TR Forums

mattsteg wrote:

3.0% IE, 4.0% firefox for http://img-cdn.mediaplex.com/ads/4340/c ... 728x90.swf on this system. Firefox uses ~33% more CPU, although s/n isn't real hot.

Neither one uses much CPU.

The Newegg snowflake ad is much worse. I dug up the url:

http://img-cdn.mediaplex.com/ads/4340/c ... 728x90.swf

-fyo

I am glad someone posted the link to Aces Hardware. I was reading this thread and unable to duplicate the problem until I found the NewEgg ad on Aces.

I can duplicate the problem on Opera, Firefox, and IE. I found that the NewEgg ad with the 'Happy Swirly Snowman' averages approximately 25% CPU usage (Barton 2500+) with both Opera and IE, and hovers around 30% with Firefox.

Both Opera and IE seem to have one major advantage over Firefox - if the window in question is minimized, the CPU usage drops down to near zero, but Firefox still produces a heavy CPU load.

In spite of the heavy CPU hit, I would have never noticed the problem if not for this thread. It does not affect the responsiveness of my system in any noticeable way. I can see how it would really hurt an older system, however.

Perhaps we will see a new benchmark - "Heavy Duty Flash Ad" - P4 vs A64 vs Pentium M.

I doubt this problem will go away any time soon. Not all web site operators are as responsible as Damage - kudos for replacing the ads with gifs !

One thing, Damage. I'm in Europe (there are a fairly big bunch of euro regulars here) and newegg simply refuses to ship to Europe.

I'm not blocking the adds, but I wonder if they pay the site for showing adds to a market they don't support at all. Wouldn't it be more profitable to filter european IPs and show different ads for us? (companies shipping to Europe or in Europe).

This thread may help: Geographically targeted banner ads -- how?

Msg me if you want me to look into the details (I know some internet shops in Spain, Germany, UK and Denmark).

fyo wrote:

The Newegg snowflake ad is much worse. I dug up the url:

http://img-cdn.mediaplex.com/ads/4340/c ... 728x90.swf

-fyo

I just loaded this up in a new maximised (1280x1024) window with Firefox 1.0 and flash 7,0,19,0 and I'm seeing firefox.exe using 50-75% cpu via taskman on my 1.93GHz AthlonXP T-Bred.

However, when I minimised it, the cpu load went to zero. Odd.

[img]http://SuperSpy00bob.no-ip.com/firefox[11-12-04].PNG[/img]

For me, firefox uses 72% of a CPU and iexplore uses 84% of a CPU for the newegg add. The ad plays faster in iexplore when running both side by side, wonder if setting affinity masks would change that.

Setting affinity makes IE usage drop to 77%. Firefox usage stays at 72%. The ad still plays faster in ie. Performance with only one of the processes running is similar.

Just refreshed the front page....that ballistix add is the devil..pulling 80% cpu on this system, as opposed to 8-10% normally

jss21382 wrote:

Just refreshed the front page....that ballistix add is the devil..pulling 80% cpu on this system, as opposed to 8-10% normally

Yes, this is what I've been saying.

Whoever authored that Ballistix ad ought to be shot. Along with whoever decided that the Firefox/Mozilla Flash plugin should keep sucking tons of CPU cycles even when the window is hidden/minimized (some -- but not all! -- people are apparently seeing this behavior, which makes it all the more puzzling).

So it isn't okay for us to "steal advertising revenue" by using ad blockers. But it is perfectly fine for them to steal our computing power. Sorry i'd rather use my spare cycles to fold, not be advertised at by a foreign company who couldn't ship anything to me even if I wanted to use them.

So it isn't okay for us to "steal advertising revenue" by using ad blockers.

Well these forums don't pay for themselves

just brew it! wrote:

Whoever authored that Ballistix ad ought to be shot. Along with whoever decided that the Firefox/Mozilla Flash plugin should keep sucking tons of CPU cycles even when the window is hidden/minimized (some -- but not all! -- people are apparently seeing this behavior, which makes it all the more puzzling).

Since people aren't posting details, we can't be sure that the puzzling behavior isn't the result of different versions of FF and/or the Flash plug-in. I have never had a reason to look at the plug-in APIs, so I don't know how easy it is for a plug-in to know if its window is visible. Of course a well-designed architecture wouldn't require the plug-in to know: it would just not get called if there was nothing for it to paint.

AMM wrote:

So it isn't okay for us to "steal advertising revenue" by using ad blockers. But it is perfectly fine for them to steal our computing power. Sorry i'd rather use my spare cycles to fold, not be advertised at by a foreign company who couldn't ship anything to me even if I wanted to use them.

Well... look at it this way -- TR is caught in the middle. They need the ad revenue, but they do not author the ads themselves. The ads are provided by an ad agency that has been hired by Newegg, Crucial, etc. The problem seems to be some combination of poor Flash authoring, crappy behavior from the Flash plugin, and web browser stupidities. There's a potential for a lot of finger-pointing here.

TR seems to be doing what they can to mitigate the situation. And TR isn't the one stealing your CPU cycles... at least not directly.

Yes, I agree it is annoying to have CPU-sucking Flash ads. But I'm willing to take a "wait and see" attitude, to see how this all shakes out. In the meantime, I'll just make sure I close any pages with Flash ads on them, if I'm going to be away from the computer for an extended period of time.

AMM wrote:

So it isn't okay for us to "steal advertising revenue" by using ad blockers. But it is perfectly fine for them to steal our computing power.

