and the Reader open and active, I get peak “bursts” of activity, rather than the constant slowdown that I was seeing previously, where the entire process just slowed to a level where I couldn’t do anything at all. Typically things run fine, but watching the task manager (this is in Windows XP SP2), I will very regularly see a burst of 30-80 for the firefox.exe task. Close the reader tab and it goes away entirely.
Not completely scientific, I realize, but it does seem to be a regular happening. For what it’s worth, I’m getting a similar, though not as significant, behavior with IE7 on the same machine – but only when IE7 has the focus. When I click off of IE, the level drops. Since I use FF as my primary browser, it’s not really an issue. Only when reading, and I can live with that for the most part. Since the browser is in focus most of the rest of the time, that’s an issue with Firefox.
The Reader team generally runs Firefox 2, and we haven’t seen this problem. Does it occur when starting Firefox in safe mode (so all extensions are disabled)?
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer