Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Takes the Performance Crown From Chrome
diegocg writes "Recent browser benchmarks are showing surprising results: in 'a geometric mean of all four performance-based categories: Wait Times, JavaScript/DOM, HTML5/CSS3, and Hardware Acceleration,' Firefox 22 'pulls off an upset, replacing the long-time performance champion Google Chrome 27 as the new speed king.' (Other browsers benchmarked were IE10, Opera 12, and Opera Next.) With these results, and Firefox developers focusing in fixing the UI sluggishness, can this be the start of a Firefox comeback, after years of slow market share decline?"
Real adblock that stops unnecessary downloads makes more performance difference at this point, than any sort of rendering engine chances. It has the nice side effect of limiting how much tracking of you goes on too.
I don't get the love for Chrome among geeks. Why would anyone willingly use a browser funded by a search giant who makes money off of scouring your privacy and already has a history of handing things over to the NSA?
Neat test but I think the summary could at least clarify that the test system is Windows 8 64 Bit. It doesn't really mean a whole lot to me when I'm running a 64 bit distribution of GNU/Linux. Also the tests are selected by Tom's Hardware as a suite ... some of these tests are fairly meaningless to me and I feel like something like cold start time should be more heavily weighted than, say, hardware acceleration performance. The wait time on start up affects everyone and is unavoidable where hardware acceleration is nice but also not something I focus on. Also, why is a topic like "security" included in a "performance" test? I think standards compliance and security should be separated out to their own scores.
Is anyone reading this actually using Windows 8?
My work here is dung.
I use it because it respects my privacy and freedom, not that i ever complained about firefox being slow, but speed was never the main factor of my decision to use firefox instead of chrome.
I regularly see my Firefox cracking a gig of memory. Then after a few days use it often starts getting weird. Then when I try to quit it the damn thing won't go away so I have to do a "Force Quit". I primarily keep using it because firebug is so good.
They like it for the same reason non-geeks do: it is very fast and stable, and it doesn't seem to leak memory like Firefox.
That said, I abandoned it because they got rid of their support for vertical tabs.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Geometric mean is useful for comparing when the expected range or units of values is different. For example, startup time is measured in seconds, but BrowsingBench numbers are things like the unitless 6646. The arithmetic mean would fail to "normalize" these values and give disproportionate weight to some over others; the geometric mean is one way of trying to account for this.
R.Mo
god-fucking-dammit how many freaking times do we have to tell you that firefox is not disabling that option, its simply hiding it from the options menu. You can still disable javascript through the about:config menu (javascript.enable) and addons like noscript.
On all my systems I start the system when I boot up and it stays running pretty much indefinitely. When I am done with the system for the day I just hibernate the system. I just care how well the browser works over time and that it doesn't go nuts memory wise. Since my laptop has 16GB of ram I worry very little about the browser.
I do like hardware acceleration a lot though. What I find is that it translates to better battery usage and the system runs faster while also running longer.
Overall I care about performance, standard compliance, security, responsiveness, and to some extent memory usage. At this point though it doesn't really matter if you choose Firefox or Chrome.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Firefox has addons, several of which will let you disable js if that is your thing. NoScript is a popular one.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There's nothing stopping you from sticking with Firefox 22. While later versions will have more support for more modern standards, if you're not going to run Javascript then it's not going to matter a whole lot what the new standards are.
In the meantime, understand too that while Firefox 23+ may not provide a UI to disable JS across the browser, it is still a low-level setting for now in about:config, and Firefox continues to be the only browser that supports extensions - meaning that options like YesScript, NoScript, and to a lesser extent Ad-block+ will always be available to provide the functionality you're after.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It doesn't matter that much if one is slightly faster in Javascript or rendering when Firefox will halt up for 5-10 seconds rendering a new tab. Maybe it's faster than Chrome, but if I have to wait for it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much Firefox devs work on "UI sluggishness" if it's a single thing can lock up all input to the browser.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Hardware acceleration gives you nice smooth scrolling. It is also vital for Firefox because they changed the way images are decoded in a misguided attempt to reduce memory consumption. Instead of decoding images are as they are loaded they are now decoded as they are displayed, so unless you have top-notch hardware with full acceleration scrolling judders like mad on pages with medium sizes images.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So what's your theory on why Tom's Hardware would change their ranking system specifically to engineer a Firefox victory?