Who's forcing you to browse TR?

Who's forcing you to browse TR?

YOU ARE!!!! or well that was my best guess

jss21382 wrote:

Who's forcing you to browse TR?

YOU ARE!!!! or well that was my best guess

Damn this f*cking site for having such compelling content, and a terrific forum!

just brew it! wrote:

Whoever authored that Ballistix ad ought to be shot. Along with whoever decided that the Firefox/Mozilla Flash plugin should keep sucking tons of CPU cycles even when the window is hidden/minimized (some -- but not all! -- people are apparently seeing this behavior, which makes it all the more puzzling).

Agree on the the Ballistix ad part!

As for Firefox... there are several threads in the official FF Bugs forum at Mozillazine.org regarding this issue. I'm not seeing it on my system, so I haven't paid much attention to it, but I do recall a setting that was mentioned that was said to fix this... I can't remember the exact name, of course... ok, searching Mozillazine brought up "config.trim_on_minimize", which may or may not solve the problem.

The branch that Firefox 1.0 is made from (called Aviary) is being merged with the trunk, meaning that the things that were fixed on the trunk are going to be fixed in Firefox 1.x. The process is a bit slow, as regression bugs are being tracked down and fixed. The impending xmas may also have something to do with it, but in any event, there do seem to be a lot of regression bugs.

-fyo

How do you guys/gals do on a all flash site like this

http://www.dubmagazine.com/

or one like this that is at 100% http://www.theory7.com/

I'm wondering on what people’s opinions are on the following.

1) I was at a tech conference a couple of months ago and a company was showing off a proxy server that blocked the ads for the ISP customers (marketing said save downloads size, improved user experience, etc). Idea was customers would pay more to remove ads. Worked off a combination of a blacklist, file size, crc, width, height and some other stuff. Swapped the image / flash with an image saying "Ad removed by ISP, click to view", also removed google adsense, intelltxt, and a couple of other javascript things. Most of the ISP's (all small players) were very impressed with the idea.

2) What if a user doesn’t install flash? Does TR default to a normal image?

3) What if I have all images turned off?

4) When is TR going to move to location based advertising? That newegg ad is as good to me as spam about cheap canadian drugs.

Hellsbellboy wrote:

How do you guys/gals do on a all flash site like this

http://www.dubmagazine.com/

or one like this that is at 100% http://www.theory7.com/

dubmagazine, brimming with all sorts of flash effects, is about as cpu hungry as the single, small crucial ballistix ad. Ie. high-80s% on my slowly 700MHz K7.

theory7 spikes to around the same level, but generally stays much lower (50-60%).

So, basically, neither of these full-flash sites are as bad as a couple of ads on TR .

-fyo

fyo wrote:

Hellsbellboy wrote:

How do you guys/gals do on a all flash site like this

http://www.dubmagazine.com/

or one like this that is at 100% http://www.theory7.com/

dubmagazine, brimming with all sorts of flash effects, is about as cpu hungry as the single, small crucial ballistix ad. Ie. high-80s% on my slowly 700MHz K7.

theory7 spikes to around the same level, but generally stays much lower (50-60%).

So, basically, neither of these full-flash sites are as bad as a couple of ads on TR .

-fyo

Maybe once the Flash.exe is in effect, the number of adds doesn't add to the CPU overhead. Hell I don't know. Maybe it's just ridiculous programming by Macromedia or the putz making the ad(s).

Think it's who ever made the ad.. the sites that i mentioned and others all flash sites, work fine.. but at least the first day that those flash ads appeared here on TR there was a very very noticeable slowdown of my system that I couldn't even "multitask", but with the two sites I mentioned it's smooth.. and I have no problems.

mattsteg wrote:

AMM wrote:

So it isn't okay for us to "steal advertising revenue" by using ad blockers. But it is perfectly fine for them to steal our computing power.

Who's forcing you to browse TR?

Do you think it is wrong to leave the room while tv adverts are on?

AMM wrote:

Do you think it is wrong to leave the room while tv adverts are on?

The TV station still gets paid for running the ad whether you're in the room or not.

emkubed wrote:

Maybe once the Flash.exe is in effect, the number of adds doesn't add to the CPU overhead.

NO, this is most definitely NOT the case.

The *bug* present in the flash ads mentioned here is additive. NFL.com had some Coors ads that sucked 65% on my 700MHz each. No problems on the pages with a single ad, but a few pages had 2, which completely stalled my system. Reproduction on a 1500MHz system showed additive scaling, within a few percentage points.

-fyo

I agree with fyo. A single "problem" ad isn't enough to cause serious issues on its own. But get 2, 3 or more of 'em running at once, and the browser will start to misbehave noticeably.

Well I can no longer go to Anandtech because of those adds....2 of the newegg adds on one page is insane

Philldoe wrote:

I use Opera and I have no problems with this type of thing. This even does fine on my old AXP 2000+ and my old as can be 366Mhz Celeron. My friend Matt with a 566Mhz Pentium says his comp runs fine too, so it must be a FireFox thing. Glad I don't use FF.

Couple of things (+bonus)
1. Grammar and punctuation;
2. We already know you don't use and don't like FF. Despite most people here supporting FF, you're not going to be deemed a rebel for declaring that you don't like it at every single opportunity. So just stop being obnoxious about it;
3. Did you try it in FF to see if the same thing happens? If no, then think about 2 some more.