Web Browser Grand Prix: Firefox 15, Safari 6, OS X Mountain Lion

By Adam Overa
published

Today we're breaking out the Hackintosh for our first-ever Web Browser Grand Prix on Apple OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion). How will Chrome 21, Firefox 15, Opera 12.02, and Safari 6 stack up against each other, and to IE9 and the rest of the Windows 7 browsers?

Plug-In Performance: Flash, Java, Silverlight

Composite Scoring

The Flash, Java, and Silverlight composites are the geometric mean of the individual RIABench tests for each plug-in. The Java score includes the millisecond results of Primetest, Prime Factorization, JPEG Encoding, MD5 Hashing, Random Key Generator, Run-length Encoding, and Focus Test. The Flash and Silverlight scores also include the frames per second results of 3D Test, 2D Test, and Memory Management.

Flash

Safari, Opera, and Firefox are in a practical tie for first place on OS X. Chrome, with its special built-in version of Flash, performs slightly worse than the other contenders. The same results are seen on Windows 7, although the scores are nearly double the OS X scores.

Java

Java

Java is a complete four-way tie on both operating systems, with Windows 7 more than doubling the OS X scores.

Silverlight

Silverlight performance is another four-way tie on Mountain Lion, however Firefox is shown to be a cut above the competition on Windows 7.

Drill Downs

The charts below contain the detailed view of each RIABench test for Flash, Java, and Silverlight.

Image 1 of 3
Flash - OS X
Image 1 of 3
Flash - Windows 7

Chrome is usually slightly behind in Flash performance due to its sand-boxed Flash player, the only real surprise here is Firefox for Windows having a small advantage in Silverlight performance.

Adam Overa
57 Comments Comment from the forums
  • glurg
    chrome ftw
    Reply
  • Eggrenade
    It would be nice if I could view the additional charts with only one click, and not in a separate window.
    Reply
  • lahawzel
    It's nice to see Chrome performing so well, but I'm still waiting on the Chrome equivalents of all the plugins I use in FF before I think about switching. The web just doesn't feel the same without them.

    (The nice popular ones like ABP, Lazarus, Greasemonkey all have equivalents; some lesser-used plugins like Rikaichan also have ports by now. Only a matter of time!)
    Reply
  • bennaye
    chrome is absolutely deserving of the award. say what you will about the frequent patch releases touted as upgrades, chrome is a very good browser, as shown by this month's article. even on OSX there is only a small margin separating chrome and safari. but the one qualm i do have with chrome is the lack of add-ons compared to firefox. and i a lot of people share this concern. the add-ons do make the experience that much better.

    as always, a great read.
    Reply
  • Would like to see this again after IE10 is released.
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    How about 64-bit Internet Explorer 9 vs Waterfox 15.0?
    Reply
  • adamovera
    bennayechrome is absolutely deserving of the award. say what you will about the frequent patch releases touted as upgrades, chrome is a very good browser, as shown by this month's article. even on OSX there is only a small margin separating chrome and safari. but the one qualm i do have with chrome is the lack of add-ons compared to firefox. and i a lot of people share this concern. the add-ons do make the experience that much better.as always, a great read.All versions of Chrome hold up incredibly well cross-platform, if you look back at the two Linux WBGPs, it won there, too. Thanks for reading!
    Reply
  • adamovera
    AdamsTaiwanWould like to see this again after IE10 is released.Absolutely, a Windows 8-based WBGP is already in the cards for October.
    Reply
  • adamovera
    JOSHSKORNHow about 64-bit Internet Explorer 9 vs Waterfox 15.0?When we have more stable 64-bit browsers, I'll definitely do a 64-bit WBGP - including versus their 32-bit counterparts.
    Reply
  • I wish Tom's would fiddle around with the settings of these browsers for these tests. In every System Builder Marathon you overclock the builds, why not try and crank the most speed while ensuring better memory management out of the browser as well?

    Testing these browsers at stock doesn't reveal even an eighth of the picture.
    Reply