Chrome 4.0 Vs. Opera 10 Vs. Firefox 3.5

Jim Karter writes "In a three-way cage match, LifeHacker threw Chrome 4, Firefox 3.5, and Opera 10 into the ring and let the three browsers duke it out to see which would emerge as the fastest app for surfing the web. Quoting: 'Like all our previous speed tests, this one is unscientific, but thorough. We install the most current versions of each browser being tested — in this case, Opera 10, Chrome's development channel 4.0 version, and the final Firefox 3.5 with security fixes — in a system with a 2.0 GHz Intel Centrino Duo processor and 2GB of RAM, running Windows XP.'"

Comments

Re:Safari

[abhi_beckert]

Safari is in the test. It's just that they focused on the three new kids on the block, of which safari 4 is not among.

TFA does list results of Safari and IE, as well as other browsers, for every test in a separate graph.

Versions

[Fri13]

Google Chrome 4.0? I just one hour ago upgraded to latest Google Chrome beta of coming 3.0 version from Google labs. (3.0.195.10). If 3.0 has not come yet out, how can they test 4.0?

Memory

[NoYob]

I made a bee line to the memory tests and based on my browsing habits, Firefox is the winner.

Re:Memory

[hattig]

Of course using Windows Process Monitor to get memory usage for a application like Chrome which has different processes per tab/plugin leads to horrendously incorrect results, which the article acknowledges in an edit, without any attempt to get the correct figures. Shame really, as this functionality is built into Chrome...

Re:Memory

[sopssa]

One thing these tests don't take into account is the UI responsiveness, in which Opera really owns the other browsers - everything just seems fast and responsive. Chrome isn't that far, but you can still see how things like opening new tabs takes some time and isn't "instant". Firefox is also behind on UI responsiveness, and I probably dont have to mention IE (3-5 secs to open new tab, seriously?).

This is what MS tried to improve in Win7 too. Even if its not really faster technically but just feels so, it improves usability a lot.

Re:Memory

[whoop]

everything just seems fast

So true. More benchmarking tests need to include seems per second. I mean, come on, it's the 21st century and all! At least, it seems to me they should. That way their reports will seem much more seemingly accurate to what I want them to seem. ... I think.

Re:Memory

[Ash Vince]

Please bear in mind they tested on the latest stable version firefox, not the latest alpha 3.6 which has various speed improvements. Yet Chrome they used a development branch. Seems a bit biased in Chromes favour.

Re:speed

[tygerstripes]

Agreed. How many more stories about browser-speed do we need, given how insignificant the discrepancies are? For most end-users, browser lag is completely dwarfed by restricted bandwidth.

In my case, judicious application of AdBlock and NoScript make this a complete non-issue. I'm far more interested in standards compliancy and security.

Re:AdBlock

[daveime]

Well no shit Sherlock ... how long does it take to render an empty page ?

Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[David Gerard]

on Unix, anyway. Exit Firefox, then do:

for i in ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/*.sqlite; do sqlite3 $i "vacuum;" ; done

FF3.x does everything in sqlite. Some of the tables fill with crap 'cos deleted rows are marked "deleted" rather than actually being deleted and compacted. I hope future versions will run a vacuum automatically every now and then.

On this Ubuntu 9.04 box I had to apt-get install sqlite3.

Re:Fabulously useful Firefox speedup

[mindcorrosive]

Or use the Vacuum Places Improved (what kind of name is that anyway) addon from AMO:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13878
Available for FF 3.5+. Labelled experimental at the moment, but works just fine. Works magic with the "awesomebar" suggestion speed: fetching suggestions has never has been so snappy.

Re:Safari

[Hal_Porter]

Back in the old days we used to eat people who did that so that the knowledge they had gained unnaturally could be shared amongst the whole tribe. Now people have gone soft. Still one day the old ways will return.