RSSFirst public Opera 10.1 beta competes against its predecessor for performance
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published October 13, 2009, 6:18 PM
At a time when performance and speed are more important to browser users than ever before, and when Web apps users need the best platform available, suddenly it's Opera Software that is having the most difficult time delivering. While Opera 10's "Turbo Mode" is intended to leverage the company's pre-rendering capabilities originally designed for the Opera Mini mobile browser, none of that matters with respect to raw JavaScript performance; and these days, Web browsers are essentially JavaScript engines with some markup on the side.
Today, the first builds of Opera 10.1 that officially bear the "Beta 1" label were released to the company's servers. Betanews tests on this latest build were not very promising, as its overall CRPI score outperforms that of the latest stable Opera 10 by less than one percentage point. In fact, scores for the first public beta fell in Vista actually fell below those of the latest stable Opera 10 by about 7%.
Opera 10 Beta 1 scores a CRPI of 6.35, which compares to a 6.30 score for the stable Opera 10 (which we retested in Vista), and a 6.56 score for the last Beta 1 preview build we tested last week.
On both newer Windows platforms (Vista and Windows 7), Opera 10 Beta 1 tended to post slower rendering times than the stable version, with the exception being a slightly faster rendering score in XP (6.17 for Beta 1 versus 6.11 for Opera 10). On Vista, for some reason, the differences in the CSS rendering test are far more pronounced, in tests we repeated just to validate the results (6.46 in Beta 1 versus 8.81 in Opera 10, and yes, O10 is faster at rendering on Vista than XP).
And even in the CSS selectors test, where the previous beta preview builds had shown some nice gains, performance fell flat or below, with scores in XP and Windows 7 for Beta 1 falling below those for the stable build. The differences are not severe, though multiple browser users who have been spoiled in recent days by the hurdle-jumping contest between Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome may be disappointed by Opera essentially bringing up the rear.
FOR THE LATEST COMPLETE CRPI SCORES:
- Expect 22.8% performance boost from next week's Firefox 3.6 beta by Scott Fulton
This is just stupid.
"At a time when performance and speed are more important to browser users than ever before, and when Web apps users need the best platform available, suddenly it's Opera Software that is having the most difficult time delivering."
Wait, Opera 10.0 has a 6.30, and 10.10 has 6.35, which is better, and yet they are "having the most difficult time delivering"?
And that moronic comment is despite the fact that their new JS engine isn't even ready yet? So what did you expect exactly?
This is just stupid, Scott.
Score: -2
|What question is that? Oh snap! a 0.05 improvement?? Points to a final improvement of probably 0.2 with a luck storm over their headquarters??
YES. Opera is trailing behind in this kind JS (should i say BS) wars, but i don't care! It's the most full featured and has the smartest design of them all. That's why i use it, sometimes aided by Firefox.
Plus, inflated numbers make it look so much worse than it is.
Score: 0
|Opera never made any claims about performance improvements in 10.10. I never made any claims about that either.
And yet BetaNews tries to turn this into some kind of idiotic "having a difficult time delivering" despite the fact that this release evidently was never supposed to focus on performance anyway. It's the Unite release!
Score: -2
|New Opera Beta is not faster but it's slower by my test with Peacekeeper.
Score: 0
|"At a time when performance and speed are more important to browser users than ever before..." I still have to hear a coworker/student/friend complain about browser speed, even for IE. I think it's easy to forget that your thoughts aren't general concensus when you interact only with geeks.
Score: 0
|Completely agree!!! I never hear of people complaining of browser speed. People complain of low connections but never that the browser is rendering fast enough or my javascript is too slow. Browser speed comparisons are great academic discussions but of little value in the real world.
Score: -1
|I could complain about rendering speed, as I'm not using the latest quad core processor, so every little bit helps. Most people who have a machine capable of running Windows Vista shouldn't really have to complain, as they probably won't notice any difference between the speed of various browsers.
I noticed a good speed up when I upgraded from Firefox 3.0 to 3.5 and Safari 3.0 to Safari 4.0, though I mostly use Firefox. Opera was fairly quick at first but hasn't kept any advantage lately.
Score: -1
|Until they fix that page loading freeze with the last few elements still remaining annoyance, and the padlock being replaced by a question mark over at your local bank, it matters not what JavaScript engine they use, or even what they call it. Opera is installed on both my machines (shortly to be installed on my brand new laptop, just two weeks to go) but for banking and such I always use Firefox or IE, anything but Opera. But when the chores have been done, Opera becomes my default again, in the real world Opera is the fastest browser I've used, I don't go around with a stopwatch timing how long things take to appear, I just know, so as those very annoying fellows from the Opera Forums are always saying, Opera rocks dude.
Score: 0
|You're such a fanboy. ;)
Score: 0
|I know, and I'm fickle to boot.
Score: 0
|Ooh. You reminded me of The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate. Darn you.
Score: 0
|Do you think we should contact Opera HQ, and tell 'em blabbery is over here making a nuisance of himself ?
Score: 0
|Fanboys will be fanboys. Even when the products they get fanatical over exists within a statistical margin-of-error equivalent market share.
This browser may be used by someone...somewhere...we think... ;)
(Hey, anything's possible. I will even admit to having used it on occasion.)
