Contributed memory usage: benchmarks over time
The contributed memory to web pages is often more important than the memory footprint of the extension itself. 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. The web page was opened in a new tab for each extension (important), after a browser restart.
Each extension was tested alone, with no other extensions enabled. The browser was left idle for more than 1 minute to ensure the 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
This was 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 anyone ran this benchmark was on Chromium 34 64-bit, and it does appear that Chromium 37 is causing web pages to consume more memory -- the reference result went from ~17 MB to ~22 MB.