Contributed memory usage: benchmarks over time
Just a place for me to keep track of contributed memory to web pages over time. I consider the contributed memory to web pages to be more important than the own memory footprint. Unfortunately it is not possible for a user to see how much memory overhead an extension contributes to a web page, without running a benchmark like the one here. Keep in mind the results here are only for one simple web page.
Using Acid Test 3, a rather simple web page, with embedded iframes. Web page was opened in a new tab for each extension (important), after a browser restart.
Each extension tested alone, with no other extension enabled. Browser left on idle for more than 1 minute to ensure web page memory was garbage collected.
The following steps were added for benchmarks dated December 2014 and later:
- Click "Stats for nerds" in "Task Manager": "About memory" opens
- Wait a few seconds
- Close the "About memory" tab
- Wait a few seconds
- Repeat all above steps until the memory footprint of the Acid Test tab stops decreasing
I found this was now necessary as it appears Chromium's garbage collector has become rather lazy. The above steps forces it into action.
- Chromium 39.0.2171.65 64-bit (Linux)
- uBlock 0.8.2.2 (default lists: EasyList, Peter Lowe’s Ad server, EasyPrivacy, malware domain lists, Fanboy’s Social Blocking List)
- Adblock Plus 1.8.8 (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware Protection List, "Acceptable ads" disabled)
Summary of results:
- Reference memory usage for the web page: 23 MB
- uBlock adds over 10 MB
- Adblock Plus adds over 33 MB
- Adblock Plus with same filter lists as uBlock adds over 46 MB
No extension (reference):
uBlock:
Adblock Plus:
Adblock Plus with same filter lists as uBlock:
- Chromium 37.0.2062.94 64-bit (Linux)
- uBlock 0.6.2.1 (default filter lists)
- Adblock Plus 1.8.5 (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Malware Protection List, "Acceptable ads" disabled)
Summary of results:
- Reference memory usage for the web page: 22 MB
- uBlock Plus adds over 9 MB
- Adblock Plus adds over 32 MB
No extension (reference):
uBlock:
Adblock Plus:
Observations:
Last time I ran this benchmark was on Chromium 34 64-bit, and it does appear that Chromium 37 is causing web pages to consume more memory -- reference result went from ~17 MB to ~22 MB.