As a general recommendation, consider enabling the -XX:+PrintReferenceGC JVM option to see the impact that different references have on garbage collection. If we add this to the application from the WeakReference example, we will see this:

2.173: [Full GC (Ergonomics) 2.234: [SoftReference, 0 refs, 0.0000151 secs]2.234: [WeakReference, 2648 refs, 0.0001714 secs]2.234: [FinalReference, 1 refs, 0.0000037 secs]2.234: [PhantomReference, 0 refs, 0 refs, 0.0000039 secs]2.234: [JNI Weak Reference, 0.0000027 secs][PSYoungGen: 9216K->8676K(10752K)] [ParOldGen: 12115K->12115K(12288K)] 21331K->20792K(23040K), [Metaspace: 3725K->3725K(1056768K)], 0.0766685 secs] [Times: user=0.49 sys=0.01, real=0.08 secs] 
2.250: [Full GC (Ergonomics) 2.307: [SoftReference, 0 refs, 0.0000173 secs]2.307: [WeakReference, 2298 refs, 0.0001535 secs]2.307: [FinalReference, 3 refs, 0.0000043 secs]2.307: [PhantomReference, 0 refs, 0 refs, 0.0000042 secs]2.307: [JNI Weak Reference, 0.0000029 secs][PSYoungGen: 9215K->8747K(10752K)] [ParOldGen: 12115K->12115K(12288K)] 21331K->20863K(23040K), [Metaspace: 3725K->3725K(1056768K)], 0.0734832 secs] [Times: user=0.52 sys=0.01, real=0.07 secs] 
2.323: [Full GC (Ergonomics) 2.383: [SoftReference, 0 refs, 0.0000161 secs]2.383: [WeakReference, 1981 refs, 0.0001292 secs]2.383: [FinalReference, 16 refs, 0.0000049 secs]2.383: [PhantomReference, 0 refs, 0 refs, 0.0000040 secs]2.383: [JNI Weak Reference, 0.0000027 secs][PSYoungGen: 9216K->8809K(10752K)] [ParOldGen: 12115K->12115K(12288K)] 21331K->20925K(23040K), [Metaspace: 3725K->3725K(1056768K)], 0.0738414 secs] [Times: user=0.52 sys=0.01, real=0.08 secs]

As always, this information should only be analyzed when you have identified that GC is having impact to either the throughput or latency of your application. In such case you may want to check these sections of the logs. Normally, the number of references cleared during each GC cycle is quite low, in many cases exactly zero. If this is not the case, however, and the application is spending a significant period of time clearing references, or just a lot of them are being cleared, then further investigation is required.