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| Web Browser Performance Roundup for Q3 2012 | |
Despite all the rumors of Apple discontinuing Safari for Windows, the web browser market is still on fire. New versions and updates are being released almost on a weekly basis. In fact, with so many options available - it would be nice to know which one is the fastest. Unfortunately, it's been a while since someone came up with a performance roundup. So we spent the last couple of days benchmarking the most popular web browsers and even some of less popular ones (a total of 13 in number). Is Google Chrome still on top? Read on to find out. Hardware Specification:
• AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
• ASUS Crosshair IV Formula
• 4GB DDR3 Crucial Technology
• AMD Radeon HD 6870 Software Specification:
• Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit (Fresh installation with all updates)
• AMD Catalyst 12.4
• Adobe Flash Player 11.3
• Avant Browser 2012 Build 177
• Google Chrome 21.0.1180.60
• Mozilla Firefox 14.0.1
• Internet Explorer 9.0.8 32-bit
• Internet Explorer 9.0.8 64-bit
• Maxthon 3.4.2.3000
• Opera 12.01 32-bit
• Opera 12.01 64-bit
• Pale Moon 12.3r2 32-bit
• Pale Moon 12.3 64-bit
• Apple Safari 5.1.7
• SlimBrowser 6.01.057
• Waterfox 14.0.2
Note: All browsers were tested with default settings. We didn't touch anything.
Futuremark Peacekeeper is a free and fast browser test that measures a browser's speed. If you use social networks like Facebook or Twitter, watch online video on YouTube, enjoy online shopping on Amazon or eBay, or just like reading news and blogs then switching to a faster browser could give you a smoother and more enjoyable browsing experience.
Rightware BrowserMark is a benchmark tool designed to measure browser performance of mobile and embedded devices. BrowserMark measures a browser's performance in JavaScript and HTML rendering. BrowserMark was designed to tell an end-user which browser performs the best on their mobile or embedded device.
WebVizBench is an animated and interactive radio playlist visualization and benchmarking application written entirely in HTML5, optimized for Microsoft IE9, and tweaked to harness the power of GPU-enhanced Web browsing.
A set of JavaScript benchmarks that demonstrate V8's performance. Equivalent benchmarks have been used for other object-based languages, they are intended to reflect the performance of well-structured object-based applications.
SunSpider is a JavaScript benchmark. This benchmark tests the core JavaScript language only, not the DOM or other browser APIs. It is designed to compare different versions of the same browser, and different browsers to each other. Conclusions:
According to our benchmarks results, Google Chrome maintains its position as the fastest web browser out there, but it looks like the gap is getting smaller with each passing day. The 64-bit web browsers seem to deliver a minor performance boost when it comes to rendering, but they are a bit slower in JavaScript (with the exception of Internet Explorer 64-bit which seems to be slow in almost anything).
Last edited by Regeneration; August 5th, 2012 at 06:56 PM.