Score: 0
|Hmm, Opera has 40-50 million desktop users, and 30-40 million Opera Mini users. Add to that all the users of Opera on the thousands of devices it's preinstalled on, and Opera probably has well over 100 million users in total. Not too bad for a tiny independent browser vendor (the only independent browser vendor).
Score: -2
|Yes that is quite annoying. Or how the page finishes loading but it continues to display i.e. 35/35 elements (if you have it showing above/below the addressbar proper). Also the 100% Processor usage - issue seems far more frequent in Opera 10 than 9.64 -- only able to clear it with a _manual_ emptying of the cache from the Preferences/Config menu. Really, Opera should be able to manage it's own cache without me having to babysit it.
Also perturbing the devs refuse to fix CTRL+B and CTRL+H. Far too much focus on Unite I think.
Score: 0
|@blabbery:
You have refuted none of my claims, but thank you so much for the plethora of non-sourced, and thus completely meaningless data.
The fact is, in terms of market share, it is insignificant as a desktop browser (which is what the article relates to...). Does market share matter to a company that offers it's product for free? Well, that depends on how they make their money. If it is derived in any way from the product, then yes, it does. If it does not, then spewing a bunch of numbers regarding usage would be just as meaningless, would it not?
This is what I love about Opera users. They are founts of ever amusing hypocrisy. Market share doesn't matter (but usage does?) Speed and ACID tests don't matter (But IE sucks because it fails at both?)
But that isn't even the best...
There is always: "their new JS engine isn't even ready yet"
Ahhh...the best is always yet to come, isn't it?
The final nail in Microsoft's coffin, the Year of the Linux Desktop, Opera's new JS Engine, Duke Nukem Forever.... and of course, flying cars.
The future does indeed sound like an interesting place. Too bad it never quite seems to get here. :)
Score: 0
|Since Opera went free in 2005 (IIRC) they make their money, primarily, from Opera Mobile -- as all versions desktop/mobile/mini use the same code-base. Opera will also rebrand and customize the browser on request for the mobile market. They've done this for AT&T (likely others) -- thus users don't actually know it is Opera, as in this case (with AT&T) it will look like a Ma Bell app.
Score: -1
|PC_Tool: That's one HUGE rant right there.
Market share is unknown. As knowledgeable people are aware of, measuring global market share is impossible. What we do know is the numbers Opera reports. It's not about which one matters, it's about which one can actually be measured.
Speed matters, and Opera is fast on real sites, not just irrelevant and artificial benchmarks.
Comparing Opera's new JS engine to either of those is idiotic to say the least. Opera never promised that it would be released by now. In fact, they clearly explained that it would NOT be in Opera 10.
Score: -2
|Balderstrom:
1/3 of Opera's revenue is from the desktop version. It's definitely something they are focusing on.
Opera is making MANY TIMES MORE off of the desktop version now compared to when it became free of charge. Better yet, their desktop revenue is growing with something like 90-110% yearly!
Score: -1
|"Market share is unknown. As knowledgeable people are aware of, measuring global market share is impossible. "
Yeah. Must be why there are dozen's of organizations and companies who do just that for millions of products on a daily basis....it's because they aren't knowledgeable....
Score: -1
|Just because "dozens of organizations" are posting bogus data doesn't mean that the data becomes any less bogus. Inf act, one of the most widely quoted ones recently admitted that they had been lying all these years, saying that their methods were completely unreliable, and once again changed their stats completely and retroactively overnight. As if the change fixed anything.
But keep being gullible.
Score: -1
|True that Opera could use some speed improvements... But on most modern computers I think its fast enough, and all the other very neat features more than makes up for it.
Although a speed increase would NEVER hurt :)
Score: 0
|"Opera could use some speed improvements"
How? It's the fastes on real world sites. Artificual and useless JS benchmarks don't really count because they don't represent real sites.
Score: -1
|The version is actually Opera 10.10 and not Opera 10.1 since they seem to follow a slightly different versioning system. "Opera 10 Beta 1 scores a CRPI of 6.35..." should be "Opera 10.10 Beta 1 scores a CRPI of 6.35" and the same in other similar occurrences.
Hopefully we will see the new JavaScript engine soon after Opera 10.10 is pushed out into final.
http://my.opera.com/core/blog/2009/02/04/carakan
Score: 0
|Opera really, really need to get the new JavaScript engine out the door.
10.x is codenamed 'peregrine' for goodness sake. It's meant to be the fastest of the last 3/4 iterations of Opera given bird names.
10.1 as it stands is adding a completely useless feature to 99% of people.
Score: 1
|Opera hasn't released a beta of 10.1 yet. The latest build is 1830 and though it says "beta", a developer has confirmed that it's just a snapshot.
Score: 0
|They did. It was available on Opera's FTP servers and from the FileForum. Oddly enough, Betanews FileForum sent notification to members about it yesterday (Tuesday) ~4:15pm EST, but Opera.com didn't announce it on their own site until Wednesday morning.
Score: -1
|I use Opera 10.10 beta build 1767. It seems very fast. It is much faster than firefox 3.53 . it seems almost as quick as google chrome 3 . I'm talking about it's use on real web-sites. The build 1767 is also extremely stable
Score: -2
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