Web Browser Grand Prix VIII: Chrome 16, Firefox 9, And Mac OS X

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I'd love to see the inclusion of tests to measure the privacy (and bandwidth efficiency) of each browser in terms of phoning home, or anywhere else not directly applicable to the page being reviewed. This would need to include installation, startup and page load tests. This is my major concern about Chrome.
 
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It’s an issue of frequency – when you’re plugged into the wall and/or your power settings are configured for frequency over power you’ll have 4ms timers and run faster than when you’re on battery and have 16.7ms timers. The frequency impacts the score here.
 
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Current WebKit Nightly is 50-100% faster in V8 and Kraken. Apple's release cycle is not helping ;-)
 

LaloFG

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@mitch074 I don't agree with you in several points. You're right about the few loose of firefox, but take in mind that Opera is weak in HTML5 (yet not fully completed), HTML5 Hw Acceleration (the same), WebGL (is dependent of HTML5), and Memory Managment; the last one is not a loose because that helps to maintain the closed tabs (for open closed tabs quickly). But Firefox is weak in CSS, and that is not acceptable, i'm sorry, so you are not helping firefox .

The stuff you say about complementing firefox, applies for Opera too, but in Opera that stuff has the names of Extensions and Widgets, and Opera barely needs that because all the good features are already in Opera. Maybe the part of the debugger console is true, i'm not a website developer, but Opera have Dragonfly IDE, I think is the same, but i'm not sure, maybe i'm wrong here.

I'm a windows user, so Opera is great for Windows users, if you use Linux, Mac and Windows, maybe firefox in there is better (because of his multiplataform form, not because works betters than other browsers in talking about features and performance).
 

in_the_loop

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When knowing that Firefox is meant to be expanded with the add-ons for maximum flexibility vs the other browsers having a more out of the box working experience and FF STILL winning is just stunning.

That makes FF totally superior when all the normal add-ons like Ad-block, flashblock. downthem all, tab mix plus and so on is installed.
I mean, just the blockers alone makes it much, much faster and I wonder if memory usage also would benefit, since it is actually blocking things not just hiding them.
Another significant thing that FF was clearly beating Chrome in was in the stability test when using a lot of tabs.
Taking all this into account makes FF in my mind the totally superior browser. That is if you are the kind of user that actually want to customize the browser and install plug-ins and also are the type of person that uses a lot of tabs expecting stability from the browser. In other words a real power user.
 

rhea

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Any plans to run benchmarks on Linux? I'd be very interested since I use Linux as my main OS and I am sure lot of other Tom's readers do too.
 

feahnor

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Anybody noticed that Chrome had gpu acceleration disabled? Turn it on and see it fly faster than firefox. I know, i have tried.
 

feahnor

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Anybody noticed that Chrome had gpu acceleration disabled? Turn it on and see it fly faster than firefox. I know, i have tried.
 

A Bad Day

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[citation][nom]feahnor[/nom]Anybody noticed that Chrome had gpu acceleration disabled? Turn it on and see it fly faster than firefox. I know, i have tried.[/citation]
Well, why didn't Chrome leave the GPU acceleration on by default? I'm fairly sure Tom's Hardware leaves the web browsers at default settings to maintain fairness.
 

pc elitist

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I'm really happy with Firefox and its constant improvement. I use as default the 'Beta' channel and as testing version the Nightly x64. Since Chrome came into the game so strongly, caused the awakening!

We'll see many more good improvements. The winner is the user.
 

adamovera

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[citation][nom]tgreader[/nom]Dear Adam, you might want to remove the html5.com test as it represents nothing but a checklist. In no way does it test the correct implementation or functioning of html5 features.[/citation]
Do you find the Peacekeeper 2.0 HTML5 Capabilities score to be superior? Now that I have a possible replacement, I could remove it. Although HTML5Test.com is regularly being updated, and that I do like.
 

adamovera

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[citation][nom]mitch074[/nom]And now, how about adding browser benchmarks on Linux...? Joking.[/citation]
I tried to in November with the release of Firefox 8, but Ubuntu 11.10 didn't play ball. The debs for Chrome and Opera refused to install and Firefox took several weeks to update, by then the next batch of browsers was much too close, so I killed the article. I very much want to revisit Linux in the WBGP... Quite serious.
PS - Thanks a million for handling a lot of the question comments, I typically stick around to do that but was immediately pulled in another direction the morning after this published.
 

adamovera

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[citation][nom]d_t[/nom]Isn't "Kraken v1.1" and "Google Kraken v1.1 Mod" the same now with bug 599914 fixed?https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=599914http://blog.chromium.org/2011/05/u [...] s-for.htmlSunSpider is pretty irrelevant these days, but the V8 Benchmark would be interesting to include again (at least under "Observation", just to see the improvements in new versions).[/citation]
Nice find! I'll stop running the Google Mod next time. I'm probably going to drop the original SunSpider as well and just run the Google Mod, unless there are objections? I just ran V8 again and the margin for Chrome's victory are still pretty ridiculous. That benchmark was removed due to the other vendors complaining that it only tests 'how Chromey Chrome is' And I have to agree, the margins on V8 are just absurd when you look at any other JS test.
 

adamovera

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[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]with IE9 being given as both 32 and 64 bit, perhaps the tests should include both these versions.many of toms members use 64 bit windows, which will install IE9 64 bit by default.[/citation]
While the 64-bit version of Window 7 does include the 64-bit version of IE, the 32-bit version is still the default. But we will run 64-bit versions as soon as there is some official competition to compare with IE9.
 

adamovera

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[citation][nom]stryk55[/nom]Hmm, this article really makes me seriously consider downloading a new browser - Netscape Navigator just isn't cutting it anymore, and it wasn't even in the comparison! WTF, Toms?[/citation]
My bad ;)
 

adamovera

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[citation][nom]br_[/nom]These plots should have error bars.[/citation]
The charts have to be standardized for all of Tom's Hardware, not sure if we have a template for that. Can't promise anything, but I'll look into it.
 

adamovera

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[citation][nom]pharoahhalfdead[/nom]I'm curious if the hardware acceleration results would be different using a discreet video card compared to Intels solution? I think even a low end solution might bring better results.I've noticed in my own browsing that I've experienced a lot of lag since my AMD card crapped out on me. I'm relying on my GTX 460 until I get my Rma, but so many web pages load slower.Could there be a reason why?[/citation]
Hardware Acceleration doesn't seem to be effected, but WebGL is. The Core i5 (Lynnfield) desktop system which has a Radeon HD 4870 gets significantly better frame rates than the Core i7 (Sandy Bridge) MacBook. In fact, for this article I had to lower the number of objects being displayed in the WebGL tests just to get out of the low single digit range, and even then the WebGL frame rates are lower on the MacBook.
 
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