RSSBefore it can tackle Windows, Chrome must leave Safari in the dust
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published July 9, 2009, 10:25 PM
Just a few months ago, Apple Safari 4 could stake a claim to being the fastest Web browser available for Windows. But although its speed has improved even since then, especially in the second update since its official launch released late Wednesday, Safari is now as much as 30% slower than the latest beta of Google Chrome 3, released the following morning. This according to Betanews tests completed late Thursday.
Since the report of last week's score following the release of the first stable Mozilla Firefox 3.5 browser, we've seen a security update for Safari 4 Beta, three updates to the Opera 10 beta, and two major improvements to Chrome 3. The first of those two releases saw major improvements to window handling routines -- the first clear indication that Google is working to build a windowing environment of its own. The second, released this morning, brings a revised layout to the default "New Tab" window (an alternative for the user's home page), allowing more thumbnails in the frequented sites list.
Also we've seen some updates for Windows Vista. Installing those actually improved our Internet Explorer 7 scores in Vista SP2 by a slight amount, forcing our Betanews index scores for the stable Opera 9.64 and Safari 3.2.3 browsers down slightly (our index compares all Web browsers' performance to that of IE7 in Vista SP2).
After these latest updates, both Safari 4 and Chrome 3 posted slower index scores in Windows 7 RC (slower than the Vista speed adjustment would mandate), but faster index scores in Windows XP Professional SP3. Chrome 3 posted a record index score of 18.01 in XP, running real-world benchmark tests at 2123% (no, readers, there's no missing decimal point in that figure) the speed of IE7 in Vista. That's 46% faster than Chrome 3 in Vista SP2, whose score is 12.97. As of now, the average Web browser runs 29% faster in XP SP3 than Vista SP2.
The latest Safari is also showing impressive speed gains even over its immediate predecessor, scoring 16.16 in XP and 11.77 in Vista. The gap between those two platforms is about the same as for Chrome 3, at 45%. Meanwhile, the development tracks for the first bug fix of Firefox 3.5 and the experimental build of 3.6 appear headed in opposite directions. While the bug fix could conceivably make 3.5 almost 2% faster, the indications from the 3.6 Alpha 1 nightly build are that developers there are trying stability improvements as opposed to speed. Thursday's nightly build of 3.6 continued heading south in the speed department, now at 7.01 on the index in Windows 7 RC versus a 9.21 score from the stable 3.5 on the same platform.
We'd like to be able to accurately test nightly improvements to the WebKit rendering engine being produced for Safari 4. WebKit's nightly builds are designed to install on top of an existing Safari installation, replacing just the rendering and processing components while keeping Apple's front end. In the tests we have conducted, we've seen clear evidence that Safari's math and string processing speeds could catch up with and even exceed those of Chrome, as some of the WebKit nightly build's benchmark scores are notably faster.
Some. The problem is, the renderer in the WebKit nightly builds appears to be a temporary solution, so its DOM and AJAX scores are too slow to be counted as legitimate -- far slower even than IE7 in Vista. The results would render the WebKit build's final index scores irrelevant, though there does appear to be fragmentary evidence that Safari could eclipse Chrome's speed at some point, perhaps soon.
We've also taken a suggestion from a few readers and started investigating the V8 benchmark suite, which Google assembled for testing the relative performance of Chrome. (Some of our readers, in response to our calling the SunSpider benchmark suite "independent," note that it was developed for the WebKit renderer used most prominently in Safari.)
As expected, Chrome performs better in the V8 suite than every other browser. But the speed gap it records of almost exactly two-thirds between Chrome 3 Beta and Safari 4, and the 951.5% performance gap between Chrome 3 Beta and Firefox 3.5 (again, there's no loose decimal point in that last score), seem to us uncorroborated by real-world experience. Chrome just isn't ten times faster than Firefox. We suspect that the speed gaps registered by the V8 suite, rather than linear in nature, are actually exponential, such that higher scores are more...shall we say, pronounced. For now, we're comfortable with the performance suite we're currently using, though we continue to investigate possible alternatives and improvements.
I just have two browsers...Opera and IE8. They both just work.
Score: -2
|NO, IT DOESN'T.
you're "apples" and oranges.
Score: 0
|Firefox should get a lot faster on the V8 suite when they support recursive tracing (hopefully in time for Firefox.next).
https://bugzilla.mozilla.../show_bug.cgi?id=459301
Score: 2
|though i see this as a clash of the titans,
i don't think google will prevail.
just like microsoft has never prevail in selling its search engine,
google will not prevail in selling their operating system.
google should not waste any money because it will be a great cost, lost and mistake in the long run.
it seems that everyone is trying to get a piece of the others pie.
but at what costs?!
in regards to safari, google should just let it subside. it doesn't cost google anything to keep it even though it doesn't zoom the net like chrome. there is still a market share for it and google should not let it go with the chance, the safari users will go to ie.
Score: 2
|Well, with each fix release, Apple has moved Safari down a peg, so it shouldn't be as difficult. However, Google must complete Chrome. It doesn't seem to be nearly as complete as Safari, let alone as complete as Firefox or Opera. By that time, we should see a major slowdown and all the benchmarks in the world won't help it on the user's desktop.
