The problem of Firefox "freezing" (rendering no longer working and UI elements like menu/scroll broken) and requiring a restart I don't think relates to memory. For example the browser is only using around 1.8gb at this moment and the machine has 8gb of RAM. I've been in contact with the Firefox OpenBSD maintainer (landry@) and he didn't have any certain indication from the logs/data I provided. He says he runs into the same problem, and simply quits/reopens. He's given a couple other steps to try getting more debugging data but otherwise, the cause is thus far unknown.
(oh and yeah I have no intention of using a newer system, I bought four X230's and an X220 for dirt cheap lol)
I quit (actually I pkill) and then I restart and restore previous session with wifi/internet turned off. Then I turn internet back on and use the tabs that I want, and they reload only when I use them. If one of them misbehaves, I'll find out when I get there, but generally, I'm closing other tabs first so whatever interaction it may have been might be gone.
if I don't do this when i restart, HN tells me it can't serve pages that fast :)
What changes when the program closes and restarts other than memory refresh would be the obvious starting point. I like hunting these things down, may take a look!
(oh and yeah I have no intention of using a newer system, I bought four X230's and an X220 for dirt cheap lol)