Comments on: Newer Chrome, Firefox show speed improvements

A new JavaScript engine secures Firefox's lead on the SunSpider test, but Chrome showed a 22 percent gain on Google's own performance benchmark.

[kingbman13]

Doesn't mean much when it is going to be beta for 5 years and buggy. I like most people will stick with firefox.

[Fil0403]

Wrong: most people will stick with Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer.

[bp92]

if you are going to test betas and developer ware, why not include the current webkit builds as they also have JS engine improvements (which outpace the firefox betas from what I can see) ?

[samkass]

Agreed... WebKit/Safari nightly builds are the ones to beat at this point. SquirrelFish Extreme seems like the most promising of the JavaScript engines and it's barely mentioned and its speed isn't listed.

Take a few minutes and try the nightly builds to get a comparison: http://nightly.webkit.org/

[YankeePoodle]

The inherent advantage firefox has are the add-ons. Speed matters, but firefox is the a more complete browser

[assman]

I just performed the sunspider test on the latest build of Chrome ("Chromium"), and I got a result of 2100ms, must lower than Stephen's result of 2900. I used my HP Vista laptop, 2ghz core2duo.

[anythingbutmicrosoft]

The ~30% decrease in performance you had was probably because you are on Vista, he used XP. Nearly all apps run about 30% slower on Vista vs. XP. Reason 7,312 why XP is the last Microsoft OS I'll ever bother with. Also notice how much slower IE is with everything? Slower, non-standard, virus magnet. Why does anyone still use IE?

[assman]

No "anythingbutmicrosoft", lower times are BETTER. I had a 30% INCREASE in performance over Stephen's XP build. 2100 means it took my browser 2100ms to complete the test (about 2min) rather than 2900ms (about 3min).

[08Rabbit]

Try opera. It's faster than firefox...but im not sure about Chrome.

[bedney42]

Stephen -

b92 is right. If you're going to be testing betas, you really need to be testing Webkit nightlies as well. The current Squirrelfish Extreme is really, really fast - possibly even faster than the ones you tested.

Fair is fair, after all.

Cheers,

- Bill

[Mereo1]

That's the keyword... The webkits are "NIGHTLIES" while firefox 3.1 is a beta. Big difference.

[goodspeed8701]

I wonder why people dont use opera. FF sucks and i will only use IE or Opera... The rest a garbage

[cb3431]

FF is getting worse with every release.

[ddesy]

Hold on... you prefer IE to Firefox? Wow.... I don't know anyone who actually thinks that way.

[JuggerNaut]

There is no web browser worse than IE, PERIOD!

[EdCnb]

Your results are different than my experience. FF is my primary browser with IE as a back up. Oh well to each their own.

[UmeshS]

Can you post URLs of 3-5 real web 2.0 sites that show the difference in snapiness due to speed increase in all these JS engines? I want to validate the usefulness of these speed advances first-hand. Thanks.

[Rants&Raves]

The point is that sites are being careful to limit interactivity to what JS can currently do. When JS can do more faster sites will be able to draw from a wider range of options.

[nissanGTRfan1]

google chrome is the best 4 me

[KrunkAttack]

chrome loads up most pages the fastest for me, but anything with videos or interactive elements seems to slow it down alot

[Imalittleteapot]

And I can only guess here, but I wonder if that's perhaps because plugins get loaded in a separate process. Takes a while to start a new process, but that's probably not it. I just wondered.

[walker2151]

What about the Safari version 4 developer preview? I tested it and it got a 294, I was just curious so I did it while I had other tabs and windows open, so, I don't know if that affect it. I've been using it because it seems to be faster than everything else for Mac, firefox 3.1b1 included (as far as I could tell).

I've ran into problems with certain pages using Chrome, but with the speed I would switch (if it were on mac), Safari version 4 has some problems too, but it's the fastest I can find for mac, I hate version 3.

[bmgomes]

Thanks, but I'll stick to Opera!

Good to have new products around, though.

[btipling]

I disagree about including webkit nightly's as some of the commentators have suggested. Nobody has any idea when webkit nightly's are going to make it to production because Apple prioritizes marketing needs above helping out web developers by giving us an open roadplan idea. Firefox 3.1 is in beta and will likely be released within a few months at most. Who knows when webkit's nightly will ever make it to production, and when they do I guarantee you it will be a very old nightly + recent security fixes.

[walker2151]

I just ran Crossover Chromium on my mac and it scored a 2006 on the benchmark, but it loads images and scrolls poorly on my macbook.

[jaypres]

I can't believe there are people using Opera. Opera is used by nerds.

[osiris1620]

nerds are usualy right thats why there nerds

[techfan_08]

ha!

[TheSoftwareArchitect]

Again nothing about Opera 9.6.... i'm tired of this...many times, your tests includes multiple browsers except.... Opera...

Makes me think how much they paid you to avoid tests on Opera.....

Opera is fast and i'm using it since 7 years now and very hapy to use the same browser on my Linux, windows machine, my Apple laptop and on my PDA...

Too bad....

[Nuotrino]

To be fair to all, one can not compare a browser released a year ago (Safari 3.1.2) with a group of browsers under development. Safari beta equivalent is (3.1.2 + latest SquirrelFish Extreme). I benchmarked the three browsers in my environment which is a MacBook Pro with Vista 32 / Sp1 and all the updates, 4 GB ram, 2.4 GHz Core 2 duo. The contenders are Chrome (0.3.154.3), Today release of Firefox 3.1b1 and Safari 3.1.2 (Webkit 37604). The results are as follows:

V8 Benchmark:

Chrome 2459
Safari/Webkit 1877
FireFox 79?

Sunspider:

Chrome 1636.2 ms
Safari/Webki 1224.0 ms
FireFox 1466.8 ms

Dromaeo Benchmark:

Chrome 5251.6 ms
Safari/Webkit 3707.40 ms
FireFox 5482.8 ms

[ckurowic]

I disagree with these results. Firefox is an absolute slug compared to Safari on my core 2 duo 2.4GHz iMac.

[techfan_08]

FF 3.0.3 was pretty slow for me, but Beta 3.1 is much faster!

[jrbeaman]

You say firefox is better, and yet chrome beats it in the two test results you show.
Your credibility sux.

[Nuotrino]

To be fair to all, one can not compare a browser released a year ago (Safari 3.1.2) with a group of browsers under development. Safari beta equivalent is (3.1.2 + latest SquirrelFish Extreme). I benchmarked the three browsers in my environment which is a MacBook Pro with Vista 32 / Sp1 and all the updates, 4 GB ram, 2.4 GHz Core 2 duo. The contenders are Chrome (0.3.154.3), Today release of Firefox 3.1b1 and Safari 3.1.2 (Webkit 37604). The results are as follows:

V8 Benchmark:

Chrome 2459
Safari/Webkit 1877
FireFox 79?

Best score = Chrome (2459)
Higher is better.

Sunspider:

Chrome 1636.2 ms
Safari/Webki 1224.0 ms
FireFox 1466.8 ms

Best Score = Safari/Webkit (1224.0 ms)
Lower is better.

Dromaeo Benchmark:

Chrome 5251.6 ms
Safari/Webkit 3707.40 ms
FireFox 5482.8 ms

Best Score = Safari / Webkit (3707.40 ms)
Lower is better.