| | | | 35 Comments | | Posted by mkey on August 5th, 2012, 01:22 PM | Nice roundup. What happened with the sunspider benchmark. it must cripple ie intentionally /sarcasm
I hope FF can pick up, there's really not many reasons to keep using it anymore. The only reason I still do is because I've been at it from 2.0. | | | Posted by Unregistered on August 5th, 2012, 01:32 PM | With regards to the likes of Opera 12.01 did you have HWA enabled or not it give you the choice of either OpenGL or DirectX when you set the preferred renderer to either 0 for OGL or 1 for DX | | | Posted by squall_leonhart on August 5th, 2012, 01:34 PM | Quote:
Originally Posted by mkey  Nice roundup. What happened with the sunspider benchmark. it must cripple ie intentionally /sarcasm
I hope FF can pick up, there's really not many reasons to keep using it anymore. The only reason I still do is because I've been at it from 2.0. | Chrome CHEATS, it is not the fastest browser | | | Posted by mkey on August 5th, 2012, 01:37 PM | Do other browsers cheat as well? Because FF is not exactly coming in second. | | | Posted by squall_leonhart on August 5th, 2012, 01:43 PM | testing v14 didn't help the comparison, the current chrome is more comparable to v15 | | | Posted by mkey on August 5th, 2012, 01:58 PM | I understand you feel close to chrome and want to maybe even defend it, but we should face facts: I personally started using FF because at the time it felt like the fastest browser among those I tested. It also provided for nice features, I find it broke the ground for other browsers, however now it seems the competition is breathing down it's neck and surpassing it in many regards. | | | Posted by andy on August 5th, 2012, 02:07 PM | Quote:
Originally Posted by squall_leonhart Chrome CHEATS, it is not the fastest browser | Care to elaborate? | | | Posted by virtuozzo on August 5th, 2012, 02:36 PM | Internet Explorer 9 64-bit is basically using IE8 rendering engine. It would be nice that you mentioned that, but who cares... | | | Posted by Thunder350 on August 5th, 2012, 03:42 PM | Quote:
Originally Posted by mkey I hope FF can pick up, there's really not many reasons to keep using it anymore. The only reason I still do is because I've been at it from 2.0. | I left FF about 2 years ago and never looked back. Looking at these benchmarks that don't show real world performance, I'm glad I did.
One crucial thing that wasn't tested about these browsers tho was how much of your computers resources it takes to run. (With multiple things open, videos playing, etc) I'm curious to know if Chrome still dominates in this regard. | | | Posted by meself on August 5th, 2012, 04:38 PM | ugh...do you realize that benchmarks don't show real life usage, do you? They're just testing some of the many features of various browsers, some that are fast enough for anything and that you cannot see any difference while browsing normally, if you didn't know about these scores.
In fact FF beats any other browser in functionality, configurability, features and memory usage, something that these benchmarks doesn't show (I have 200 tabs open right now and it's using less ram than chrome with just 10 opened).
Every browser has its up and down, but discarding one (ANY one) because it scores lower on a benchmark is simply dumb...as dumb as being a fanboi. | | | Posted by GTK on August 5th, 2012, 05:24 PM | The variance in speed is negligible with today's high speed networks. I have been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix and I will continue to do so no matter what these tests claim. | | | Posted by Unregistered on August 5th, 2012, 06:58 PM | Quote:
Originally Posted by Thunder350 One crucial thing that wasn't tested about these browsers tho was how much of your computers resources it takes to run. (With multiple things open, videos playing, etc) I'm curious to know if Chrome still dominates in this regard. | It dominates the field by being the heaviest of them all, yes. | | | Posted by Straybeat on August 6th, 2012, 03:08 AM | I use SRWare Iron which is Chrome with all of the snooping garbage stripped out of it. I scored 3308 on the peacekeeper benchmark. It was second on all the others, faster than FF, but slower than Chrome. It bogged on the Sunspider test and scored 306. Whether it matters or not I have about 10 tabs open. I also have FF 14 and it scored way worse than the numbers above, but it too has 10 tabs open. | | | Posted by Straybeat on August 6th, 2012, 03:59 AM | I re-ran the tests on my laptop, an Asus G73jh with an ATI 5860 video card and 8 gig of RAM. I closed the 10 tabs I had open and all the numbers got a little better, but FF was a dog. I'd like to know what they did above to get those numbers? Here they are;
SRWare Iron 20
Peacekeeper 2333
Browsermark 564663
Webvizbench 1920 X 962 4930/20.72fps
V8 benchmark suite 8563
Sunspider 282.1
Firefox 14
Peacekeeper 1560
Browsermark 350062
Webvizbench 1920 X 904 4580/15.39fps
V8 benchmark suite 5158
Sunspider 333.4
I'll be taking FF off the machine. I just downloaded it to see what it's like. | | | Posted by mkey on August 6th, 2012, 06:25 AM | Quote:
Originally Posted by Straybeat I use SRWare Iron which is Chrome with all of the snooping garbage stripped out of it. | Can that be achieved via an addon on standard chrome? | | | Posted by Straybeat on August 6th, 2012, 07:31 AM | Quote:
Originally Posted by mkey Can that be achieved via an addon on standard chrome? | Google is the one that added all of their snooping stuff to Chrome. SRWare stripped it all back out and re-released this as Iron. 
