Analysis - For a brief moment, you could have thought the browser speed race was over and is now replaced with a contest for the best HTML5 implementation. The latest Chrome and IE9 previews tell a different story – more speed continues to be a feature of browsers and there is room for improvement. Time to take the latest browser versions through the benchmark parcours, which not only reveals the fastest browser available today, but also a forgotten strength of the current IE8.
Two days ago, I published a story in which I boldly stated that Chrome 4 is the fastest browser you can install today – a claim that was rightfully criticized by some readers as I did not provide any data that would support this note. I won’t go into this much further, but say that I am grateful for a vocal Opera fanbase, which strongly supports this browser and should be credited with keeping Opera alive. However, we also have to be realistic and see that Opera has a combined market share of about 3% (including Opera mini), according to Net Applications and it just isn’t as relevant as the other four players. However, this is a comprehensive comparison of browsers and, for this purpose, I included Opera.
Notes
Before I am taking you through the benchmark results, let’s get on the same page of browser benchmarking. Measuring the actual performance of browsers is highly subjective. It is virtually impossible to achieve results that translate into reliable results for real world conditions that can be replicated on your computer. There are countless variables affecting load as well as rendering times and there are variables that are beyond our control, including background processes and Internet connections. Also, different hardware configurations yield dramatically different results in browser benchmarks. So please take the following results with a grain of salt. The actual absolute values are meaningless beyond the system they were recorded on. What counts is the relative performance gap between different browsers: The gap tends to be comparable across different platforms in terms of percentages.
To achieve a somewhat realistic real world result, all benchmarks were run on an Intel mainstream PC with a quad-core Q6600 processor, 3 GB of memory, two 500 GB hard drives and a 3 Mb DSL Internet connection. There was nothing special to this PC, and I have not taken any no measures to enhance or streamline the browser performance. In fact, this is the type of PC your entire family may use for various kinds of purposes from writing emails to playing games.
For more detailed charts, please check out the slideshow at the end of this article.
Contenders and Benchmarks
The browsers tested in this benchmark series are:
Google Chrome 4.1.249.1064
Google Chrome 5.0.375.29 Beta
Mozilla Firefox 3.6.3
Mozilla Firefox 3.7a5 (Alpha 5, May 5 trunk build)
Opera 10.53
Apple Safari 4.04
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.0 Platform Preview 1
Microsoft Internet Explorer 9.0 Platform Preview 2
Please keep in mind that the Chrome 5.0.375.29 Beta, Firefox 3.7a5 as well as the IE9 Platform Previews are pre-release versions and should not be considered final or even stable versions of browsers. They are likely to have bugs and may fail in production environments. However, they do provide an enticing insight in things to come (only Firefox 3.7a5 did not complete a test in this benchmark series.) The IE9 PP versions have incomplete UIs that do not make them very practical for everyday browsing.
The benchmarks covered in this series are
Google V8
Webkit SunSpider
Celtic Kane
To provide an idea of a browser’s Javascript performance;
Acid3
HTML5Test
to test the compliance with web standards;
Futuremark Peacekeeper
for a general performance evaluation;
as well as
LeCrabe
to determine the Flash capability of each browser.
I am aware of Microsoft’s graphics benchmarks that take advantage of IE9’s hardware acceleration. This is a unique feature to IE9 at this time and there is not much to test at this time. IE9 is at least 3x faster than any competing browser as far as demanding graphics are concerned. I previously published test results which you can find here.
Read on the next page: JavaScript Performance, Peacekeper Results
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