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Software The Internet

Google Chrome Tops Browser Speed Tests 371

Posted by kdawson from the there-fixed-that-for-ya dept.
ThinSkin writes "So many Web browsers, so little time. The folks at ExtremeTech have assembled the ultimate browser test to determine which Web browser is king. From speed tests to rendering tests, different browsers traded off wins, but Google Chrome came out on top."
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Google Chrome Tops Browser Speed Tests More

Google Chrome Tops Browser Speed Tests

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  • Google Chrome (Score:5, Interesting)

    by freakmn ( 712872 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @04:21AM (#25883129) Journal
    Guess I must be the only one here using Chrome. No other comments yet.

    But seriously, the speed difference is noticeable. When I'm on my mac, I miss using it. Plugins are hard to come by, but other than that, it's great. Quick as Firefox used to be.

  • Not a suprise to anyone who has tried Chrome (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @04:22AM (#25883139)

    But speed isn't everything. The moment Chrome lets me use the 17 extensions I have to firefox and is still the fastest, I applaud. Currently I couldn't even consider having to lose all the extensions that help web development and surfing...

    This thing should be clear to everyone by now.

    Use Chrome if you want speed, Firefox if you want extensions, IE if you just want to annoy the hell out of all us Firefox fanboys, Opera if you want a ready package of speed and features, etc...

  • Which ones were in the category of spyware? Because I can only think of one myself.

  • Safari? Safari what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tyrione ( 134248 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @04:31AM (#25883203) Homepage

    You're using a non-release Chrome and yet I'm not seeing a nightly build of Safari referenced.

    The Developer Preview of Safari 4.0 trounces Safari 3.1.x.

    The Safari nighly builds trounce all over Safari 4.0 developer preview.

  • Interesting, but nothing really new (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bearhouse ( 1034238 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @04:31AM (#25883209)

    Summary: IE is crap, Safari has some issues, Opera most compatible with Acid 3, Firefox is OK and Chrome is fast but not finished.

    So, a stripped-down browser is fast. Wow.

    In the real world, I'll be sticking with Firefox, with Ad blockers, Greasemnkey etc.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by karstux ( 681641 )

      Adblocking can be done through the HOSTS file, and there's a Chrome build with support for Greasemonkey scripts - look up Greasemetal.

      I've been using Chrome as my main browser for a while now. It's perfectly usable, the UI is a minimalist's dream and it's really, really fast.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by MichaelTheDrummer ( 1130657 )
        But changing the hosts file to block ads on a per domain basis is fairly basic. One of the more useful features of plugins like AdBlockPlus is you can block any particular image/flash animation on a site, whether it is an ad or not. This is great for things like flash banners that sit in front of drop down menus because of rendering bugs on Linux.

      • I'd never heard of Greasemetal. Looks like he's making it compatible with GM scripts, too! Thanks!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pbhj ( 607776 )

        Adblocking can be done through the HOSTS file, ...

        Adblocking can be done by cutting out rectangles of sticky backed paper and placing them on the screen as you read. I'd sooner use an install and forget it system - with an auto-updated adblock file I can't recall when I last had to take action to block ads. Yes one could write a script to update the HOSTS file from an online repo but one doesn't need to, the FF addon does it.

        For those who believe this is content-view "stealing": Places I frequent I whitelist ads on - if however they use dynamic or misleadi

  • That's not the browser speed (Score:5, Funny)

    by DreamerFi ( 78710 ) <john@sint[ ].com ['eur' in gap]> on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @04:32AM (#25883223) Homepage

    That's just the rendering engine they're testing. My browser is called "AdBlock".

  • If you want speed, use links, elinks, lynx, links2, links-hacked, linkx, etc...

    You even get graphics in the last 4. I think lynx finds the window-id of the xterm and then draws in to it. Which is unholy and scary the first time you see it.

    If you want features, then, well, you might want to look elsewhere. But they're fast. Personally, I use a graphical links variant for everything I can and switch to what ever Mozilla variant of the day in installed for websites requiring javascript.

  • Wrong use case (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bazald ( 886779 ) <bazald@z[ ]pex.com ['eni' in gap]> on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @04:52AM (#25883333) Homepage

    ...at least for me. I don't care about optimizations that allow a page to be loaded and rendered 0.1 seconds faster. The lower bound on how fast a page loads is rarely imposed by the browser anyway.

    I often like to use the "Open All in Tabs" feature of Firefox, in which an arbitrarily high number of bookmarks in a folder are opened and loaded simultaneously. I can open and load 15 sites (with adblocking) in under 3 seconds. Chrome seemed to take a second to open just one tab, let alone 15.

    I'm not saying I'm the normal user, but test more than the scripting engine and the rendering system before saying a browser "tops speed tests".

    • I can open and load 15 sites (with adblocking) in under 3 seconds

      Not my firefox. It takes more like 10 seconds to load 9 tabs.

  • Speed? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by benssol ( 906203 )
    and what about the plugins and add-ons we used to in firefox ... I think a long way still ahead

  • The graphs on page 2 ("Browser Extensions") don't make much sense. Look at the values shown vs. the tickmarks at the bottom.

    Additionally, you might note the omission of how the timing was done in the first section, Testing Methodology. That the author claimed to use their home broadband connection for the tests doesn't suggest a controlled environment...at best, sort of a "If you happen to be on one of these machines at my house at the same time of day that I was, you might see similar results."

    I'm sure eve

  • I'll give up a few milliseconds. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Beelzebud ( 1361137 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @05:01AM (#25883391)
    I'll give up a few milliseconds for Firefox's features...

