The Benchmark: Surprised?

The tested versions in my benchmark run were:

Stable:
Google Chrome 5.0.375.127
Google Chrome 5.0.375.127x (launched with GPU acceleration extensions)

Beta:
Google Chrome 6.0.472.41 Beta
Google Chrome 6.0.472.41x Beta (with extensions)

Developer:
Google Chrome 6.0.495.0 Dev
Google Chrome 6.0.495.0x Dev (with extensions)

Canary:
Google Chrome 7.0.500.1 Canary
Google Chrome 7.0.500.1x Canary (with extensions)

Nightly Build:
Google Chromium 7.0.503.0 (57020) Nightly
Google Chromium 7.0.503.0x (57020) Nightly (with extensions)

To complete the comparison, I also included:

Firefox 4 Beta 5-pre (with activated hw acceleration)
Internet Explorer 9 PP4

Safari and Opera were not part of this comparison as they do not support GPU acceleration and their results are irrelevant in this comparison.

Without further delay, here are the results.

I was not able to achieve any performance improvements by using the GPU acceleration switches (or any other Microsoft demonstrations that are not listed here. However, the version change shows that, at least in this test, Chrome 7 Nightly ist about three times as fast as the current stable and beta versions of Chrome. All of these tests were run at a resolution of 1680×933 pixels. The Canary build refused to run the test with activated extensions and simply crashed, while I was told that the extensions show effect on this specific build. I was not able to find proof for that.

The bad news for Chrome is that, of course, even if Chrome 7 is 3x faster than Chrome 5, it is not even at 1% of the performance level of IE9 or Firefox 4 in this particular test. There are other tests, such as the Potato Gun Test, at which Chrome reaches about 10% of the performance of IE9 and Firefox 4 Beta.

If Chrome 7 will bring GPU acceleration, it is pretty safe to say that it is not there yet or it simply does not work very well. It should be mentioned that this Psychedelic Wheel test heavily depends on the screen size (as most other IE9 performance tests do as well.) IE9 shows a maximum performance at full-screen as well as smaller windows, while Chrome gains dramatically as you decrease the window size: At 900×600, the performance was up from 12 to 190 revolutions per minute, while IE9 was stuck at 1784. Firefox came in at 1774.

So, what about JavaScript performance? If you ever wondered what the difference between the difference Chrome versions in Sunspider and V8 are, here are some interesting numbers. Keep in mind that there is a reasonable margin of error of about 3%.

Both tests show that Google is making some improvements from version to version and the extensions had no impact on the JavaScript performance. Chrome 6 and Chrome 7 are substantially faster than the current version 5. And yes, I do hear those who say that there is not much difference between 350 ms and 300 ms in Sunspider. Overall that may be true, but Chrome 7 feels, subjectively, snappier than Chrome 5. It loads faster and renders web pages notably faster than the current stable version of the browser.

So far, we have little idea what Google is planning for Google 7, even if GPU acceleration will remain a hot topic, no question about it. However, it is apparent that Google is adding functionality as the browser package is growing in size. The unzipped nightly build now weighs in at 60,264 KB, while the last Chrome 6 Nightly Build we are aware of (dated August 16) was at 57,135 KB. In July, the package was at 55,509 KB and in May, just after the addition of Flash in Chrome 5, at 53,999 KB. Chrome 7 shows a jump in package size and we are curious to find out what it is.

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