I know people joke about never reading TFA, but knee-jerk cynicism is no replacement for actual knowledge. If you're going to accuse someone of deceit, you really ought to at least check on who's making them claim in the first place.
See "How not to lie with statistics: the correct way to summarize benchmark results"
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=5673
http://ece.uprm.edu/~nayda/Courses/Icom6115F06/Papers/paper4.pdf
The test with the biggest difference was memory usage, with Firefox using half the memory of Chrome. This matches comparisons I have done. If you ever have to use an older computer with 2GB of RAM Chrome is pretty much unusable while Firefox works fine. I have an SSD so I turned off virtual memory. With 8GB of RAM I would have to close Chrome if I want to play a game but have no problems with Firefox.
Perhaps you could launch IE 6 to refresh your memory. I think you begin to think about IE6 with nostalgia...
To be more specific, the geometric mean has the property that a 5% change in factor A and a 5% change in factor B have the same influence on the result, regardless of their units.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Just set gfx.direct2d.disabled=true and the problem is solved. That's what the fix for the bug is anyway (they'll do it automatically with a hardware blacklist). It isn't like Mozilla can force AMD to fix their broken, abandoned drivers.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Firefox may support a more robust extension model than other browsers, but it certainly isn't the only browser that supports extensions.
.
At this point, if you are deciding upon which browser to use, perhaps the browser with the marginally highest performance benchmark numbers may not be the browser for you. Here is a difference that matters more to me: when I change the http proxy settings in Firefox, only Firefox is affected. However, when i change the http proxy settings in Chrome, the proxy settings for Windows are changed, meaning that other applications are affected. For this reason I use Firefox instead of Chrome, even though Firefox is a lot slower on a web page I frequent a lot.
Uh, that's exactly what chromes profiles do. I've got 2 different chrome windows right now, both logged into their own gmail accounts. Now, if you want them in the same window, that's not possible. The only way to do that is with gmail's "switch user" feature, but that's gmail specific, and doesn't isolate all of your data (cookies, history, etc) the way chrome profiles do.
Even more specific, it's the nth root of the product of n numbers, but your example explains better why it's used in this case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_mean
Of course, the median is another useful indicator of central tendancy, less effected by extreme values...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median
Only the worst of Java-script heavy pages slow down on modern hardware with any of the browsers. 99.999% of the time the "slow" is because of AJAX queries to an unresponsive website, and there is bugger all the browser can do about that.
I tweak code performance beyond reasonableness, too. It's a "hacker thing." But it's not something the user can really see or notice once the first rounds of tuning are done, though. But there's an ego involved in producing the best and fastest code possible, even if no one else can tell the difference without a nanosecond stopwatch.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Although I can believe this to be true in the Desktop - at least in Windows desktop.
The truth is that on the Android platform the situation is quite diferent. You can check this link: http://www.cactusinception.info/2013/06/android-browser-benckmark-june-2013.html
The comparison is from last month, and if you read the iOS post about the browsers, you can see the testing methodology changed a bit. But still, using the new tests, Firefox still comes out in the back, altough in that case Opera surpasses Chrome. That part will be updated very soon.
