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REAL-WORLD TESTING of four web browsers under Windows has shown that Firefox 3 hung onto much less working-set memory after almost three hours of typical web-surfing.

The browsers tested included Safari 3.1.2, Firefox 3.0, Flock 1.2.2 (a Firefox 2 derivative), Opera 9.5 and Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta 1. The benchmark testing process used a custom .NET application that recorded memory usage every three seconds, creating millions of data points collected over 14 hours of combined web-surfing time.
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Over time, the Safari and Internet Explorer web browsers produced memory working-sets that steadily increased in size, while the Firefox 3, Flock and Opera web browsers exhibited memory working-sets that stabilised and more-or-less leveled off. Real memory available on the testbed computer wasn't exhausted by the testing performed on any of the browsers, but one might conjecture that Safari and Internet Explorer might have eventually consumed all available real memory if the testing had been continued long enough.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ … -benchmark