RSSGoogle Chrome 2 is 20% faster than Chrome 1 in physical speed tests
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published May 22, 2009, 10:34 PM
Yesterday, Google traded development track 1 of its Chrome Web browser for track 2, making the latter effectively the "stable" edition of the browser, even though it's still officially under development and not yet feature-complete. Many users of version 1 found themselves automatically upgraded to version 2, and may very well have noticed a subsequent speed increase from the JavaScript interpreter.
In a blog post yesterday, Google said that speed increase would be about 30%. But is that an accurate assessment, especially given that Google's V8 JavaScript benchmark was devised by Google to test its V8 JavaScript interpreter?
On Betanews' new physical test platform for Windows-based Web browsers and operating systems, whose construction was completed Friday, our latest tests show that Chrome 2.0.177.1 was 20.4% faster than Chrome 1.0.154.65, in independent benchmarks other than V8 related specifically to speed. Our adjusted performance score for Chrome 2 on our new platform was 21.4% better than Chrome 1, relative to the performance of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on the same system.
For the past few months, we'd been testing Web browser performance on easy-to-manage virtual machines. Our move to a physical platform did change our index numbers with respect to Windows Vista, but it changed them fairly proportionately to one another.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 ran a little faster in Windows Vista than the IE7 we measured on a virtual system. That should be no surprise to anybody. Naturally, nothing is slower than IE7, which is why we still use it as our index system. But as we verified by repeating the test circumstances from scratch, IE7's speed did jump more than the other browsers in our test.
But not by much. While our initial performance index score for Internet Explorer 8 showed it easily doubling IE7 with room to spare, our reset score was still double that of IE7, with about 215% the speed of its predecessor. IE8's physical index score is 2.03, reflecting a much better SunSpider score for IE7 on the physical platform -- its string processing score is especially higher.
All the other browsers in our test are, as we said, proportionately lower, but with variations less-than-slight enough to justify our having moved our test bed to a physical platform. In our latest tests, Apple's Safari 4 beta registered a score of 14.12 -- meaning Apple's latest browser performs over 14 times better than Microsoft's earlier browser. Divide that score by 2.03, and you'll see how much better performer Safari 4 is than IE8.
Google is following close behind in the race for browser performance, with an index score of 12.23. Let's break that score down a bit: Version 2 scored a 3.28 against IE7 in the HowToCreate.co.uk CSS rendering test, with the JavaScript timer adjusted to compensate for browsers (especially Safari) that fire the onLoad event differently. That's a test that loads a page and then renders a cavalcade of successive blocks of CSS. Since the scores for those renderings vary from the very first one down the line, we take that test five times and average their times together. Chrome 1 scored a 2.83 in that test, with IE8 scoring 1.99 and the Safari 4 beta a stunning 5.98. Even after compensating for what some call an anomaly and others a "cheat," Safari 4's score remains outstanding.
Chrome 2's Celtic Kane basic JavaScript score remains high at 4.83, but Safari 4's score here remains incredible at 7.68. Where Chrome's performance pulls up closest to Safari's is in the SunSpider test -- a 32.48 versus a 34.50. The big reason for these huge scores has to do with string processing -- how long it takes to process text in memory. IE7 is notoriously slow at this, but IE8's score in string processing of 12.74 indicates that IE8 is almost 13 times faster than its predecessor at handling text.
After restarting our test matrix fresh on a physical Vista platform, we're adjusting the scores for Firefox browsers to account for the faster IE7. But our latest battery of tests still verify that of Mozilla's three development browsers, the one the public's testing right now -- Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 -- remains the fastest. We've noted the "Beta 5" designation has recently been removed from the 3.5 Beta 5 "Shiretoko" track, indicating a likely move to Release Candidate status. But while Beta 4 posted a revised index score of 8.49, the latest daily build of the private tests of 3.5 posted a 7.47 -- a score we verified by repeating the circumstances. And the latest daily build of Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 "Minefield" followed behind at 7.25.
We'll be following the suddenly resurgent arena of competitive Web browser development on our physical platform from now on. Our machine uses a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard with an Intel 965 chipset, running a 2.40 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 processor with 3 GB of DDR2 DRAM. Our display adapter is an Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS, and our physical Vista platform is running an Nvidia brand driver.
