Performance Comparison of Web Browsers

Source: http://sixrevisions.com, by: Jacob Gube

This article reports a research about performance of major web browers include Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome 3.0, Internet Explorer 8.0, Opera 10, and Safari 4.0. Browsers were tested 3 times with unprimed caches except during caching performance benchmarks.

• Javascript Speed: The fastest is Google Chrome (542.3ms), and the slowest is Internet Explorer (6.305.5ms). However, Safari becomes a big competitor of Google since its speed is only about three hundreds different from Google (863.9ms).
• CPU Usage: When Google Chrome is able to be the winner of five (3.0%), Internet Explorer should accept itself as a losser (13.1%). But again, Safari becomes Google competitor since it gains position as a second winner (4.4%).
• DOM Selection Speed: At this point, Opera is proved as the browser which is very responsive on asynchronous page updates (27ms), followed by Safari (30ms), and Google Chrome (39ms).
• CSS Rendering Speed: There is a big difference between the fastest and the slowest here. When Google Chrome is able to render in 91ms, Internet Explorer is only able to render in 793ms.
• Page Load Time: In this case, the differences between 5 browsers are not too much. When Firefox as the fastest proved 1.34ms, Google Chrome proved 1.45s.
• CSS Rendering Speed: There is a big difference between the fastest and the slowest here. When Google Chrome is able to render in 91s, Internet Explorer is only able to render in 793ms. That speeds are followed by Opera in 1.50s, Safari in 1.61s, and Internet Explorer in 1.61.
• Browser Cache Performance: When the test proved Google Chrome is able to load in 0.72s, the test also proved Safari is only able to load in 0.89s.

Since the overall performance shows that Google Chrome now is the winner of five major web browsers, I am very interested to download and use that browser for my internet activity. This finding is very surprising because it has been a long time I've believed that Firefox is the best browser.