Analysis And Conclusion
This brings our Web Browser Grand Prix to an end. Some of our findings weren't that shocking, such as Internet Explorer's failure to adhere to Web standards (Acid3). But there were also a ton of interesting notes along the way, like Opera's gluttony for RAM and Safari's strong performance versus much newer versions of the other browsers. I already knew that Firefox was beginning to feel slow, but I didn't know how bad it had become. Safari didn't live up to its boast of being "the world's fastest web browser." Apple's product was beaten by Opera, and owned by Chrome. While Opera came close to living up to its claim of being "the fastest browser on Earth," close just isn't good enough. Google Chrome is the real speed king. The table below tallies the placing of each browser throughout testing.
Chrome was counted as the first-place finisher for the Acid3 test, while Opera and Safari were both tallied as second. Firefox was counted as third. Fourth place was skipped, and Internet Explorer was counted as fifth, due to it's utterly terrible score on that test. The SilverLight test was also a tie. This time, IE and Firefox were both counted as first place finishers. Second was given to Opera and third was skipped. Since Safari received a score almost half that of Opera, it was counted as a fourth-place finish. Chrome was given fifth. We also counted Opera's sketchy first-place finish in the Mozilla Dromaeo JavaScript Test, despite having experienced errors causing it to not complete a portion of the test. If we did not, Chrome would have had an even greater victory.
| Chrome | Opera | Safari | Firefox | Internet Explorer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 7 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 2 |
| 2nd | 9 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 3 |
| 3rd | 2 | 6 | 11 | 3 | 3 |
| 4th | 4 | 3 | 1 | 12 | 4 |
| 5th | 3 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 13 |
As you can see, Google Chrome comes out on top. Although it tied with Opera for the most wins by racking up the highest number of second place finishes Chrome managed to take the win. Considering that Safari has gone so long without a major new version, yet still placed so well, we cannot wait to see what's next from One Infinite Loop. Mozilla on the other hand is a different story. Though I do believe that version 3.6 did bring a significant improvement over 3.5.x, it simply wasn't enough to compete. Since Mozilla's latest offering is only a little over one month old, their placing in our Grand Prix is dissappointing to say the least. However, Firefox did manage to only come in last place one time. This brings us to Internet Explorer, Destroyer of Netscape Navigator, how the mighty has fallen. The browser from Redmond came in last place thirteen times, that's more than half of the tests. Internet Explorer's performance here is nothing less than sad.
Now, before someone cries foul about the over-saturation of JavaScript tests, I have also tallied the wins by category. The three startup time tests are counted as one. We've also counted the three memory usage tests as one category. Our five page load time tests, as well as the NonTroppo benchmark are counted just once, too. The table below shows the winners by category.
| Category / Test | Overall Winner |
|---|---|
| Startup Times | Opera |
| Memory Usage | Firefox |
| Page Load Times | Firefox |
| HTML | Safari |
| CSS | Safari |
| Tables | Safari |
| JavaScript | Chrome |
| PeaceKeeper | Opera |
| Acid3 | Chrome |
| DOM | Chrome |
| Flash | Opera |
| Java | Opera |
| SilverLight | Firefox / Internet Explorer |
This table only displays the winners, rather than the previous table's full placing results. While it may appear that Opera had a better showing than Chrome, it does not reflect how many times that browser was edged out by Chrome when neither placed first. It also does not show that Safari remained smack in the middle throughout or that Firefox had a stranglehold on fourth.
Any way you want to analyze the data, Google's Chrome comes out on top. That's why we're not only calling Chrome the winner of our Web Browser Grand Prix, but we're also awarding it the Best of Tom's Hardware Award--the first time we've given such an honor to a software product. If you haven't yet downloaded Google Chrome, you just don't know what you're missing.
These benchmarks give us a pretty good picture of which browser is the fastest. What these benchmarks do not reveal is the usability (or overall end-user experience) of these browsers. The staggering number of customization options available for Firefox, or the almost constant (and insufferably bothersome) prompting in Internet Explorer are just two examples of what cannot be benchmarked. Security is also a major concern, and something that was not tested for this article. We focused purely on speed and performance, and in those fields, Google Chrome takes the gold...at least in this round of the raging browser wars.
