RSSSpeed crown changes hands: Safari 4 slows down, now behind Chrome
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published June 8, 2009, 4:46 PM
Perhaps the absence of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, or any hint of his existence, will go down as the biggest disappointment of this year's WWDC conference in San Francisco. But it may be on the top of a list of more than one item, and down that list not too far behind Jobs' no-show, there is this news: The final release version of Safari 4 is not the fastest Web browser on Windows, despite what SVP Phil Schiller told attendees today.
The last public build of the Safari 4 beta revealed a curious slowdown in Windows 7 RC versus Windows Vista SP2 -- about 22% less rendering and JavaScript processing speed overall in Win7. That problem has apparently been rectified in the final release, with Safari 4 build 530.17, released this afternoon by Apple, scoring 21% better than the final beta build 528.17 in Win7.
But in an amazing change of fortune for Apple, Safari 4 on Vista SP2 slowed down dramatically by 20%, meeting the Win7 figures halfway. In Betanews tests this afternoon, Safari 4 posted a performance index score of 12.11 in Vista SP2, tucking the new browser back in third position behind the stable release of Google Chrome 2.0.177.1 at 12.23, and 12.24 for the beta release of Chrome 3.0.182.2.
And while Safari 4 now runs 13% faster on Win7 than on Vista, instead of the other way around, its index score now falls behind Chrome 2 by mere hundredths: a 13.41 versus Chrome 2's 13.43 and Chrome 3's 13.86. This despite Chrome 2 and Safari 4 posting 100% scores on the Acid3 standards compliance test, which makes up 25% of our index score.
What happened? Rendering speed -- the part that had been so fast for Safari that, at one point, developers suspected Apple was cheating -- slowed down in Vista by as much as a third over the final Safari 4 beta, though posted speeds were still better than 20% performance over Safari 3.2.3. General JavaScript performance suffered as well, with 28% slower scores for Safari 4 in Vista on the Celtic Kane test compared to the final beta, and 14% slower scores in Vista on the SunSpider suite. This despite accelerating scores for the same events in Win7.
Safari 4 can still claim about 45% better performance in Win7 than the browser that could be released to the public this week as Firefox 3.5 RC, which posted a 9.23 index score in Betanews tests this morning. And Safari 4 is almost six times the browser that Internet Explorer 8 is, in terms of speed and performance. But in what has become one of the most exciting and competitive races since the early '90s, at the moment, it's Chrome by a nose.
This article is misleading. It states that Chrome and Safari are faster than Firefox based on their index score. But how can the index score truly state this when 25% of the score is based on a standards test which as betanews states has nothing to do with speed. How about they disregard the standards compliance test. When I want to know what browser is the fastest, I could care less about how well they comply with standards. It's a completely unrelated metric to performance.
Score: 0
|Here too -- have switched back to the last BETA.
Score: 0
|Score: 0
|Without Ad Block Plus, this is a no go for me....
Score: 2
|This isn't really surprising as the OS X Chromium builds have been beating out the WebKit nightlies for the past month or so. I'm also happy to see the tabs revert to the bottom, the old UI was driving me nuts.
Score: 0
|glad im not imagining things. 4 final seems much less snappy than 4 beta. wonder what gives
Score: 0
|They fixed things and the correct way was slower.
It doesn't really feel all that snappy but I'll take their word for it that it's faster on some platform since it's not my default browser anyway. I'm not sure it matters how fast the third browser is because I hardly use a second browser. When Firefox and Opera can't handle a web site, there isn't much chance that Safari will.
Score: 0
|So an extra couple of extra milliseconds load time is what you people care about? IE does suck and I've been using Firefox for a while now. Security risk? Get Vista and turn on UAC, your registry can't be altered by any app or web page unless you authorize it.
Score: 0
|its like safari v safari for me. browsers awesome, but the milliseconds in loading a page seem much longer than that now, especially when switching tabs or opening a new window... seems almost slower than firefox which isnt a good place to be.
Score: 0
|How many webpages do you view in one day? You'd be surprised by the amount of time .5 seconds per request adds up to in one week, one month, one year...
Score: 0
|Chrome can get as fast as it wants - I won't touch a Google product. Unfinished, unrefined - those are Google's software hallmarks - and watch those wonderful EULAs, baby. Not interested in mac stuff either. Opera is just too much crammed into a browser and IE8 - less said, the better. I'm a reluctant Firefox convert who has come begrudgingly to appreciate that browser (I got sick and tired of IE7's instability).
Google applications in general? A waste of my valuable time.
Score: -4
|way to take that right out into who gives a damn what you think land
Score: 1
|sorry - nothing to add, but: HAHAHAHahahaha
Score: 0
|...which is exactly how I feel about Chrome, Safari and the whole "my d*** is bigger than your d***" browser speed wars.
Did I mention that it was a waste of my time?
It's a waste of my time.
Really.
As are all the other browsers (and Google apps) I don't use.
And that's why - hugely stunning revelation - I don't use them.
Score: 0
|So when Apple says that Safari is "The fastest browser", do they mean...on the Mac?
Score: 1
|apple is just talking out of its a** atm, you actually believed them the first time they said this? just stick with firefox and you're golden, safari is full of useless bloat and is a mess of a security risk and privacy concerns to boot
Score: 0
|Do they actually mean ANYTHING or are they indulging in typical Apple fare, which is to say...
...HYPE?
The question is rhetorical.
Score: 0
|What I thought was most odd is that the tabs which previously were right at the top have reverted to being below the address bar. What happened to that idea?
Score: 0
|Bringing the tab bar back down was the best move they did.
Score: 0
|The tabs at the top are what make Safari look the best!!
Anywho, Chrome sucks. It just sucks.
Firefox used to be the best...USED TO BE
Internet Explorer...No comment
Safari...Thumbs Up!
Score: -2
|Super ticked at the tabs at the bottom revert. I loved the tabs at the top. It made the browser less obtrusive and at minimum less of an eyesore than all the other browsers with their meaty navigation array.
Score: 0
|It looked freak show-ish and violated their own Human Interface Guidelines.
I'm guessing that a few people liked the idea but Chrome doesn't even have tabs in the title bar, so what were the people at Apple thinking?
Score: 0
|I applaud BetaNews efforts to benchmark the browsers. This is great.
But you really need to work on how you present the results. Reading a text full of percentages and numbers is very hard work an not very easily understandable.
Instead, make several different graphs to cover all the aspects of your test. Find a way to graph increases and decreases in speed.
And in the previous article the writer showed he doesn't know how to calculate percentages. This is inexcusable I'd say for anyone who wants to call themselves a writer or journalist.
Score: 0
|Yeah I spotted this, a few dev builds ago Chrome jumped over Safari 4 beta on my own benchmark tests in Peacekeeper.
However turning on expermental extension support really slows it down a bit (to below Safari, still fast though) but it could just be the extensions I had. I really didn't check to see if there was a single culprit.
Hopefully by the time support is finalized, well-written extensions will have little impact on Chrome performance. :)
Score: 0
|