Here's an explanation of changes; http://www.srware.net/en/software_sr...me_vs_iron.php | | | Posted by mkey on August 6th, 2012, 08:42 AM | Yes, I quite understand the genesis of this browser. My question related to the "snooping" portion of Chrome and the possibility of disabling said portion via extensions. | | | Posted by Straybeat on August 6th, 2012, 08:45 AM | Quote:
Originally Posted by mkey Yes, I quite understand the genesis of this browser. My question related to the "snooping" portion of Chrome and the possibility of disabling said portion via extensions. | I was under the impression, by numerous things I have read, that Google embedded it in the code. Therefore requiring SRWare to strip it back out. | | | Posted by mkey on August 6th, 2012, 09:05 AM | Straybeat, thank you for the information. Quote:
Originally Posted by meself In fact FF beats any other browser in functionality, configurability, features and memory usage, something that these benchmarks doesn't show (I have 200 tabs open right now and it's using less ram than chrome with just 10 opened).
Every browser has its up and down, but discarding one (ANY one) because it scores lower on a benchmark is simply dumb...as dumb as being a fanboi. | Chrome feels more responsive too. Even if FF destroys other browsers at 200 tabs, who the hell would even notice something like that? | | | Posted by ChickenLover on August 6th, 2012, 11:54 AM | As you can see Maxthon is just ahead of the Chrome ( I love both of them - Chrome for its super-fast browsing and Maxthon for it richness of features and customization options).
BTW this test is not exactly fair... why did you tested developer version of Chrome 21 but you didn't tested Firefox 17 Nightly or at least Firefox 16 Aurora ? Why did youtested Maxthon 3.4.2.3000 if there is 3.4.3.800 version (with much enhanced webkit - better than Chrome right now) on the board? Result could be much different (with different winners) if you would perorm this tests accuratly and objectively. | | | Posted by AvroArrow on August 7th, 2012, 08:10 PM | Honestly, my PC is so fast that I don't notice or care the differences in speed that are only significant on a chart. I use Firefox because of the fantastic add-ons that the other browsers just can't match. The functionality of those add-ons is far more valuable to me than that 1/16th of a second faster load time on a webpage. All those scores have a "points" rating system. What good is that? How does it translate into better and/or faster per-second performance? Am I going to load a page twice as fast as with firefox (which already loads pages in 3 seconds or less) and if so, am I going to care about the 1 second difference between the two browsers? Probably not. This is useful for people still playing with Conroe Core2Duos or AthlonX2's but for the rest of us, it's a waste. | | | Posted by mkey on August 9th, 2012, 06:02 AM | Which addons are those? Because Chrome has all the addons I use in FF. | | | Posted by Straybeat on August 9th, 2012, 07:41 AM | Quote:
Originally Posted by ChickenLover As you can see Maxthon is just ahead of the Chrome ( I love both of them - Chrome for its super-fast browsing and Maxthon for it richness of features and customization options). | I was bummed by Maxthon's performance on my system. I used to use it like 12 years ago and had forgotten all about it, but remembered that I really liked it after reading this article. I downloaded a copy and ran these tests, but it didn't do well and had a major graphics glitch on my system.
