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Firefox version: benchmarking memory footprint

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gwarser edited this page Aug 29, 2019 · 28 revisions

Note: Results have been updated with latest Firefox 52 and Chrome 59. Previous benchmarks:

Setup

  1. Ensure the blocker is the only active extension (to avoid results to be polluted by other extensions)
  2. Ensure click-to-play (or whatever equivalent) is enabled before launching the benchmark
  3. How blockers were configured:
    • uBlock Origin: default settings.
    • Adblock Plus: EasyList + EasyPrivacy, minus "acceptable ads".

Steps

  1. Have the benchmarked blocker enabled and properly setup
  2. Have only the "new tab" opened
  3. Quit Firefox
  4. Launch Firefox
  5. Paste http://news.yahoo.com/ in address bar, wait for page to finish loading
  6. Open new tab, paste http://news.google.com/, wait for page to finish loading
  7. Open new tab, paste http://www.huffingtonpost.com/, wait for page to finish loading
  8. Open new tab, paste http://www.cnn.com/, wait for page to finish loading
  9. Open new tab, paste http://www.nytimes.com/, wait for page to finish loading
  10. Open new tab, paste http://www.foxnews.com/, wait for page to finish loading
  11. Open new tab, paste http://www.nbcnews.com/, wait for page to finish loading
  12. Open new tab, paste http://www.dailymail.co.uk/, wait for page to finish loading
  13. Open new tab, paste http://www.washingtonpost.com/, wait for page to finish loading
  14. Open new tab, paste http://www.theguardian.com/, wait for page to finish loading
  15. Open new tab, paste https://news.ycombinator.com/, wait for page to finish loading
  16. Leave the browser idle for two minutes
  17. Open new tab, paste about:memory, wait for page to finish loading
  18. Firefox: Click "Minimize memory usage" button in "Free memory" section
  19. Firefox: Click Measure button in "Show memory reports" section
  20. Firefox: Write down "Explicit Allocations" value (see notes below) / Chromium: Write down Σ value

So I did the exact above steps for no blocker, ABP, uBlock.

Results

  • Firefox 52 (benchmark results updated on April 3rd, 2017)
    • Two measurements needed with FF 52.0: Main Process + Web Content
    • No blocker: 175 MB + 1,397 MB = 1,572 MB (reference memory usage)
    • Adblock Plus 2.8.2: 241 MB + 626 MB = 867 MB (reference minus 705 MB)
    • uBlock Origin 1.11.4: 176 MB + 488 MB = 664 MB (reference minus 908 MB, ABP minus 203 MB)
  • Chrome 59 (benchmark results updated on April 3rd, 2017)
    • No blocker: 1,615 MB (reference memory usage)
    • Adblock Plus 1.13.2: 1,253 MB (reference minus 362 MB)
    • uBlock Origin 1.11.4: 832 MB (reference minus 783 MB, ABP minus 421 MB)

Important: You can't compare directly the figures between the browsers -- they are taken using different methodology from one browser to the other. The benchmarks are more to compare the figures for various blockers within the same browser.

Notes

No other extensions were present.

For Firefox, I chose the "Explicit Allocations" figure because as per Firefox, it is "the single best number to focus on" with regard to memory usage.

Without going into details, hardware is i5 quadcore + 8 GB

If other users feel like repeating the tests, it would be nice just to confirm I got everything right.

uBlock Origin - An efficient blocker for Chromium and Firefox. Fast and lean.

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