Reliability
Our reliability test is conducted after loading 40 tabs. We open them all simultaneously and record how many pages require a reload due to broken formatting or missing elements. The best score a browser can achieve here is zero, and the worst is 40.

Once again, Opera exhibits solid reliability, only requiring one reload. The second-place finisher is Safari with five failures, followed closely by IE9 with six and Firefox with seven. Chrome suffers nine failures, putting it in last place.
Responsiveness
In the last Web Browser Grand Prix, our dusty old test system made it very easy for us to compare responsiveness. Although none of the browsers slowed to a crawl using our much more modern hardware platform, IE9 does regularly crash and restart itself. And because we have to wait for 40 tabs to finish loading before checking for failures in the reliability test, we noticed we don't wait very long when testing Opera. Firefox treats us to a short wait, too.
We're confident in calling Opera 12 the responsiveness winner. Firefox presents a strong case, while Chrome and Safari are both merely average. IE9 is dubbed weak in this discipline.
Security
BrowserScope Security is the first legitimate security test we've come across that the browsers haven't already beaten. It consists of 17 pass/fail tests, making 17 the maximum score.

Chrome 20 grabs first place with the high score of 16 tests passed, and is followed by fellow WebKit-based Apple Safari. Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 passes 13 tests to earn a third-place finish, beating arch-rival Mozilla Firefox. Opera 12 lands at the bottom, passing just ten out of the 17 tests.
- The Top Five Browsers, Tested And Ranked
- Chrome, Firefox, IE9, Opera, And Safari
- Test System Specs And Software Setup
- Test Suite And Methodology
- Startup Time
- Page Load Time
- JavaScript Performance
- DOM And CSS Performance
- HTML5 Performance
- Hardware Acceleration
- Plug-In Performance: Flash, Java, Silverlight
- Memory Efficiency
- Reliability, Responsiveness, And Security
- Standards Conformance
- Test Analysis
- Crowning A Windows 7 WBGP Champion
2. in the 40 tab test, try working in a tab during the loading of the 40 tabs. you will find lots of difference between browsers. FF hangs, Opera and Chrome remain fluid.
3. how about a test where a browser is using 1GB+ RAM and you are trying to open/close tabs. Then see the UI responsiveness. most browsers can easily handle 800MB RAM. but which browser easily handles 1.2GB+ RAM ?
maybe you should do a few memory benchmarks with ABP installed just to realistically judge what 99.99% of FF users go through.
2. in the 40 tab test, try working in a tab during the loading of the 40 tabs. you will find lots of difference between browsers. FF hangs, Opera and Chrome remain fluid.
3. how about a test where a browser is using 1GB+ RAM and you are trying to open/close tabs. Then see the UI responsiveness. most browsers can easily handle 800MB RAM. but which browser easily handles 1.2GB+ RAM ?
i tested this and found that during a HTML5 benchmark, IE9 had the least CPU usage, and most GPU usage amongst all the browsers.
maybe you should do a few memory benchmarks with ABP installed just to realistically judge what 99.99% of FF users go through.
ABP works wonderful on Firefox, i RARELY see any ad. While I have used ABP on Chrome BUT its doesn't block half the ads.
I know its Not Google's fault, its just that ABP developers are putting more effort with Firefox.
So for me, Firefox > Chrome.
Really interesting, what utility do you use for measuring GPU usage?
I'd estimate ABP usage on FF at around 5% or less based on ABP and FF usage statistics. Besides, that would give FF an unfair advantage.
MSI afterburner for GPU. windows task manager for CPU.
i sent a mail regarding this to Chris. but maybe i sent it too late for this article...
but if you run 4 instance of dromaeo in 4 tabs, the CPU usage is still 25% (using only 1 core).
so chrome is not completely multiprocessing.
in IE10 beta, if you run 4 instances of dromaeo benchmark in 4 tabs, it uses all the for cores. so we can expect better multiprocessing from IE10 and win8
Is Dromaeo (the DOM portion) working in Chrome for you? I could not get it to finish in Chrome or Safari on any of my Windows machines.
BTW, i run chrome dev version. so that could make a difference.
I still prefer Firefox since it has more features and i like it's features.
I disabled Smooth Scrolling to make it more responsive.
I just hate random freezes/stutter sometimes and some problem on Youtube while watching,
when you scroll up/down, the youtube screen is messed (Glitch).
By the way, ABP user here too.
thats a flash issue. disable the protected mode of falsh.
i tested this and found that during a HTML5 benchmark, IE9 had the least CPU usage, and most GPU usage amongst all the browsers.
+1.
IE9 uses also a lot more GPU Memory than Chrome. I am listening to internet radio when I am playing games and I found that a single tab from IE9 (opened for more than an hour) uses 150MB VRAM oO. Now this amount is not significant for some users but for most users that have 1024MB VRAM and doing the same thing like me (or have open tabs and alt-tabing during games) while playing at 1920x1080/1200 might cause fps drops.
Chrome has Adblock, just to let you know. But personally I prefer Firefox Aurora with Adblock Plus, anyway. I couldn't imagine using a browser that didn't have any version of Adblock on it, though; it'd be torture.
13.0.1 is the latest stable release. I'm using version 15.0a2 of Firefox, but it's a moot point in any browser competition because it's not a release version.
Where? Not here: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all.html
i stand corrected. I'm not sure how i got mixed up.
However, I'm not sure how Silverlight takes importance over WebGL or HTML5 in this test. >~