Erm Chrome actually uses the most memory while Firefox uses the least.
about:config is the browser equivalent of the Windows registry or /etc/ files. Unless you're actually doing something a computer professional would need to do, it's a failure of user interface to require the user to do it.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
Holy crap, save yourself some serious pain and just use Chrome's native developer tools (which are, IMO, superior to Firebug) rather than using that crappy Firebug Lite hack.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
Depends on how you use it. [In my experience] Chrome does well with Netflix, but flakes out when my wife is trying to play FB games. FF will play her games, but cannibalizes itself on memory if she does it for long - IE does better (as dirty as I feel saying that.) Chrome and FF come out as about a wash for casual browsing but, for reasons that may be irrational, I've leaned toward Chrome ever since FF ticked me off for blowing out memory when my wife was gaming. [Damn you Candy Crush! I used to actually see my wife's FACE from time to time!]
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Firefox is funded by the same search giant.
Well, once you get past the tech savvy crowd which is like 1% of the browsing population, even if Firefox truly beats Chrome by a big margin, I don't think this is going to change things one bit for Firefox.
Chrome is bundled with Java, Acrobat and Flash updates, which ~98% of computers in the world have. Forget a checkbox in a hurry because you want to do something useful and Chrome is installed.
It is bundled with many PCs by the OEMs who get paid for it.
It is constantly advertised on TV and on Google properties like Google search engine and Youtube, especially to Opera and IE users.
Mozilla doesn't have the resources to do the above and,all this explains Chromes' growth among the nontech crowd more than just performance differences.
I have personally seen many folks for who I installed Firefox back in the day end up using Chrome. When I ask them, most of the time they don't have no idea how they got it. Google's been sinking a lot of money into Chrome over the years(even paying websites $1 per download they drive) and it makes sense because one more Chrome install they don't have to pay money to Firefox and Opera for being the default search for another user. Benchmarks are not going to change any of this.
And what is for the average user the relevance to speed by optional debugging tools?
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I really think the Firefox people think of it like hiding an option to make your feet a valid target on a hypothetical "smart" shotgun. It's an intentional user interface failure because they actually don't want you to shoot yourself in the foot. Of course, if you're a professional who "knows what you're doing", then you can easily change a text file or install No Script.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Wake me up when the Chrom(e/ium) console is better. Yes, both allow tab-completion of properties of an object. However (as a contrieved example), say you have an object "foo" that has a method "bar" that returns an object of type "baz". In both, I can type "foo.b" and select the "bar" method. But in Firebug, I'm able to write "foo.bar()." and autocomplete properties of "baz". If you're working with something like ExtJS it's godsend. Also the network tab is much more useful in Firebug - in Chrom(e/ium) one can sort by type, but there's no way to show only requests of a certain type.
A geometric mean has that effect (unit-independent figures of merit) only if its constituents "poijt in the same direction". If you multiply opposing figures, a browser can put out 25% less work over a fixed time (as in fps) and take 33% more time for a fixed-workload test, and both changes would cancel out..
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
I think it's the pauses. This is mostly speculation, but from what I understand Firefox runs very quickly but much of it is still single-threaded (or in simpler terms, most of what it does is running in a single sequential order). That means Firefox might be doing important calculations lightning fast in the background, but while those calculations are running the graphical window in front of you pauses temporarily. Chrome is better at multi-threaded, multi-process execution, so the user interface is responsive while background work happens.
Both might take 12 seconds to render a particular web page, but Chrome might load one visual element every few tenths of a second for the entire 12 seconds. Firefox will appear to load half the page, freeze for 9 seconds, then load the last bits. Either way you're done in 12 seconds, but Firefox gives the impression of being painfully slow.
The good news is, per the article Firefox is putting a renewed investment in asynchronous operations: https://dutherenverseauborddelatable.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/announcing-project-async-responsive/ (same link as up top) and further up in the discussion someone mentioned that Firefox has decided to revisit their abandoned project to split individual browser tabs into separate threads and processes http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3929071&cid=44165865
Unless you're actually doing something a computer professional would need to do, it's a failure of user interface to require the user to do it.
