The new version of Firefox is faster than previous and consumes less memory than Chrome

Nowadays almost all popular browsers use multi-process architecture. This means that you are using your own process to display each tab. Such technology allows to achieve high-speed display pages, but leads to too high costs RAM. This explains the inordinate appetite of Google Chrome.

Firefox was until recently the only browser, which used only one process to work. This resulted in a significant lag from the competition in speed, so developers had decided to move on Electrolysis technology.

Firefox 54 is the first publicly available version of the new engine. Sharing tabs into separate processes, the browser makes better use of hardware on your computer, so the sites will now be opened much faster than in previous versions.

However, Mozilla did not want to part with the title of the developers of the economic browser. Therefore Electrolysis has several differences from the architecture used in Chrome. The most important thing: Firefox does not use more than four processes, while Chrome - unlimited number.

By According to the developersThis measure made it possible to achieve a reasonable compromise between performance and economy. Indeed, in most standard situations, four simultaneously active processes is sufficient. But this configuration requires much less RAM that can not please the owners of old computers and laptops.

As a result, Firefox 54 consumes much less memory than competitors. And regardless of the operating system. The detailed results of the test you will find here.

If your computer has less than 8 GB of RAM, using Firefox with the new architecture can give excellent results. If more memory, then you just need to increase the number of processes. For this page about: config you must change the parameter dom.ipc.processCount. In the future, the developers plan to make the appropriate option in the program settings. Thus, each user can configure the browser to the capabilities of their equipment.

Download Firefox 54 for Windows, Mac or Linux →