Web Browser Grand Prix 9: Chrome 17, Firefox 10, And Ubuntu

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Last month, we ran WBGP VIII on a MacBook Air, representing browser performance in a native Mac environment. Today we're returning to the PC. But the cross-platform comparison theme continues with a long-overdue rematch to WBGP 2: The Linux Circuit.

Test System Specs And Software Setup

Hardware Setup

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Test System Specs
Operating System 1 Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
Operating System 2 Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocleot (64-bit)
Processor Intel Core i5-750 (Lynnfield) @ 2.8 GHz, Quad-Core
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7, LGA 1156, P55 Express, F7 BIOS
Memory 8 GB Crucial DDR3 @ 1333 MT/s (2 x 4 GB)
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 4870 Reference Boards 512 GB GDDR5 (PCI-e 2.0)
Storage Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500 GB SATA 3Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 16 MB Cache
Optical Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS
Power Supply Corsair TX750W (750 Watt Max)
Chassis Zalman MS1000-HS2
CPU Cooler Scythe Mugen 2 Revision B

The following table contains the system specs of the local Web server used for our startup time/page load time tests and JSGameBench.

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Local Web Server Specs
Operating System Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server Edition "Lucid Lynx" (32-bit)
Processor AMD Athlon @ 1150 MHz
Motherboard Soyo Dragon Platinum
Memory 512 MB DDR
Graphics AMD Radeon 9550, 256 MB GDDR
Storage 40 GB Western Digital HDD WD400BB
Optical Samsung DVD-ROM SD-616T
Extra Packages Apache2, MySQL Client, MySQL Server, PHP5, PHP-GD, PHP5-MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, SSH

The table below holds additional information on the test network.

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Network Specs
ISP Service Cox Premium (28 Mb/s down, 5 Mb/s up)
Modem Motorola SURFboard SBS101U
Router Linksys WRT54G2 V1

Software Setup

Both test installations were freshly installed and fully updated as of midnight on February 5th. Power management and automatic updating were disabled before testing.

The Web browsers and additional software, along with the exact version numbers tested, are listed in the table below.

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Software Version
Chrome 17.0.963.56
Firefox 10.0.1
Internet Explorer 9.0.8112.16421
Opera 11.61 (build 1250)
Safari 5.1.2 (7534.52.7)
AMD Driver (Windows 7) 8.93-111205a-132104C-ATI
AMD Driver (Ubuntu 11.10) 8.881-110728a-122950C-ATI
Adobe Flash 11.1.102.55
Microsoft Silverlight 5.0.61118.0
Oracle Java 6.0.300
87 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mayankleoboy1
    just wondering if use of a DX11 capable GPU will change scores in some HTML5 and other benchmarks as the browsers use DX11 assisted rendering.

    Also, AMD driver support in linux is poor compared to Nvidia.
    For future Linux articles, can you use a Dx11 based Nvidia GPU?
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    IMO, Firefox is concentrating more on HTML5, ignoring CSS and JavaScript.
    It does well in HTML5 benches but 99% of the websites use primarily CSS and JS and HTML3, in which Firefox does poorly.

    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    Waiting for OPERA12. It keeps impressing me.
    Even without hardware acceleration, it keeps up with the competition,

    When that beast launches, it will kill FF/IE and most probably chrome too.
    Reply
  • PreferLinux
    Who wants to guess that the poor Linux Flash and WebGL results were because Flash and WebGL don't use hardware acceleration with that graphics card and driver? I would be thinking so.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    Firefox performance took a dive starting with version 4, where all hardware acceleration was disabled: before then, in version 3.6, XRENDER was used when available (it was 4/5th as fast as IE9 on the same PC) while it is now really slow - it's all software.

    Moreover, the only driver enabled for hardware acceleration on Linux is the Nvidia driver: according to Mozilla (and verified by yours truly on AMD and Intel hardware), most display drivers in Linux suck when it comes to 2D rendering - ouch. Note that Mozilla and Google could add shims to circumvent those bugs, but they don't -not worth the effort, especially when driver makers could fix their bugs rather easily, leaving the browsers broken yet again.
    Reply
  • indian-art
    I use Chrome (19.0.1041.0 dev presently) the most on Linux (Ubuntu) and empirically I felt Chrome works very well. Now your tests confirm it.

    I find Opera 12 really nice too. It can run with Opera 11.61. Opera 12 has a silver icon & 11.61 has its classic red. I like Firefox & Epiphany too.

    Its a shame Safari and IE are not truly cross-platform.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    how many of those top 40 sites use HTML5?

    i think that the HTML5 scores should be weighed by a factor of the percent of top40 sites that use HTML5.
    This way actual importance of HTML5 can be judged in real world.
    Reply
  • nd22
    It's a shame Apple does not pay enough attention to the Windows market and optimize their browser! On Mac Safari is king of the hill - personal opinion of course!
    On Windows I feel that IE9 works really well for me, although Chrome is the speed demon! FF 4+ lost their appeal for me.
    Reply
  • forestie
    The OSes that are used are 64 bits but the browsers are mostly (all?) 32bits on Windows, and probably 64bits on Linux.

    Internet Explorer has 64bits builds on Win7, and Firefox has "almost" a 64bits browser on Windows too: Waterfox, which is a semi-official Firefox for 64bits Windows. Waterfox in particular claims huge improvements over base 32bits install, I would like to see how that translates into real-world.

    Not sure about availability of 64bits editions of other browsers on Windows.

    Here are my wishes:
    -clearly mention if the 32bits or 64bits version of the browser is used
    -where applicable and relevant, test with both 32bits and 64bits variants. I would like to see IE and FF split into 32 and 64 variants on Win for example.

    I personally migrated from FF to WF on my machines 3 weeks ago and find it noticeably faster in everyday use. WF is now my main browser.
    Reply
  • doive1231
    As long as phones keep using Android, Chrome will be the most popular browser for a long while. Google have got it all sorted.
    Reply