I think the ads are likely the source of the excessive CPU usage.

Most of my browsing takes place on my work Windows laptop using Chrome while I have a few minutes at work. On occasion I will browse FT using the same work laptop when I am traveling or at home. I began to notice that when I browsed the desktop FT site anywhere other than at my workplace, the CPU utilization for my browser would spike to 25-50%. As soon as I closed my browser or went to another website, the CPU utilization went down to almost nothing.

As a frequent visitor to the site, the high CPU utilization was getting frustrating since it bogged down my computer and drained my battery so I began looking into it a little more.

I found that at my workplace, they have a content filter that happens to block the ads that display on FT. Whenever I browse FT using the filtered connection at work, the ads do not load and my CPU usage stays below 5% while I move around the site. This is with both Chrome and IE.

Just to confirm my findings, I tried the same test on my Surface Pro and had the same results: Non filtered browsing with ads - 25%-50% CPU usage during FT browsing. Filtered browsing without ads - 0%-5% CPU usage during browsing.