I like that Chrome became even faster, but as I understand there are security concerns and in other things it's just catching up with other browsers. Here's a pretty critical post: http://www.auslogics.com...d-and-the-disappointing/
Score: 0
|I don't like chrome for it can't enlarge text of websites, I have to use Mother's Magnifier to do it.
Computer screen magnifier URL:http://www.mothersmagnifier.com
Score: -2
|It can't? I guess i must be hallucinating the larger text when i hit (ctrl)(+)...
Or was your post FUD to help sell whatever is at the link you provided so "helpfully?"
Score: 0
|How did you get hold of Firefox 3.5 beta 5 since it doesn't exist? 3.5beta5pre does exist, though or rather did exist. Shiretoko is telling me only 3.5pre today, as though it's going to release candidate soon.
Score: 0
|In the chart, there is an asterisk next to Firefox 3.5 beta 5. At the bottom of the chart, the asterisk note explains "denotes a nightly development build." In other words, it's "post-beta4 but pre-beta5" and there's simply not enough room in the chart for such a long label.
Score: 0
|I saw that before I wrote, but this is BetaNews, not Ars Technica, so I shouldn't worry too much about accuracy.
Score: -1
|Great! But will it run Quake Live yet?
Score: 0
|I wonder when will Google programmers get it that JavaScript speed is not everything.
Sure i like speed, but i also want functionality and Chrome doesn't have any. Tabs are like prehistoric thing all browsers have these days, that searchbar thing is nothing to brag about and i never used those crappy shortcuts to access so called web apps (i just use bookmarks so i don't clutter my desktop space). I'm especially dissapointed that there is NO GMail integration with notifier like GMail Notifier for Firefox. I mean its their service and they don't take advantage of it, who will? Or bookmarks synchronization. I need this thing to keep my netbook and PC synchronized.
Score: 2
|I've been a fan of Chrome since the start. I see these tests talking of its speed all over the place, but in every day browsing I'm no longer finding Chrome faster ,or as fast as the opposition. My default is now Opera 10 alpha, and if that should fail it would be back to Firefox beta. When a new Chrome arrives I'll download and try it, and every time it now disappoints, and that's a shame.
Score: 1
|Another comment -- as a Chromium developer I don't understand your comments (in this article or previous) about "track 1" and "track 2" at all. There aren't "two development tracks". There is one development track, releases of which trickle down through three distinct update channels as they are found to be more stable. Major version numbers are not a big deal in Chromium development and simply indicate a milestone of collected work -- as of this writing the Chromium trunk already reads "3.x" because milestone 2 has been stabilized and work is now proceeding on the next milestone. These builds will first go to Dev channel users, then Beta, then Stable. I'm not sure what you mean by "officially under development and not yet feature-complete" -- no browser I've ever seen is "feature complete" or not under development (save IE's sad lag after IE 6), and the Chromium code is no exception. You act as if the versioning system is somehow misleading users but this is the first place I have seen such confusion.
Score: 1
|Well, certainly I don't want to be contributing to any confusion, pkasting, so I can certainly change my use of language and refer to the "update channels" you're more familiar with. Of course, I will need to correct or compensate for Google spokespersons' use of the "tracks" term, but I understand that the marketing team and the development team rarely work in the same office.
As for your question about methodology, I had been avoiding repeating myself on this subject, but you're right, I should post a side note on that topic, especially now that this methodology has been updated.
-SF3
Score: 1
|Is there somewhere that a Google spokesperson used "update tracks" (except perhaps as another name for the various update channels)?
What I mean by this is that I'm less confused by your use of the word "tracks" as by your application of it to the milestone 1 series builds (1.x, which were up until recently shipping in the stable channel) and the milestone 2 series builds that have been in the dev channel for about five months, beta for two, and just arrived in stable. You seemed to be describing a different versioning process than I'm familiar with.
Score: 0
|I had certainly heard elsewhere from a Google person that Track 1 represented their then current stable application and that Track 2 was their development application.
Score: 0
|Is there a page that lists the precise tests conducted and how they are combined into a final score?
It seems a bit disingenuous to pooh-pooh the V8 benchmark as biased but then include in your suite Apple's SunSpider benchmark, which must certainly face the same conflict-of-interest questions. Perhaps simply including both, as both are public tests with source code available to all browser makers, would be the most fair.
Score: 2
|I'd rather it be 20% slower but have a useful plugin library. *cough* Adblock Plus *cough*
Score: 1
|*cough* And Nuke Anything Enhanced... *cough*
Score: 0
|