Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Google Chrome 12 vs. Firefox 5 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5
With the release of Firefox 5 and Opera 11.50, TomsHardware took 5 most popular web browsers and compared them against each other.
Internet Explorer 9
Google Chrome 12
Firefox 5
Opera 11.50
Safari 5
What are the results? Let’s check them out.
Startup Time
Page Load Times
JavaScript
Silverlight
JSGameBench
Psychedelic Browsing
Memory Usage
Battery Life
Conclusion
Conformance Testing
Standards Conformance
When it comes to summarizing all the results, Google Chrome 12 takes the crown and is followed by IE9, Firefox 5, Opera and Safari.
So here you have it folks. Whether or not Chrome will continue to be the king of the hill with the upcoming releases of Internet Explorer 10, Firefox 6 and Opera 12, remains to be seen.
For even more details, visit the original post.
[Thanks, Ichann]
About (Author Profile)
Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.
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There seems some very strange tests amongt those, as if they are cherry picking the benchmarks to use, to come up with a pre-determined outcome.
Whatever happened to proper unbiased benchmarks on finalised and ratified standards like Sputnik Runner and the like.
There may be more unbiased tests on ratified standards if such tests exists. As it is, Sputnik only tests Javascript conformance, which is only one aspect of all the testing areas Tom’s Hardware is looking to do.
There arent anymore more tests apart from sunspider and peacemark.
Have you lost your jelly beans?
There are more on the site.
Its interesting to see IE9 still tops few test even after many releases by other browsers!!
IE9 still doesn’t support text shadow lol
or last-child
or a proper box model
IE9 supports last-child. But I have no idea why they won’t support text shadow. seems strange.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc351024(v=vs.85).aspx#pseudoclasses
Safari appears to be nowhere close to the other browsers.
For some reason Apple think releasing a new version every year is adequate when actually it gets old really quickly.
Actually Safari 5.1 is in beta now and the results should be pretty impressive, from what have I heard
Actually Safari 5.1 is in beta now and the results should be pretty impressive, from what have I heard
“Startup Time” does they count the time the browser takes to load completely or just present itself on the screen? Chrome may open fast but after the main window is loaded you have to wait for the “Speed Dial” page to be loaded, etc… Where in some other browsers everything is already opened from start…
Tests are very relative…
“Tests are very relative…”
That’s true. It’s not so easy to evaluate different products with tests.
But this test seems better than any other you can see whenever a new browser version appears. Almost every time X version of Y browser is released, you can see the tests where that “perfect” browser is the best for everything.
This one seems more objective
It’s just strange that Chrome is heavier and laggier (noticeable by human’s eyes) than the other browsers in my “slow” machine (and even on my main normal computer) and when you put it in those “top” test machines it gets a lot of wins.
Well you said it yourself.
Its like running Vista on a pentium.
But even in “top” computers. Don’t you notice a lag when you open a tab….. and after enter an address and pressing enter? It’s like IE7’s “Connecting”. :o
I notice this as well. If I have a lot of tabs open in Chrome, and switch tabs, I get a blank white screen for a few seconds. And sometimes the scroll bar on the right “sticks” when I maximize the browser leaving a gap, and sometimes the bottom of the browser window is blank where the download box appears.
It seems Microsoft have do many work with IE 9 and the gap between other browser is now very small. If I take a look on security updates, so I think Firefox, Goolge Chrome and Opera have more as IE 9.
to Tiago Sá:
CSS 3 is at present a working draft, also HTML 5 is in development. So I think, you can’t really compare the top 5 browsers. And aside from that, browser developers can insert the W3C specification if they want, but they don’t have to do that. Take a look at Opera, he have a problem with the CSS1 width and Safari have a problem with list-style-image since many years.
So why did Opera not prevail against the other browsers bar Safari? It’s usually great at being second in tests like these, making it a great secondary browser, but not anymore it seems…
Lack of hardware acceleration is the killer hopefully they will implement it soon.
+ memory usage. Doubt it’s all due to “undo closed tabs” feature but anyway… Free memory = wasted memory.
Nowadays Efficiency Benchmarks are all about memory, I can remember when it was all about CPU efficiency where Opera shines relative to the other browsers.
care to provide examples of tests where opera ‘shines relative to the other browsers’?
Opera is the best browser, not withstanding any of these tests. Just ask any Opera user.
“When it comes to summarizing all the results…” on Standards Conformance(33 tests) picture when you sum up browsers positions 1-5th place, only first two (chrome/firefox) have 33 tests, other browsers have 31 total each. Browser fails on 2 tests or bad math, hmm ?
In the very last info graphic, the “Standards Conformance” Total Placing grid, it says there are 33 tests, but when you count up the number of places thatshould be present (5 browsers X 33 tests = 165 places) you see that thereare only 159 places. It seems there are 6 missing places. Here’s an imageI made to show this :http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r200/pixel-panther/More%20photos%20Yay/StandardsConformance-TotalPlacinggrid.jpg
D’oh! Sorry for repeating what you already said, OperaSerb.
Page Load Times
I’m surprised at this one. Chrome uses 6 connections per server, Opera has 16 max/64 total by default. Opera is faster on my machine than these tests suggest. Only Chrome beats it or comes close. The other three browsers aren’t even close.
Memory Usage
Definitely no surprise here. Chrome and now IE9 use separate processes for each tab, which by design use more RAM. Not a problem if you have a modern machine, but it will bog down older systems. Opera 11.50 utilizes RAM best on my machine, followed by Firefox 5. I won’t even mention IE9’s footprint.
Overall, with out-of-the box features, small file download, small install, extensions support and browsing speed makes Opera the best in my view. I think these tests definitely don’t tell the whole story. I have and use all the 5 major browsers on my system, and if you haven’t tried Opera, I recommend you give it a spin.
You just might make a switch…
The difference in browser start up times with one tab
over the 5 browsers is just under 0.6 seconds.That test is irrelevant.
If the difference was 10 seconds, then it would be an issue. But when
you’re talking about the slowest browser starting in 1.3 seconds, who
cares. 1.3 seconds is absolutely nothing.
And the variance in the start time with 8 tabs isn’t really bad. Less than 6 seconds after clicking the mouse you’re up and running. Iit makes me laugh at how impatient we have become if 8 tabs coming up in 6 seconds is just to slow for peoples busy lives.
The 3 page load time tests for Google, Facebook and Youtube are all irrelevant as well as the worst result on any of those 3 tests was still well under 1 SECOND. If there are people somewhere getting wound up or conversely, getting smug because on browser loads the page a FRACTION OF A SECOND quicker or slower than another browser, then god help them.
The other tests like benchmarks and hardware acceleration are possibly worth looking at, but I personally don’t know what any of those tests mean to everyday users in the real world.
i dont know about the tests…. but i think internet explorer 9 is the best
A good point to add is that IE9 cannot play all types of online videos(for some reason), while on the other hand, chrome has been able to play these.
Chrome would surely fly if they ever increase the damn 6 concurrent connection limit like every other major browser!