The fastest Web browser

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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Still using the browser that was bundled with your OS? Maybe it’s time for a change of pace.

The following benchmarks tested windows based installations of Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome.

The Results

Google’s Chrome browser comes in tops, out-performing all others in terms of speed. Apple’s Safari isn’t far behind it though, also performing admirably. The stalwart Firefox comes in third, with reasonable performance, and only a few hiccups in the Acid3 tests.

Opera and IE brought up the rear, with particularly slow JavaScript results. The IE work horse seems to be going a bit lame in its old age, taking an excruciatingly long time to perform the Dromaeo tests, before grinding to a halt with “errors on page.” This is probably due to the antiquated engine which hasn’t received much of an overhaul since the days of IE 6.0.

These tests really only indicate browser rendering and script execution speeds, which while making the overall browsing experience snappier, don’t represent security or customisability attributes. Individuals may forego the browser speed of Chrome, for the customisability of Firefox, or the familiarity of IE.

The Benchmarks

Acid3 (http://acid3.acidtests.org/) is a test page from the Web Standards Project. It tests various elements, as well as JavaScript, and is a good indicator of overall browser rendering ability. There are 100 subtests which must be passed for a browser to be deemed worthy by the Web Standards Project.

The V8 Benchmark Suite v5 (http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/data/benchmarks/v5/run.html) runs pure JavaScript benchmarks on 7 different sets of code, and aggregates the results. The base performance score is 100 – the higher the score, the better the browser performance. The average from five test runs is shown.

SunSpider (http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html) is another pure JavaScript benchmark utility that combines simple and complex tests, that are representative of real-world JavaScript solutions implemented by developers. The speed in which the browser completes the tests is the indicator of performance.

Dromaeo (http://dromaeo.com/) was created by a member of the Mozilla foundation, and is designed to vigorously test JavaScript performance. Results for the numerous individual tests can be aggregated into a figure which shows an average number of scripts run per second. The higher the number, the better the browser performance.

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