In a set of comprehensive Windows Web browser performance tests conducted by Betanews on August 7 -- our first test of browsers running on the final Windows 7 RTM Build 7600 distributed by Microsoft yesterday -- the five major families of browsers tended to run 13% faster on Windows XP Service Pack 3 than on Windows 7, and 29% faster than on Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

That reflects a decline in the speed gap between XP and Win7 of about 1%, from tests conducted comparing XP-based browsers to those running on Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100. Some browsers are faster in Windows 7 RTM, although Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2 ran just a tick slower.

Our latest complete round of tests shows Google Chrome 3 continuing to make phenomenal gains with each iteration, with developer channel build 196.2 posting another record Betanews index score of 18.96 in XP, and 16.09 in Win7. In other words, on the XP platform, Chrome 3 performs with the relative horsepower of about 19 Internet Explorer 7 browsers running on Vista SP2.

Read the entire article at BetaNews.