Please make sure you're setting higher GC limits for the Ruby tests. Ruby's defaults are awful for a framework, and result in a LOT of GC thrash. It's not uncommon to see an order of magnitude improvement in performance when they're tuned properly. (edit: I'll just send a pull request, I found the setup file!)
Something else you might consider is the OJ gem rather than just the stock Ruby json gem. The latter is notoriously slow and memory-hungry (which will compound the GC issues!)