Speed test: Google Chrome beats Firefox, IE, Safari
Google introduced Chrome in part because it wants faster browsing and the richer Web applications that speed will unlock. So how does Chrome actually stack up?
Google's Chrome overpowers the other browsers on the five subtests by which Google measures its browser's JavaScript performance.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)Lars Bak, the Google engineer who was the technical leader for Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine, said at the launch event Tuesday he's confident Chrome is "many times faster" than the rivals at running JavaScript, the programming language that powers Google Docs, Gmail, and many other Web applications.
But when pressed for specifics, he told me to try them out. So I did.
Google offers a site with five JavaScript benchmarks. On each one of these tests, Chrome clearly trounced the competition. I hope benchmarking experts and developers will weigh in with comments about how well these tests represent true JavaScript performance on the Web--either for ordinary sites or for rich Web apps.
Here's the site description of the speed tests:
• Richards: OS kernel simulation benchmark, originally written in BCPL by Martin Richards (539 lines).
• DeltaBlue: One-way constraint solver, originally written in Smalltalk by John Maloney and Mario Wolczko (880 lines).
• Crypto: Encryption and decryption benchmark based on code by Tom Wu (1,689 lines).
• RayTrace: Ray tracer benchmark based on code by Adam Burmister (3,418 lines).
• EarleyBoyer: Classic Scheme benchmarks, translated to JavaScript by Florian Loitsch's Scheme2Js compiler (4,682 lines).
Google's overall score is head and shoulders above the competition for executing JavaScript.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET News)A few notes: First, your mileage may vary; I ran these tests on my dual-core Windows XP machine.
Second, my apologies here to Opera, whose browser I don't have installed.
Third, I tried to run the SunSpider benchmark tests as well, but perhaps because a lot of other curious people had the same idea on the day Chrome launched, I couldn't get to the site.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
It's not uncommon, you know.
Firefox 3.0.1 loads 6 tabs in around 8 seconds on my AMD dual core system with Vista Ultimate 3 gigs RAM
And Google Chrome?? 6 tabs fully loaded in 4 to 5 seconds. Lightening quick !!!!
Now if Google Chrome could be customized with various themes,add-ons,extensions,etc as Firefox can, then I would have my new Browser to replace Firefox.
The tiny speed increase in Google Chrome will not sway me until it can be totally customized.
No stupid useless add ons.
No pointless extras
I'm not too tech on browsers...
So there are a lot of people that need such an education. Should be a class-action lawsuit, but can that be brought against a state government?
"behind the times using exclusive scripts and plug-ins that only work on IE" - Yes mate if it works in IE that's 75% of the market - the majority - the marekt leader - the most popular - the industry standard - get it yet Jonathon?
But before you accuse me of being a Microsoft Fanboi, I also installed Chrome, and prefer it over IE.
Cheers Google
In other words.... if you get a toilet that flushes 10x faster than what you got now... how much benefit you'll see will depend on how often you worship the porcelain god each day.
Q: Why was the leper speeding?
[ Answer at http://cackl.com/joke/view/655/Why-was-the-leper-speeding if you need it! ]
Can anyone from Google confirm?
I am torn over the speed of Chrome and my undying love for FF3+extensions. If I am a fanboy of anything, it's Lost, BSG, Firefox, Google and AMD. I will probably use both Chrome and FF3 for different things.
The point of this is to trace your browsing habits easier, so you can get more ads.
for beta version performance looks good but it hang couple of times & alignment were out of order for some sites but it will improve once they have final version..
I mean that's what the Linux users say right? You guys don't want binary blobs right? I mean, you can't debug that as easy right? You want to merge the source and do all your own compiles and machine optimizations and make this and make that and get it in the repo and use the package manager and rename it IceChrome right? I thought you guys didn't want other people doing all the work for you. Google can't just give you a binary blob of installer. That's just not the Linux way remember?
That's a Linux user for you. Complain that if everything was just one way everything would be much better then when it is that way they complain anyway. Well, it's open source so get your Linux box out and get to work and stop complaining. I'm waiting to install IceChrome on my Linux partition.
- by Core_M September 2, 2008 7:09 PM PDT
- I noticed it was much faster than the other browsers right away, and this is on a Core 2 Quad with 8GB of RAM. I was honestly really surprised!
- Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 5 pages (120 Comments)Then again, this basically just means that Firefox is about to get faster ;- )
Either way, Chrome has a loooooooooooooong way to go before it even comes close to touching FF in terms of features and plug-ins/add-ons. Lets not get too ahead of ourselves - there isn't even a scroll feature yet. Still, it is very impressive.