Maxthon
Peacekeeper 2515
Browsermark 454968
Webvizbench 1876 929 2830/4.08fps
V8 benchmark suite 7889
Sunspider 321.4
It kicked butt on Peacekeeper, but didn't do as well on the rest. | | | Posted by mkey on August 9th, 2012, 08:32 AM | I tried maxthong, it's fairly fast and simple to use (obviously) however I don't see support for userscript... is there any? | | | Posted by Regeneration on August 21st, 2012, 09:21 AM | | | | | Posted by blindartist on August 21st, 2012, 04:00 PM | Whatever happened to Minefield anyways? | | | Posted by tinkicker on August 28th, 2012, 05:19 AM | Any browser in which I find nice features, I keep a current copy on my computer and just switch among them as I like. I don't like using a particular one just because I always have since version whatever. I'm always looking for improvements, so I like freely switching whenever the mood strikes.
Currently I'm in Waterfox 14, and I also have Pale Moon 64, IE, Chrome, Opera 64 and FF. I also have Avant, but it's a little weird for me. Awkward.
Meh...that's why there's so many...you can have what you like and I'll have what I like and we can agree to disagree. | | | Posted by Poppadoo on September 7th, 2012, 06:19 AM | I have a question to all you guys crying about browsers using lots of memory.. Are you running your system on 1GB RAM or what? Aren't they supposed to use memory if it's available? I even run the browser disk cache on a RAMDisk so I don't have no disk-bottleneck. I have only 4GB RAM and am still only at 60% physical memory usage with my regular programs running (foobar2k, Deluge, mIRC, Skype, XBMC, Waterfox (currently 26 plugins loaded), RAMDisk (400MB) and a couple of others..). Only memory related problem then would be a memory leak, right, and that wouldn't be a problem until the RAM starts to fill up completely or causing the application to become unstable, right? | | | Posted by squall_leonhart on September 8th, 2012, 02:37 AM | the problem with heavy memory use, is that in a JIT browser, more memory in use by the process means larger delays during garbage collection. | | | Posted by Straybeat on September 8th, 2012, 05:24 AM | I'm running the old Asus G73. 8 Gigs of RAM stock. No problem here. ;-) | | | Posted by mkey on September 8th, 2012, 12:40 PM | For me the problem with too high memory usage is the fact I don't see what all that RAM is being used for. To me the browsers of today look like bloated pieces of dog turd on a stick.
If there's anything I dislike in computing, it's bloated software. | | | Posted by Bilal on November 23rd, 2012, 11:17 AM | Opera 64-bit beats 32-bit in every benchmark, except V8.
So this: "The 64-bit web browsers seem to deliver a minor performance boost when it comes to rendering, but they are a bit slower in JavaScript" is not quite true. | | | Posted by benJephunneh on December 20th, 2012, 03:33 AM | Any benchmark that sees Firefox ahead of Opera is a bogus benchmark. Firefox makes me question my internet connection until I pull up Opera and find that there is nothing wrong.
An additional note is the feature set of Opera at fresh install. Opera has bunch of useful features (that Chrome and Firefox often copy, I might add) that are just there without having to install extensions to get them. I recently installed Firefox after years of scrapping it for Opera and it takes an hour (for this rookie) to get all the extensions installed that simply bring it up to the same level of functionality that Opera has right out of the gate. I imagine the situation is similar for Chrome.
It would be interesting to install the extensions that bring Chrome and Firefox up to the same functionality as Opera and then run the benchmarks. But like I said, Firefox isn't faster than Opera no matter how you bake it. That's just false. | | | Posted by squall_leonhart on December 20th, 2012, 10:52 AM | JIT performance wise.
Chrome > Firefox > Safari > Opera
thats reality bitch. | | | Posted by mkey on December 20th, 2012, 03:37 PM | Quote:
Originally Posted by benJephunneh I recently installed Firefox after years of scrapping it for Opera and it takes an hour (for this rookie) to get all the extensions installed | How many extensions have you installed? 2k? | | | Tags | avant browser, chrome, firefox, internet explorer, maxthon, opera, pale moon, safari, slimbrowser, software, waterfox  |
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