Score: 0
|These tests would be a lot more helpful if they weren't multiplied by the Acid3 score. In the real world, even though Opera and Safari score higher on Acid3, the browser with the least compatibility problems is IE. Acid3 is nice as a club to encourage future development, and it is shocking and nice to see that even IE improved its Acid2 scores. However, when comparing the speed and even the compatibility of browsers, Acid3 is useless. Let's see some real speed scores that aren't distorted by Acid3 which has nothing to do with real world compatibility or performance.
Score: 0
|Internet Exploder has the least compatibility with real standards.
Poor web development and adherence to Microsoft's thinking has led to far too many web sites that aren't compatible with where the web was supposed to be several years ago.
It takes just a quick trip through the W3C validator to see how poorly web sites stick to real standards and how the good ones work well with Firefox, Opera, and Safari and even Chrome.
Score: 0
|You appear to be guessing wildly at how the V8 benchmark suite works.
If you read the code, it's actually quite simple: Each part of the benchmark runs in a loop that counts how many times it can run in a set time (scaled by some arbitrary value). If you can execute the benchmark twice as fast, you get twice the score.
Then the final score is counted as the geometric mean of the part scores, meaning that getting twice as fast on one part gives the same final score as getting twice as fast on another.
If you are twice as fast on *every* test, you get twice the final score.
Nothing exponential in that. Quite the contrary actually.
I'm guessing the main reason for the huge difference is that the V8 benchmark suite is not micro-benchmarks that can finish in 5 ms, but actually test serious workloads. In particular the memory management benchmark (Splay) really tests something that I haven't seen any other benchmark test (and I guess V8 is scoring so well because they have actually cared to optimize their memory management and create a benchmark for it).
Score: 0
|I have installed and tried both Safari 4, Chrome 3, anf of course IE8 and Opera 10... and somehow I always end up using Opera, even though according to this test is not the fastest. I dont really care much if "the speed gap it records of almost exactly two-thirds between Chrome 3 Beta and Safari 4, and the 951.5% performance gap between Chrome 3 Beta and Firefox 3.5 (again, there's no loose decimal point in that last score), seem to us uncorroborated by real-world experience".
There is more to a browser than those kind of sentences in my opinion.
Score: 1
|I had IE, Firefox, Chrome and Opera installed on my computers for months, but in the end I settled with Opera. I am not a die hard Opera fan, Opera does have some compatibility problems with some sites, but its rare. Opera has a lot more features that I use without needing to install plugins
Score: 1
|I've tried 'em all, but at the end of the day I always end up back with Opera. Doubt it's the fastest anymore, probably not the safest, has some really daft ideas about what a browser should be, and without a shadow of doubt the most annoying fans of any browser, ever. But I like it, it reclaims it's place as my default two or three times a week, I may be fickle but when it comes to Opera I'm faithful to the end, Opera rocks.
Score: 1
|I think Chrome will have to push really hard and come up with something exceptionally brilliant to beat Safari and Firefox. Yes, they concentrate on speed, but just like the article said - it's not 10 times faster than Firefox in real life!
Score: 0
|Can't every browser beat one that can't even remain running?
I even prefer IE to Safari.
Score: 1
|Trying to defeat an Apple product is about as easy as doing push ups on your eye lashes.
Score: -9
|"As of now, the average Web browser runs 29% faster in XP SP3 than Vista SP2."
No kidding, everyone, even the Microsoft fanboi's on here know Vista is a bloated, broken, super expensive pig.
Score: -6
|i think of Vista as a stepping stone (i think i have since it was released) at this point, i'm glad i never actually bought it outright :P just came with a new PC, happened to have zero issues with it and kept it til this day
i'll switch to 7 when it retails, going as far as to buy it pre SP* this time around too, but hey i guess consumers spoke and MS listened when it comes to Vista, we all wanted something leaner and meaner from the get go and we're getting just that soon and have already if you're using 7 RC
but i mean come on, are you really still going around bashing Vista years after its launched? have you nothing better to do, we all know what the 'problems' are/were by now and so does Microsoft, we don't need a rehash every day lol
at least 7 will be cheap for the majority to upgrade and should run great on older hardware (has on my test systems thus far), if somebody wanted to try the 4th most popular OS (that being OS 10) they would have to fork over a few thousand dollars, thats appealing... not really
Score: 1
|Perhaps you are already aware of this, if you bought a PC with Vista you paid money for Vista.
If you are a student and you get a "discount" for Microsoft Products, you get that discount because you pay enormous computer use fees and your university has signed an agreement to use Microsoft software.
If you are in a business and you use Microsoft Office, be aware that you are paying for Microsoft software development with that software. Office is Microsoft's cash cow, it is amongst their most profitable divisions, and it is the key that ties almost all its other software to your machine.
Chrome OS and browser is going to start taking down this dominance, and we will all win as a result, whether you use MS/Apple/Linux/Google. This is exactly what this industry needs, and where Sun and Novell failed miserably. (IBM failed also but they know where the money is anyway.)
Score: -1
|i'm aware, paid nowhere near full price though :P
Score: 0
|artfuldodga, the trick is to buy used from a very, very poor person, as long as the the total cost is less than the price of the O/S you've cracked it.
Score: 0
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