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Windows 10 IE With Spartan Engine Performance Vs. Chrome and Firefox

Posted by Soulskill on from the attempting-to-battle-back dept.

MojoKid writes: In Microsoft's latest Windows 10 preview build released last week, Cortana made an entrance, but the much-anticipated Spartan browser did not. However, little did we realize that some of Spartan made the cut, in the form of an experimental rendering engine hidden under IE's hood. Microsoft has separated its Trident rendering engine into two separate versions: one is for Spartan, called EdgeHTML, while the other remains under its legacy naming with Internet Explorer. The reason Microsoft doesn't simply forego the older version is due to compatibility concerns. If you're running the Windows 10 9926 build, chances are good that you're automatically taking advantage of the new EdgeHTML engine in IE. To check, you can type 'about:flags' into the address bar. "Automatic" means that the non-Spartan Trident engine will be called-upon only if needed. In all other cases, you'll be taking advantage of the future Spartan web rendering engine. Performance-wise, the results with IE are like night and day in certain spots. Some of the improvements are significant. IE's Sunspider result already outperforms the competition, but it has been further improved. And with Kraken, the latency with the Spartan-powered Trident engine dropped 40%. Similar results are seen with a boost in the Octane web browser test as well.

2 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. that reads like a press release by wardk · · Score: 0, Troll

    Microsoft can't afford advertise elsewhere?

  2. Re:But does it matter any more? by paavo512 · · Score: 0, Troll

    I guess they've got to have a browser, every OS comes with one. It used to be that Microsoft was at their best as the underdog. If the browser were good enough, I'd switch... I have no loyalty to my browser. Adding value is fine with me--if it really is value and not bloat. I don't see it happening, but you never know.

    With IE, it's more like misfeatures, like hiding the fact that my employer is carrying out a MITM attack on my encrypted connections. So sorry, there is no chance I would switch to it.