Regeneration

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).

  

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.

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Unregistered

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

squall_leonhart

Chrome CHEATS, it is not the fastest browser

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mkey

Do other browsers cheat as well? Because FF is not exactly coming in second.

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squall_leonhart

testing v14 didn't help the comparison, the current chrome is more comparable to v15

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mkey

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.

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andy

Care to elaborate?

virtuozzo

Internet Explorer 9 64-bit is basically using IE8 rendering engine. It would be nice that you mentioned that, but who cares...

Thunder350

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.