CI Memory Usage

[eluser]section31[/eluser]
I'm new to CI and I've never used a PHP framework before and I'm a little alarmed at how much memory CI uses.

Am I correct in assuming CI uses so much memory because it buffers all of it's output data.

In the Loader Library I read this

Code:

/*
* Buffer the output
*
* We buffer the output for two reasons:
* 1. Speed. You get a significant speed boost.
* 2. So that the final rendered template can be
* post-processed by the output class.  Why do we
* need post processing?  For one thing, in order to
* show the elapsed page load time.  Unless we
* can intercept the content right before it's sent to
* the browser and then stop the timer it won't be accurate.
*/

It doesn't seem like those 2 reasons justify the reason for throwing all the output into memory.

What can I do to reduce as much memory as possible aside from caching since sometimes it's not an option? Is there anyway I can disable this buffering?

My first simple CRUD script claims it's using 1.2MB...and it's just an example. I'm assuming site's that get a lot of traffic avoid using php frameworks?

Can someone please enlighten me?