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cool, good test!
still perfectly happy inside the firefox world, but worth keepin' tabs on chrome's rise
cheers,
bollos
p.s. stuff & nonsense: http://eupeople.net/forum
Would definitely like to see which browser performs best on Linux, as I am planning to switch to that OS for day to dat use
I agree
I agree
I tried chrome, but i really can't say goodbye to my firefox addons
I would also like to see a linux test, would also be interesting to compare it with the windows scores
Speed isn't everything... I stick with Firefox because I can tweak it to my liking. A few milliseconds worth of page loading times won't be enough to convince me to switch browsers.
Very good article.
It proves what I always knew, IE is pants.
I'm sticking with Opera, at least for the time being.
yeah, where firefox does lose out it's not by much, i know how to use it, i like it's feature set, a few milliseconds here or there isn't enough to get me to switch
I like chrome, but it runs like a pig on my work machine (installs itself in c:\users\appdata. The retard) And as stated, I don't know what I'd do without my FF add-ons. fire.fm, greasemonkey, echofon, ABP, webdev toolbar. All indespensible. As stated in the article though, unquantifiable (assuming that's a word. Sounds OK)
Interesting comparison, thank you.
I have a slight issue with the memory usage analysis though. I don't necessarily see using more RAM as being a bad thing necessarily. Even on a system with only 1GB of memory, we're talking about the difference between 2% and 5% usage of all available memory between the lowest (~20 MB)and highest (~50 MB)usage. I say let the browsers do what they gotta do. Memory usage will only impair system performance when it's in short supply. People with 2 - 4 GB systems (most of us) wont miss it.
The load times look fishy. Compare the 1, 5 and 8 tab times by browser:
Chrome 1.37 - 13.94 - 10.40
Firefox 4.21 - 16.99 - 11.34
IE 7.89 - 9.56 - 17.73
Opera 3.01 - 8.01 - 8.31
Safari 10.31 - 21.69 - 10.83
Why is it Chrome, Firefox and Safari could load 8 tabs faster than 5 if the 5 were a subset of the 8?
Also, there's no indication of the range of times for each browser...
aje21 is spot on, it would seem other factors are at play here (site load, bandwidth usage, time of day etc) as it makes no sense whatsoever that chrome, safari and FF are slower for the lesser test of 5 tabs, but are faster with the same 5 tabs plus 3 more.
I also want to know why we are using an old dual core proc and a handheld STOPWATCH........thought this was cutting edge tech site!!!!
To be honest these days any of those browsers are perfectly good to use. I use Chrome, Firefox and IE8 all the time and don't really have fault with any of them.
Memory usage and page load times are the most important things to me in regard of web browsing and in both categories firefox wins, which is the browser I use, so that tells me that at least for me FIREFOX RUUULLZZZZ!!!
As weefatbob said, I was expecting some rationale/logic for the hardware used.
The last time I did a sunspider test (on firefox 3.6) I got ~780ms, which is faster than any of the results here, I wonder if that is due to the fact that I have a faster, more modern processor or faster RAM; hardware related.
Why change the test to 8 tabs just because IE is too dumb to let you open more than 8 tabs?
firefox is the nicest to use by a long way - chrome doesn't even have an ad blocker.
chrome has plug-ins now, adblockers, xmarks sync and most of the other popular firefox plugins have been converted to it already.
chrome does not use as much ram as the ram test suggested, as it shares ram considerably between processes (the shared ram gets counted multiple times by looking in process manager). It was explained in detail in an official chrome dev blog.
chrome also wins on security - it was the only browser not hacked in the 2009 PWN2OWN hacking contest.
...and even with those errors and omissions, it still won.
Ironic to see that the winning web browser isn't able to show this very artickly correctly. When clicking the pull down menu to change to another side, parts of the menu disappears under other content on the page and its not possible to operate the scroll bar. Still not considering to move away from Chrome though
I've been using Chrome for months now, I love it. It's even better now it supports the plug-ins (extensions). I've tried all the reviewed browsers and benchmarks etc aside, none give the fluidity and response of Chrome.
As far as RAM usage goes, with 8GB RAM I don't really mind if it uses more since it's the user experience that matters.
My version is showing as 4.0.249.89 not 4.0.249.78 as the article suggests is the latest version as of 3 days ago? (I've not updated recently)