What? Mozilla is now requiring everyone to use about:config? I haven't had to do that yet, have they just not gotten to me yet? Will my family also be required to do it, or can I do it for them?
Oh, what's that? You only need to use it if you're disabling Javascript, or changing any of the other minutiae that only a super-user who isn't going to be angry or confused at seeing about:config would bother changing in the first place? Doesn't seem like such a problem to open about:config, type "javascript" into the search bar, and find the option to disable it, does it?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
1 Gb seems high. I have 24 tabs open, run a bunch of plug-ins (Ghostery, Noscript, Adblock Plus, All-in-One Gestures, Nagios Checker, Session Manager, Download Helper, Brief, YouTube Rating Preview, Fiddler, Lastpass), add-ons (Java, Flash, VMWare Rconsole plug-in) and I'm hovering around 580 Mb.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
I've never seen anyone other than myself change their mind or behavior based on an Internet argument so I certainly won't try to convert you.
But I'll tell you anyway why I think running your computer all the time is stupid and wasteful, and we can both happily celebrate your freedom of choice.
I support some fairly large computer installations at work, two churches, and two schools. Some people use your philosophy, some use mine. I have seen the results.
1) Computers do not catch zero-day infections when they are not running. The only true defense against zero-day exploits is to reduce attack surface, and a powered off computer has no attack surface.
2) Computers are never exploited by internet criminals to set up child porn distribution nodes while they are not running. I had to testify in a court case once in which a young man barely escaped being permanently labeled a sex offender simply because his windows PC was hacked. Always-on PCs are high-value targets for such criminals, and in most US jurisdictions simply owning the PC makes you a guilty party, under child porn laws, regardless of any other issues.
3) Computers do not spontaneously catch fire when they are not running. I have seen three or four of them burst into flame with no warning during my career (the worst was an IBM 5151 monitor, which was burning like a campfire and belching thick carcinogenic smoke in less than five minutes). If this had happened during non-working hours the entire building probably would have been heavily damaged by the fire department's hoses.
4) Computers that are not running do not generate profits for companies (such as the major energy producers and telcos) that spend money to undermine my preferred culture and systems of government. Running your computer 24/365 sends at least $100 a year to the power company, for most people more like $250 a year (use a kill-a-watt meter and a calculator to determine your own expenditure).
5) Computers that are not running do not generate pollution. My grandfather and favorite uncle died of lung cancer, so pollution is a very personal issue. Power in my area is from natural-gas fired turbines running off fracked gas, so running my computer pollutes water tables and increases earthquake risk as well as making air pollution.
6) In the Windows world (I run linux, personally) when you shut down daily you can install updates at shutdown time and thus maintain your patchlevels without interupting your use of the computer. Always-on computers are slightly less convenient to keep patched up-to-date, since you often have to reboot windows to get patched up properly.
But to each his own, I guess... my systems all boot in less time than it takes for me to settle in at a workstation so that's not an issue for me. I don't parachute from orbit into a chair and start typing furiously, it's just not my style!
You have to make your own risk and value assessments. If you decide the risk and cost is not worth saving a few milliseconds at boot time, make sure you put the computer on a power strip. Nearly all PCs don't really turn off any more without a powerstrip.
We took a lighting strike at my daughter's school a few years back, that struck dirt less than ten feet from the building in the middle of the night.
The server room UPS was turned into a smoking pile of fused plastic and metal from the ground surge. The network switches were fried by the UPS and every single powered-on system connected to the network (including the servers) was toasted. The end user PCs were a total loss, but we salvaged the HDDs from the servers and put them in new chassis, and the printers only lost their (replaceable) network interface cards. User PCs on switched-off power strips were completely unaffected by this event, even though several of them were closer to the actual strike than the UPS was.
So,
7) powered down computers are less likely to be damaged by lightning strikes.
Humans generally sleep about a third of our lifetimes. So I turn off my computer while I'm asleep and reduce many of my computing risks and costs by 30% or more.