Which Web Browser Is Best Under Windows 8?

[adamovera]

Welcome to our first-ever Web Browser Grand Prix on Windows 8! Will Chrome remain the reigning Windows champion? Is Internet Explorer 10 going to smash the competition like its predecessor? Does Opera 12.10 finally deliver on what version 12 promised?

Which Web Browser Is Best Under Windows 8? : Read more

 

[mayankleoboy1]

1. Did you ensure that Opera has Hardware acceleration and WebGL enabled in about:config ? AFAIk, Opera does not enable HWA by default.

2. I find the over-reliance on "Internet Explorer Test drive" benchmarks disturbing. Most use code that is inefficient and not used anywhere else on the web, making it quite theoretical.

3. +1 for using Google Octane benchmark. Both google and mozilla agree that this is a good real-world benchmark.

4. Addition of the "Maze solver" benchmark is disappointing.

5. Why remove the subjective smoothness ? 95% of the time, subjective smoothness is what lures a person to use a specific browser. People use a browser, not run benchmarks on it all day. Subjectively, no browser can beat Google Chrome. Then comes Opera , Firefox and far lastly, IE10.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

Any technical reason why browser performs generally better in Win8 ? Even the 'WHQL' drivers from Nvidia and AMD arent quite mature for Win8.
Games and applications did not show any improvement in Win8 over Win7.

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]1. Did you ensure that Opera has Hardware acceleration and WebGL enabled in about:config ? AFAIk, Opera does not enable HWA by default.2. I find the over-reliance on "Internet Explorer Test drive" benchmarks disturbing. Most use code that is inefficient and not used anywhere else on the web, making it quite theoretical.3. +1 for using Google Octane benchmark. Both google and mozilla agree that this is a good real-world benchmark.4. Addition of the "Maze solver" benchmark is disappointing.5. Why remove the subjective smoothness ? 95% of the time, subjective smoothness is what lures a person to use a specific browser. People use a browser, not run benchmarks on it all day. Subjectively, no browser can beat Google Chrome. Then comes Opera , Firefox and far lastly, IE10.[/citation]
1) We use fresh installs at default settings; Opera does not enable HWA by default.
2) The only IETestDrive tests we use are Psychedelic Browsing and Maze Solver, and IE regularly loses to competitors on both.
3) Octane was not used because it had issues with IE9 and Opera 12.10.
4) We definitely need a new CSS test, but the only other options are outdated or on IETestDrive - unfortunately, Kaizoumark doesn't work with IE10.
5) It's really difficult to see that kind of stuff on a modern test system, but I will say that Chrome and IE10 are about equal in that department, with Firefox and Opera noticeably more choppy right at the beginning of the 40-tab load.

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]Any technical reason why browser performs generally better in Win8 ? Even the 'WHQL' drivers from Nvidia and AMD arent quite mature for Win8.Games and applications did not show any improvement in Win8 over Win7.[/citation]
Not sure, the Nvidia drivers used were the same version on both OSes.

 

[Guest]

And we're also passing the torch from Windows 7 to Windows 8.

We are going to miss you on Web Browser Grand Prix, Windows 7 [:russk1:9]

 

[mayankleoboy1]

1) We use fresh installs at default settings; Opera does not enable HWA by default.
2) The only IETestDrive tests we use are Psychedelic Browsing and Maze Solver, and IE regularly loses to competitors on both.
3) Octane was not used because it had issues with IE9 and Opera 12.10.
4) We definitely need a new CSS test, but the only other options are outdated or on IETestDrive - unfortunately, Kaizoumark doesn't work with IE10.
5) It's really difficult to see that kind of stuff on a modern test system, but I will say that Chrome and IE10 are about equal in that department, with Firefox and Opera noticeably more choppy right at the beginning of the 40-tab load.

1. IMHO, enabling these settings would have made Opera more competitive and this article fairer.

3. Whoops, misread that. But this is a good benchmark. Robohornet and robohornet pro are complete jokes.
4. Just exclude the maze solver. Its bad coding, as any web developer can tell you.
5. Thats exactly what i'm saying. This needs to be factored in the overall score. You want the browser UI to always remain smooth. UI choppiness is unacceptable and sloppy coding. We are not living in the 90's anymore.


The one thing i dislike in Chrome is the memory bloat when opening many tabs. In the 40tab test, FF uses 600 MB. Chrome uses 1600MB :O. That is probably an iverhead of using separate processes for each tab. That is excellent for smoothness and UI fluidity. But shameful for memory consumption. I guess devs need to find a middle path.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

Both 'mozilla kraken' and 'Google sunspider' benchmarks need to be retired . They are old, and all the major browsers have optimizations to score better on them.
Plus, they heavily test features that are not used anywhere else on teh web.

Example : Sunspider makes a billion manipulations to the the "date" variable. Mozilla did not have any optimization for this. So it scored poorly on Sunspider. After numerous 'review sites' started using sunspider to test FF Vs Chrome, mozilla developers had to reluctantly add the same optimisation (which is basically a separate buffer to store the date). Of course, nowhere on the web is the date variable used in this manner. So its optimization for an artificial test.

