Chrome 27, Firefox 22, IE10, And Opera Next, Benchmarked

[adamovera]

Today, we have the latest benchmark results from the top four Windows-based Web browsers, along with a sneak peek at Opera's upcoming Chromium-based overhaul. Is this really a step-up from Presto/Carakan or just another Chrome clone?

Chrome 27, Firefox 22, IE10, And Opera Next, Benchmarked : Read more

 

[Onus]

No, the Onus is not on Google; I'm using www.startpage.com for my searches.

While this is interesting, I still encounter built-in pages (such as on routers or other network devices) that will not render cleanly in Firefox, but are perfect in IE. More often than not though, pages that would be filled with nuisance ads and popups are cleaned up nicely by Firefox with AdBlock+ and NoScript.

 

[soundping]

A good test is rendering a heavy site like Huffington Post. They use a ton of flash and java scripts.

 

[ivyanev]

While benchmarks are the way to compare browsers, they do not represent the feel you get- firefox might be faster but still feels sluggish compared to chrome or opera(the stable one).

 

[pharoahhalfdead]

I would like to see benchmarks on page start up, and load times comparing ssd, hard drives, and ram drives. Maybe I missed these an a previous article, but I feel since ssd's and ram drives are getting more popular, benchmarks should prove or dispel the the 'so called' benefits they bring.

I have both and start up times for IE are quick but page load times are horrendously slow, whereas FF has slow start up times but superfast page load times. It's possible that add-ons are contributing to that.

 

[mikeynavy1976]

Ever since I have compared Firefox and Chrome I've always found Chrome to start much faster (I'm running the Dev channel and my wife uses the Stable channel and they both take maybe 1 - 2 seconds to start cold or hot). Only IE beats both of them. Maybe Firefox 22 is that much faster and worth a try, but seeing as Chrome did so well in most categories I'll probably stick with it.

 

[EzioAs]

Having move back to Firefox a couple years ago after Chrome, I don't intend to use Chrome (or any other browser) regularly anymore. I still give Chrome 2-3 tries a week (just to compare things) but Chrome isn't better than FF in 3 things:

1) Pages load noticeably slower
2) Memory usage is indeed high (as seen in the benchmark above)
3) FF add-ons are much better than chrome extensions.

I never noticed any startup time difference for both FF and Chrome; it's possible they're both fast enough that it doesn't even matter at this point. I also like the FF toolbars better although that's really more of a personal preference. I've never tried maxthon though; heard it's pretty good.

 

[beoza]

I've never really noticed a difference in browsers speed wise. Sure some load pages faster than others, and some have issues with certain pages. But in the end they all take me to the same place. I use Firefox 95% of the time at home with adblock+, if I encounter an issue I clear cache, if it still has issues I switch to IE 10, usually this is all I need to do but once in a while IE has problems with a page and I just move on to something else. At work I'm stuck using IE10. The speed of a browser can also be affected by other factors like the speed of your connection, how many devices are on your network, what tasks your doing on the computer at the same time like gaming, downloading, streaming movies (netflix, hulu), and your hardware. You're not going to get much responsiveness on a 5yr old celeron w/2gb ram and Win XP while you're downloading a game, watching youtube and the A/V suite scans your computer in the background, and there's 5 other people all sharing your 10Mbps network. Which describes probably 50% of the users out there in the real world.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Opera Next (and every other browser) is a significant step down in terms of features/customization from the current version.

I'll miss a hell of a lot of stuff when I move off Presto-based Opera.

 

[ElDani]

Well done on this test, I actually found the test results genuinely helpful and your summary/conclusion to be well thought out.

Still, this test shows us once more, that no modern browser - I exclude Opera from this, since it isn't a maintained release anymore - must absolutely be replaced by the winner of such tests. If you don't mind performance weaknesses of the Internet Explorer in certain areas, or if your most-accessed websites don't require you to use a certain alternative, then even Microsoft's browser of choice can be okay for daily use (if only as an engine in products like Avant, Maxthon, etc).

The one thing I'm a bit curious about: why does Opera Next suddenly behave so differently from Chrome? Yes, there's a difference between Chrome 27 (WebKit) and Opera Next (Blink = Chrome 28), but if that's the only reason for the browser's weaker showing, then the future of Chrome doesn't look too good. What's your take on this?

 

[tomfreak]

I dont know how useful in this review when they are tested all the browser on a 1155 super computer, nobody is going to tell the diff if the browser is 0.25sec faster. Get some Brazos, Atom and run the test, these are the platform have problems with web browsing.

 

[ikefu]

I've used FF for quite a while and have been very happy with the last few releases. Things definitely seems generally zippier and I've WAY less pages with load errors. I've also got my computer, tablet, and phone FireFox copies all sync'd together and love that it just works.

 

[varun706]

When the hell did Intel release an i5 3770K ?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

We're now on an Ivy Bridge-based Core i5

I'm guessing it should have said i5-3570K.

 

[varun706]

Yep I'm gonna upgrade my Firefox.

 

[Jak Atackka]

Interesting test. I haven't heard of Opera Next, but now I'll definitely be keeping my eye on it. I use Google Chrome and have noticed it's slower loading speed (both to open Chrome and a webpage) the past update, and judging by the test results, the changes are significant.

Can I make a request for your next test? Try comparing SSDs and HDDs in some of the tests, especially cold boot. They are becoming more and more popular, and at least with some of these tests, I imagine they do have a significant impact on performance.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Opera Next is just the development/beta fork of Opera. They have the nice extra that you get separate data storage - you can have both installed at the same time.

When the Chromium-based version becomes stable, it will be called Opera.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Somewhat useless, yes. As they are from the same codebase they should perform relatively similar to on windows though.

 

[LordConrad]

Good on you Firefox, keep it up!

I love customizability and plug-in support of Firefox. I also love the separate address and search bars. If I type "IBM" into the address bar I want to go directly to the website, if I want to search then I'll use the search bar. Unfortunately, whenever I install Firefox, I have to re-enable the "go directly to the website" ability in the address bar because, starting with Firefox 4, some dork at Mozilla changed the functionality of the address bar.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

You can do all that in Opera (though I'm still kind of lost as to why they keep the search bar, given they were the first to allow searching from the address bar).

Up/down keys are your friend.

One other pet peeve I have is that the autopredict in browsers have a habit of interpreting '192.168.1.1' as '192.168.1.104', if you visit the latter more frequently. Someone disable autopredict for IP addresses, and I will use your browser.

 

[csf60]

I always wondered why you don't test flash performance. Is it because it only depends on adobe flash player and not the browser?

 

[blubbey]

Good job FF.

 

[Cryio]

Hey guys, you got Chrome wrong. Version 27 is still Webkit. From 28 onwards it will be officially Blink.

 

[Cryio]

Also, if you are putting Android an iOS there, you should put WP8 at IE10 also. It's only fair.

 

[Cryio]

Can you please please also add Maxthon to the Gran Prix mix?