RoboHornet: The Next Big Thing In Browser Benchmarking

[adamovera]

Today, Google and GitHub unveil the mysterious project RoboHornet. This ambitious all-in-one Web browser performance benchmark is like no other seen before, and we have early access! Will RoboHornet become the one browser benchmark to rule them all?

RoboHornet: The Next Big Thing In Browser Benchmarking : Read more

 

[aicom]

Nice to see that IE10 has got some fight in it. I haven't really used it much on Win8 after installing Chrome though. If IE can get that plugin ecosystem that Firefox and Chrome have plus some of the nice cloud syncing stuff with Win8/RT/Phone that Safari and Chrome do with their mobile brethren, I'd definitely consider IE.

They've got to quit bundling OS updates and IE together though. Otherwise, they get left behind when all the other browsers get updated, but IE doesn't. When IE 9 came out, it was quite the monster too, but 3 years is a long time for other browsers to catch and easily overtake it.

 

[puddleglum]

Good to see the browsers broken out by OS. Not everyone runs MS.

 

[Guest]

How about firefox on android ?

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]hheexx[/nom]How about firefox on android ?[/citation]
Didn't work. It may eventually finish but it spent way too long on the first test, pretty much the same story with Maxthon, Opera, and Sleipnir on Android. Same deal on iOS. They specifically mentioned that mobile was not yet supported, but it will be a priority in the future. Maxthon took a very long time on Windows, OS X, and Android, so I aborted it, but I have a feeling that it would finish eventually (could literally be hours though, and I didn't have time to wait). If anyone reports Maxthon, Sleipnir or Camino actually finishing the test, I'll give them another go and update the article accordingly.

 

[aaab]

RH-A1:0092.97
2 out of 17 benchmark(s) failed.

My poor work PC

 

[Guest]

What an awful collection of microbenchmarks. Go read Hennessy and Patterson; the best benchmarks are real apps, not tiny little tests that measure a single thing.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

IE10's win on Win8 makes me wonder if the benchmark makes use of specialised data arrays, which are supported in IE10 only.

In normal use, IE10 performs worse than FF15, so i dont see how it scored that much better.

 

[alikum]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]IE10's win on Win8 makes me wonder if the benchmark makes use of specialised data arrays, which are supported in IE10 only.In normal use, IE10 performs worse than FF15, so i dont see how it scored that much better.[/citation]
How exactly? I'm using IE10 for work and home and it's been superb thus far, with 0 crashes. Can't say the same for FF. It's a memory hog.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

^ to each his own

FWIW, the actual mozilla developers had no clue about this benchmark prior to this article. Infact, they have started working on this benchmark after someone reported this article. So IMO, the presence of Mozilla is marginal at best in the overseeing member committee

And, mozila has only one representative. More than half of the committee members are google people. Makes me wonder if there is some unintentional bias....

 

[freggo]

Win 7 with Firefox 15.0.1

typed robohornet.com as the URL and get a friendly 404 error.
Actually have to use www.robohornet.com !

Now isn't that kinda sad ?

 

[mayankleoboy1]

^ the correct site is :

http://www.robohornet.org/

BTW, FF15.0.1 automatically searched for .org when i typed the .com address, so no issues here
Time for you to check proxy settings ?

 

[freggo]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]^ the correct site is : http://www.robohornet.org/BTW, FF15.0.1 automatically searched for .org when i typed the .com address, so no issues here Time for you to check proxy settings ?[/citation]

"I" obviously did not have problems figuring in out
But the majority of casual surfers (i.e. my clients) will not bother after a 404 error. They hit reload and then give up and go somewhere else.

It's not that hard to configure a server to work with/and without www

 

[davewolfgang]

Wow....a bunch of "Tests" by the makers of ONE of the browsers that - OMG - the main competition loses everything, and doesn't even show on some.

Things that don't make you go Hmmmmmmmm.

 

[Guest]

"Today, Google helped launch a modular, independent, and open source browser benchmark": This is literally not true, Google is the supplier of Chrome, and therefor not independent.