 

[wilem_WAR246810]

"The King Is Dead, Long Live The King!" am I the only one who thought of Megadeth?

 

[deepblue08]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]Any technical reason why browser performs generally better in Win8 ? Even the 'WHQL' drivers from Nvidia and AMD arent quite mature for Win8.Games and applications did not show any improvement in Win8 over Win7.[/citation]

As far as I heard there are significant under-the-hood improvements in Win8, in terms of memory efficiency and multi-core usage.

 

[epileptic]

Is it Opera x64 or x86? I remember having tested Opera 12 and the startup was very slow. I'm still using 11.64 atm. The only thing keeping me from moving to Firefox is how sluggish the UI feels... I'd also have to find a new mail client. :/

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]1. IMHO, enabling these settings would have made Opera more competitive and this article fairer.3. Whoops, misread that. But this is a good benchmark. Robohornet and robohornet pro are complete jokes.4. Just exclude the maze solver. Its bad coding, as any web developer can tell you.5. Thats exactly what i'm saying. This needs to be factored in the overall score. You want the browser UI to always remain smooth. UI choppiness is unacceptable and sloppy coding. We are not living in the 90's anymore. The one thing i dislike in Chrome is the memory bloat when opening many tabs. In the 40tab test, FF uses 600 MB. Chrome uses 1600MB . That is probably an iverhead of using separate processes for each tab. That is excellent for smoothness and UI fluidity. But shameful for memory consumption. I guess devs need to find a middle path.[/citation]
Chrome scales quite nicely to the available memory, it doesn't need the 1.6 GB to display all those tabs, it just uses that much on a system with tons of spare memory. We saw that Chrome can get by with just 450 MB on an XP-based beige box with only 768 MB total system memory.

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]wilem_WAR246810[/nom]"The King Is Dead, Long Live The King!" am I the only one who thought of Megadeth?[/citation]
LOL, there's a good chance that Megadeth was playing in a YouTube tab while I was doing the final layout for this article.

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]epileptic[/nom]Is it Opera x64 or x86? I remember having tested Opera 12 and the startup was very slow. I'm still using 11.64 atm. The only thing keeping me from moving to Firefox is how sluggish the UI feels... I'd also have to find a new mail client.[/citation]
32-bit, they're all 32-bit.

 

[randomizer]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]1. IMHO, enabling these settings would have made Opera more competitive and this article fairer.[/citation]

Running every browser with its default configuration except one is not a fair test.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

[citation][nom]adamovera[/nom]32-bit, they're all 32-bit.[/citation]
Yes and this is unfortunate. We need more competition in the 64-bit browsing world. I currently use Waterfox. It's only other competition (that I'm aware of) is IE 64-bit.

 

[stairmand]

Would have been nice to include some fatures, the Pinch to Zoom on IE 10 makes that a winner for multi-touch ebnabled systems on its own.

 

[assafbt]

Ok, perhaps I missed something about the new composite scoring, but what I am always interested in is solely which browser has the least weak performances & behaviors, not really interested in who is good or best. With the new scoring we went back quite a bit, or am I missing something?

 

[mayankleoboy1]

[citation][nom]JOSHSKORN[/nom]Yes and this is unfortunate. We need more competition in the 64-bit browsing world. I currently use Waterfox. It's only other competition (that I'm aware of) is IE 64-bit.[/citation]

In most of these 'benchmarks', which basically run a few tight loops a gazillion times, 64 bit browsers will perform worse than 32 bit.
Plus, Visual Studio 2010, on which all these browsers are compiled, does not many of the performance optimisations for 64 bit code.

 

[Cryio]

[citation][nom]adamovera[/nom]32-bit, they're all 32-bit.[/citation]

False, IE10 RTM on Windows 8 x64 is a 64 bit browser.

 

[Cryio]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]In most of these 'benchmarks', which basically run a few tight loops a gazillion times, 64 bit browsers will perform worse than 32 bit. Plus, Visual Studio 2010, on which all these browsers are compiled, does not many of the performance optimisations for 64 bit code.[/citation]

Well, hopefully things change now with the release of Visual Studio 2012.

 

[Cryio]

And yeah....Opera is all over the place nowadays. I still use it because I like it's UI and loading speed (SPDY Turbo is insane), but scrolling problems, crashes, lock-ups, page rendering problems, really bad memory usage...Man...

 

[mayankleoboy1]

[citation][nom]Cryio[/nom]Well, hopefully things change now with the release of Visual Studio 2012.[/citation]

Firefox ,for one wont be shifting to VS2012 for a few years

 

[tipoo]

Hmm, Chrome still starts up faster than anything on Windows 8 64 bit for me, maybe something else was going on there?

 

[damianrobertjones]

Please, please, PLEASE, Internet Explorer users... change your pop-up blocker settings to HIGH instead of medium.

CLick the cog, Internet Options, Privacy, Pop-up blocker settings, High