Google Chrome slow? Disable extensions and get the real speed

I'm a Google Chrome fan since early versions. With every new version it consumed more memory. Today, after upgrading it to v. 17 I have decided to try Firefox v.10 What I saw was faster site rendering! Though FF seems to be less responsive (especially when switching tabs) sites were loading faster. It also  consumed less memory.

Finaly, I have disabled all chrome extensions with --disable-extensions switch. Viva Chrome! It's fast again!

If your chrome gets slower, disable extensions. You won't get fast page loads with extensions enabled.

Here's the extension list I was using:

• Last Pass, 
• Page Rank, 
• Gmail Checker+, 
• Firebug Lite, 
• Smooth Gestures, 
• RSS Finder, 
• FlashBlock (that's the most suspicious one regarding the page load imho).

Question is "Is Google Chrome worth using without some of these extensions?" ...

Edit: You can also speed up Chrome with RAMDisk .
In my Chrome shortcut I added flags as follows:

--disk-cache-size=26214400  --media-cache-size=26214400 --disk-cache-dir=g:/ --purge-memory-button

This limits cache size to ~26 Megabytes.