firefox 3 doesn’t do multi core CPUs
I occasionally need to open about 50 websites in one hit… !!!
Firefox 3 is great, in that its quick, and doesn’t chew up my system RAM.
But sometimes I open up some badly written websites. I suspect they have a script error that causes an infinite loop (and thus use up all the CPU time, and cause a huge web slowdown).
So I take a look at task manager, and I see firefox is sitting at 50% (on my dual core CPU). That usually means that its using only 1 core, while the other core is idle.
If I try the same thing using IE7, I find both cores are at 100%, and ie7 feels noticeably more responsive.
It looks (to me) like firefox is not a multi-threaded application.
I’m surprised that in this age of multi core CPUs, the firefox developers haven’t developed a truly efficient product for todays CPUs.
The good news is that I recently tested googles Chrome browser… and it is amazingly good at using multiple CPUs… so much so, that if one website crashed the browser, any other tabs/websites you have open, will not be affected.
Once google irons out the security bugs, chrome will be a fantastic web browser.
I love firefox AND chrome—when chrome is in final release i think it might just be the Firefox killer though—its so freaking fast at everything and so innovative…im surprised that FF isnt multithreading though, have you tried changing the affinity on it to cover both cores?
Like I said, I was surprised.
Affinity was the first thing I checked. It covers both cores.
Maybe FF4 will (hopefully) involve a complete redesign to allow for the same multi-threaded capabilities as Chrome.
Good analysis here. So is FF not multithreaded??? But, when it comes to the speed IE7 is dead slower in my PC. Whereas, FF is good!