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The Linux distillery Face off part two: Windows vs Linux real world RAM and disk tests
The Linux distillery Face off part two: Windows vs Linux real world RAM and disk tests | Face off part two: Windows vs Linux real world RAM and disk tests |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Monday, 28 July 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 3 I put forth that Internet Explorer on Vista, over time, was left holding 400MB of memory more than Firefox on Fedora, even when closing everything but the final tab. A large number of Windows defenders left comments that this was actually expected and even desirable, behaviour.To be honest, I don’t see how SuperFetch explains why Windows Vista tends towards swapping to disk even when RAM is available. After all, the RAM is there to be used. I also don’t see how SuperFetch explains why Internet Explorer would hold onto so much RAM. The readers who favoured this theory put forth a reasonable-sounding view that Windows does not relinquish the memory allocated by Internet Explorer in case the browser is again fired up in the near future. However, Microsoft’s description of SuperFetch only says it preloads applications and not that it acts in the way suggested. Mind you, I can see how SuperFetch answers one question, namely that of why Windows Vista takes so long to boot up! Nevertheless, I certainly concede my understanding of Windows Vista under the hood is likely to be faulty and incomplete. Therefore, it is eminently sensible that the Firefox web browser also be executed under Windows Vista to see if this same behaviour occurs. If Firefox, too, is left with a large memory footprint then this would make it plausible that what is being seen is a genuine feature of Vista itself. On the other hand, if Firefox exhibits the same pattern of memory usage under Vista as it does under Linux then this means SuperFetch is not at work but instead Internet Explorer is problematic. This is the crucial test to get to the truth of the matter! Rather than perform these tests I sought a reputable source. Ok, this person may be arguably biased but I am certain any reasonable reader will agree their experiments have been undertaken with great care and diligence. Indeed, the online identity of this fellow was chosen in honour of the scientific work by Ivan Pavlov (famed for bringing forth canine salivation on demand.) ”Pavlov” is a software engineer working at Mozilla Corporation. Pavlov and his team put a lot of work into the memory footprint of Firefox 3. His experiments reflect the state of Firefox 3 beta 4 and were performed on Windows Vista. A stress test was developed which put Internet Explorer and Firefox versions 2 and 3 through the same collection of page views in the same order and with a consistent delay between page loads. Windows Perfomance Counters were employed to accurately measure memory usage. What did Pavlov find? How did the browsers face off against each other? CONTINUED |
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