Some modern websites make my CPU and GPU work harder than many games do. The examples I've noticed are highly animated landing pages and design portfolios that combine large JavaScript bundles, full-screen video, WebGL, parallax effects, and constant scroll-based animation. They may look impressive, but they can cause stuttering, high power usage, loud fans, and long load times. Is this becoming a broader problem with the modern web, or are these unusually elaborate showcase sites?
5 Answers
Chrome’s memory usage can make the experience feel even worse, especially with many tabs or several heavy web apps open. Still, browser memory use is only part of the story; oversized bundles, constant animation, third-party scripts, and unoptimized media are usually what cause the heat and frame-rate problems on individual pages.
A lot of normal websites could be much faster. I’ve worked on small-business sites where the main focus was quick loading, and many of the fancy tools turned out not to provide much value. On larger sites, the biggest problems are often marketing bloat, duplicated vendor scripts, poorly maintained analytics or tag-management setups, and nobody being responsible for what gets shipped. Seeing 100–300 requests on a fairly basic marketing page isn’t unusual.
The examples you picked are mostly portfolio and showcase sites, where the goal is to make a visual statement rather than provide an efficient everyday experience. Full-screen video, WebGL, scroll effects, and tracking scripts can all keep the machine rendering constantly. The people commissioning the design often aren’t the ones who maintain it afterward.
It’s definitely a problem in some parts of the web. A simple splash page can ship megabytes of JavaScript and keep the GPU busy with parallax and animation. A computer that handles demanding games smoothly can still struggle with a poorly optimized webpage.
Performance usually gets traded away because teams are rewarded for shipping features and impressive visuals. Someone asks whether a new effect is possible, and the answer is yes, but the performance cost gets ignored—especially when everyone is testing on expensive modern laptops. Testing on low-end hardware and cutting motion when the page stutters is a much better approach.
That’s fair, but the same pattern shows up in plenty of ordinary business sites too. The animation may be less flashy, while the tracking and marketing scripts still create most of the bloat.