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Firefox Beta Scores 93 On Acid3 Test

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the scored-worse-on-meth2-test dept.

CodeShark writes "Mozilla released their latest Firefox 3.X beta today (3.5b4), and increased their score on the Acid 3 test to 93 [on my XP laptop], with tests 70, 71, and tests 75-79 being the final challenges. Curiously though, the current release of the top Acid3 performer — Safari — still not only rates higher (I got scores of 99 once and 100 most of the time) but is usually faster by a little (1.1 sec avg. vs. 1.4 over ten runs apiece) but only because the new Firefox beta was all over the map — frequently better by 25% (.85sec) or tanking badly with rendering times in the 2.5 — 3 second range, and both suffer performance hits on one test (#69)."

3 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. Opera 10 as well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Opera 10alpha is also a 100/100 on the acid 3 since dec 12, 2008

    http://www.opera.com/docs/history/

  2. Garbage collection by tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

    Presumably the test should take about the same time to run each time, right?

    One of the 100 tests is JavaScript garbage collection. A garbage collector that uses tracing without reference counting isn't necessarily guaranteed to finish in a given amount of time.

  3. Re:Why the variation? by auzy · · Score: 5, Informative

    One of the tests is related to rendering speed (#69) not design faults. That's because it wants the test to be completed fast enough to achieve 30fps.

    Under system load, or browser load (such as extra stuff being done in the rendering thread whilst the test is running), a browser may not always pass this test. Whilst its an OK test, there will be no way to reliably pass it 100% of the time, and as CPU's become faster and more efficient, its likely browsers will pass eventually regardless of if they optimise their code or not.

    Its also one example of why the ACID tests are quite overrated.