 

[Guest]

It is of course way too early to use this benchmark as an indication about real world browser performance.

Just the other day another test was published, made by MS. In that test for all practical purposes IE and FFox were tied at #1. ahead of Chrome. http://www.favbrowser.com/internet-explorer-10-is-8-faster-than-google-chrome-20/

Robohornet do catch some specific slow spots in Firefox. But it also has some tests that look suspect. I expect both to improve, though. Look at the comments in this Bugzilla thread. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=793913

 

[Avro Arrow]

These numbers seem big and meaningful but remember, we're talking a MAXIMUM DIFFERENCE of 1 (maybe 2) seconds between the "top" browser and the "bottom" browser in page load time. This is not something that is going to make or break your internet experience, especially considering that most of us on tomshardware are enthusiasts that have powerful rigs with Quad-Core or better CPUs running at 3GHz or more. Pick the browser you like most and use it! The feature set and feel of a browser are a far bigger issue to me on my computer (desktop or laptop) than speed. Speed affects smartphones far more and from my own personal android experience, stability is key, not speed. In that respect, I've found that Opera for android is the best of that bunch. As for Apple anything, I wouldn't know. I'm allergic to "Apples"... :sol

 

[bwric]

How come the Windows results are double that of the Mac?

 

[Avro Arrow]

[citation][nom]bwric[/nom]How come the Windows results are double that of the Mac?[/citation]
Because all of these programs were originally designed for Windows and "ported" to Mac.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

[citation][nom]Avro Arrow[/nom]These numbers seem big and meaningful but remember, we're talking a MAXIMUM DIFFERENCE of 1 (maybe 2) seconds between the "top" browser and the "bottom" browser in page load time. This is not something that is going to make or break your internet experience, especially considering that most of us on tomshardware are enthusiasts that have powerful rigs with Quad-Core or better CPUs running at 3GHz or more. Pick the browser you like most and use it! The feature set and feel of a browser are a far bigger issue to me on my computer (desktop or laptop) than speed. Speed affects smartphones far more and from my own personal android experience, stability is key, not speed. In that respect, I've found that Opera for android is the best of that bunch. As for Apple anything, I wouldn't know. I'm allergic to "Apples"... :sol[/citation]

1. Most browsers are single threaded. So quad core is meaningless.

2. This "1-2 secnd" difference is when loading simple pages. With complex pages using lots of CSS3 and HTML5, these "1-2second" differences become several 10's of seconds, which is noticable, unless you are "simple"

3.This benchmark also tests how responsive the browser is during a page load. If the browser freezes during a page load, any speed gain is quite meaningless.

 

[ojas]

hmmm. i'm getting 118 on chrome and 82 with IE9x64

 

[face-plants]

So what exactly sets this "baseline" against which all the browsers are compared? Looked carefully at every page and couldn't find any explanation. I understand that the most useful info is the relative results among each browser but I'm still curious.

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]face-plants[/nom]So what exactly sets this "baseline" against which all the browsers are compared? Looked carefully at every page and couldn't find any explanation. I understand that the most useful info is the relative results among each browser but I'm still curious.[/citation]
Just received a bunch of pertinent links, will update story soon. This is regarding their reference test system and scoring - github.com/robohornet/robohornet/wiki/Scoring-Rationale

 

[Guest]

Who says that Mozilla backs this benchmark? There is none on the technical stewards committee.

Also Mozilla folks already flagged various tests, for not using returned values, cause then only valid JS behavior would be to skip those tests, as "doing nothing". One of svg tests (clrearRect) is also bogus. Clearing canvas that was never rendered too.

While those tests could be valid (there is "dead" code on the net after all) it should be marked properly.

Probably that explain why V8 can perform 10x than js engine in Firefox 15.

PS anyone have test results for IonMonkey? Currently in FF Nightly.

 

[przemoli]

http://www.ghacks.net/2012/09/25/robohornet-independent-browser-benchmark/

FF 18 scores best on Win7 and comes second on Win8 when compared against other devs versions.

So when can we see all alpha/dev versions tested on toms hardware?