  • Safari? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by herve_masson ( 104332 )

    I'm surprized safari scored this bad. Anyway, Browsers are likely the most complex software to properly benchmark. Writing a tangible and useful conclusion from all those charts and numbers is nearly impossible.

    I have coded a few large javascript/DOM-intensive applications and my overall feeling is that chrome rocks both on compliance and speed. It also seems much better on garbage collection than FF3, which stills badly suffers from unreleased memory. My experience with safari on those applications is good

    • Anyway, Browsers are likely the most complex software to properly benchmark.

      You have to be kidding. These browsers are userspace applications running on desktops and have a fairly consistent set of operations to complete the task. Try benchmarking various surveying data collection software applications on embedded devices and you will notice that they all do different things. It is near impossible to determine which is "faster" as that could mean testing sensible workflows, CPU efficiency and a variety of other factors. Or try benchmarking device firmware - it is extremely difficul

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dword ( 735428 )

      I'm surprized safari scored this bad

      I'm not. It has already been pointed out that they used the "wrong" [slashdot.org] versions just to get the results they wanted.

  • Nonsense (Score:5, Informative)

    by roca ( 43122 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @05:30AM (#25883587) Homepage

    There's some weird stuff in this "article". For example, what does it mean to "include V8 code" in a browser? Even choosing V8 as a benchmark is a mistake. Sunspider is the standard JS benchmark and it's much broader in scope.

    Awarding 10 points for winning a category and then adding up the points to reach a final score is the most statistically bogus "methodology" ever.

    It's nice to see SVG and canvas in benchmarks, but "IE8 will fix that compatibility issue"? Completely untrue, IE8 will not support SVG and canvas. This bit of ignorance makes me worry about the whole piece.

    And as others have noted, comparing the Chrome beta against various-aged releases of other browsers makes little sense.

    • More ignorance from the article:

      We tested the version of Firefox (called Minefield) that does include the V8 code and listed those results below our "official" findings.

      Let it be known now and henceforth, Google Chrome IS THE ONLY BROWSER USING V8. Safari's new stuff is SquirrelFish and Mozilla's is TraceMonkey.

      Please know this before you write an article making yourself look foolish.

  • Adblock or bust (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JustAnOtherCodeSerf ( 181281 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @05:31AM (#25883599)

    Till it's got adblock, I don't care if it renders pages before they exist. I don't care if it makes me breakfast or does my laundry. In short, without adblock, it ain't S**T.

  • Why IE7 and not IE8? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Numen ( 244707 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @05:35AM (#25883623)

    Chrome is the current browser beta from Google, and IE8 is the current browser beta from MS... so why compare Chrome in the same group as IE7?

  • Who really cares? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @05:55AM (#25883751) Homepage
    OK, maybe it's just me, but browser speed has absolutely not been an issue since the Netscape days. I've never said, "gosh, these pages look great, but they're just being rendered too slowly!" and then abandoned a web browser. The only thing that's an issue is download speed - rendering speed is not even noticable. Is this just me? I get the feeling that the "browser speed" issue that slashdot talks so much about is like some obscure industry metric that is rather meaningless, but still gets brought up in conversation because it's a bright shiny number that people can quote when regurgitating arguments.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mattMad ( 1271832 )
      I agree to some extent. However, since more and more application functionality (e.g., Google Mail replacing your local email program) is pushed into the browser, performance gets more important again. People just want their web apps as snappy as their local applications.

      • People just want their web apps as snappy as their local applications.

        Correction: Developers don't want to have to worry about making their web apps snappy. This push for faster Javascript is not coming from users.

  • Why not Konqueror? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Karellen ( 104380 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @06:00AM (#25883773) Homepage

    Why does no-one include Konqueror in these tests? It's even available for Windows [kde.org] these days.

  • How is it that Opera beats Firefox in all but one test (SVG and Canvas) and beats it in the ACID3 and yet still gets placed 3rd? And then he says (despite it getting the highest ACID3 score) that both Opera and IE7 have compatibility issues? WTF?

  • How come the only beta browser tested was Chrome? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rklrkl ( 554527 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @06:26AM (#25883933) Homepage

    It's quite dubious that the only beta browser tested was Chrome, especially when most of the others have publicly available beta versions available for testing. Yes, I understand that the *only* release of Chrome is a beta, but then either Chrome should be disqualified from testing since it's not a final release or other browsers' beta releases should be allowed into the test (why not include both a final and beta release of those in that case, so we can see if there are improvements in the beta?).

    I'd also like to see tests on non-Windows platforms as well, although Chrome scores as badly as IE here - it's *only* available on Windows at the moment and there's been a vague promise of ports to Mac and Linux, but these seem to be predictably dragging on and on.

  • hey! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Pinchiukas ( 828697 )
    They didn't test w3m!
  • For those that are interested: there is no "official" mac build yet, but I regularly compile "TestShell", a simple testing application for MacOS that is used by Google engineers to test the Chrome rendering engine.

    The latest version can be found here [securityandthe.net]. It renders /. so it must be good, right?

  • Rigged? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wingsy ( 761354 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2008 @08:01AM (#25884421)
    Is it fair for them to run these tests on different machines? If you'll notice, Safari was run on an obsolete Mac Mini, a relatively slow single core laptop in a desktop box. Some poster there had run his own tests with the browsers in question, all on the same machine and he got different results -- Safari was fastest. I think they should have also tested Safari on a standard issue Mac, like a current iMac.

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