> Chrome just chokes on it for a long time - the tab uses 1.7GB of memory while it is still loading!
Chrome 43.0.2357.130 m (64-bit) on Windows 8.1 here, takes 787.6 MB for me (with uBlock). If I open an Incognito window (i.e. no extensions) it takes 109 MB. Not sure where this discrepancy is coming from. Chrome's responsive the whole time.
Chrome extensions run in their own process which means the memory usage is reported separately for each tab and extension. IOW the memory usage for the tab is that of Chrome 100%.
I believe (most) ad blockers work by changing the DOM of each tab. They inject their own CSS to hide elements. The the stylesheets will be processed in the tab's process, not the extension's. This VIM page would be quite heavy on elements that need styling by CSS.
Yes, they do run in their own process. But, so what? Did you expect the ram consumed by the extension to balloon? I didn't. It's clearly evident that these ad block extensions are inflating the memory used by the tab. So, again, why is Chrome to blame for these inefficient extensions?
I was testing on OS X - On Windows 8.1 the page kept loading for a while and then the tab crashed - it used 767Mb before crashing. Probably the extensions you are running are different from me as well - I am running uBlock, Privacy Badger, Lastpass and ChromeCast.
Edit: The crash on Windows 8.1 is reproducible for me. Turns out I'm running a 32-bit build on Windows. But that just very likely means the crash is due to it exceeding the 32-bit process address space limit. I've seen it reach 900+Mb but since the reporting is not real time in chrome://memory it's hard to know at what point it crashes.
In any case since extensions are separate processes I am more perplexed as to how you are getting that low memory usage for the VIM tab. Make sure you wait for the page to load - it takes some time for me to start reaching 900Mb levels and the tab is still loading at that point.
I waited the first time. If I scroll to the bottom of the page I get 98,232 KB. Highest I can get now. Task Manager says close to the same thing, and my computer isn't under memory pressure so I don't expect Windows to have paged out a bunch of Chrome's memory.
http://imgur.com/im0YFhw - 1.6GB on 64-bit build. I get 107Mb in an incognito tab as well. That has got to be a bug - more than 10 times mem usage on regular tab!
Chrome 43.0.2357.130 m (64-bit) on Windows 8.1 here, takes 787.6 MB for me (with uBlock). If I open an Incognito window (i.e. no extensions) it takes 109 MB. Not sure where this discrepancy is coming from. Chrome's responsive the whole time.
http://i.imgur.com/QFG2ryq.png