Firefox grabbing so much memory

[#1]

Since 17.0.1 I have noticed that FF seems to eat away at even more memory than before.
Currently at 1.8GB and rising!
Once it starts getting higher than around 1.3GB it appears to quite a dramatic affect on the overal speed of the PC even though the CPU usage is still very low (around 23% at the moment). This is on a PC with quad core and 16GB RAM.
As soon as I end FF processes everything is back to normal again... till the next time
Anyone else having similar experiences?

[#2]

I believe it defaults to infinite cache size.
Try changing it to 64MB (for example).

[#3]

Ahh, thanks for the reminder.
I seem to remember this has come up before and now I'm pretty certain I did set it to a lower figure previously but when I just checked there was no limit set.
I have actually set it a fair bit higher at 640MB and will see how that goes.

[#4]

This works for me:-

[#5]

Something seems amiss here...
Task manager is reporting over 1.6GB!

[#6]

That setting is for the disk cache, you'd want to set the memory cache size.
That's a hidden preference and is accessed by typing into the location "about:config" and searching for 'cache'.

[#7]

You could remove some of your RAM, that'll stop programs using it. 
More seriously, there is about:memory which gives a breakdown of Firefox's memory usage.

[#8]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cache-status/ might be useful - gives a user interface to the disk and memory cache status and settings

[#9]

Thanks. I've downloaded the addon, jelv.
Will see how it pans out.
Ta.

[#10]

I left the default RAM cache at 64MB and set Maximum Disk Cache to 655360.
Task Manager is currently showing FF as using almost 1.1GB and rising!

[#11]

The quick & easy solution: http://www.crystalidea.com/speedyfox

[#12]

SQLite databases are generally fast and efficient - perhaps you are using an in-memory kind, due to excessive waste memory.
I don't know If you have any of these, but my maximum firefox SQLite database (with no active cleaning on my part over at least a year) amounts to 20MBytes.
How much history do you keep?
I suspect Firefox is set to auto-clean (a SQLite feature). 

[#13]

I've never liked firefox for its memory consumption. I use its sister product seamonkey which has always been better but even that is slowly following the firefox trait of eating up memory and freezing the computer. It takes longer to do it but it is getting there.

[#14]

I've found this happening recently too - though a bit longer than just FF17.0.1. I haven't found a solution either but might try one or two of the above thanks.

[#15]

I haven't found a problem!