When it comes to browsing the Internet, we currently have several options. From the classic Google Chrome to the more experimental browsers like DuckDuckGo, going through such juicy alternatives as Mozilla Firefox or the recently appeared Microsoft Edge based on Chromium. As you all know, web browsers consume resources from our system, mainly RAM memory. And what is RAM? Let's make a paragraph to explain it to you in a simple way.
Every time we run a program on our computer, it occupies virtual memory on our computer. We call it 'virtual' because it is not occupied by physical elements such as images or videos, but information. And this is precisely the RAM. Browsers save all the information of the pages you visit to execute the processes in a more efficient and faster way. And not all browsers manage this memory in the same way. In addition, each of us have different computers, with different RAM memory capacities, so it will be better for us to use one browser rather than another.
So, having seen what you've seen, which browser is best for you? It will depend on the equipment you have. The more amount of RAM you have on your computer the better, so it will not suffer when you handle a very demanding browser. For our part, we want to help you. We have done a test in which we have used the three main web browsers that we can use today, Google Chrome. Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge. And we are going to compare them through the task manager, seeing which one consumes more RAM memory with the same open processes.
We have to add that the equipment in which the test has been done has a RAM memory of 8 GB . In addition, the latest versions of the corresponding browsers have been used.
For testing, we have opened tabs with different content, viz.
- A normal web page with text and images.
- A social network with text, video and images
- A playing YouTube video
- A movie playing on a streaming platform
- A song playing in the browser version of Spotify
Obviously, it is very rare for a normal user on the Internet to have all this open, but we wanted to put browsers to the limit of their possibilities to see how they perform and then show it to you.
These are the results.
Microsoft Chromium
Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome
As we have just seen, the absolute loser in this contest is, against all odds, Mozilla Firefox. In addition, we not only see the wear on the RAM, more than 1GB 500MB of the total, but we also observe how it makes use of the GPU graphics, specifically 13%.
Microsoft Edge is on the heels of the browser developed by Mozilla. In this case we find a use of 1GB 300MB of RAM, in addition to 2% of the GPU graphics, a merely testimonial use. What is most striking is the enormous number of processes that it opens for the five tabs, no less than 30, unlike Firefox (10) and Google Chrome (11). Remember that the same tabs have been opened in all three browsers.
And now we go with the outright winner… and for a certain advantage. Against all odds, the browser that consumed the least RAM in the test was Google Chrome, despite the bad reputation that precedes it. Google Chrome has always had a bad press when it comes to how it manages computer RAM. Have they optimized this 'bad' in the latest versions? It is also the only browser that keeps the GPU graphics at zero. In total, with the same active tabs, it has consumed just over 1 GB of RAM
Can we conclusively conclude that Google Chrome is the browser, of the three, that consumes the least RAM? no, since everything will depend on the versions that, at that moment, we are using. Right now we can say that Google Chrome is the web browser that has occupied the least RAM, but what will happen with the following versions?