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

Round-ups
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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?

Test System Specs And Software Setup

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Hardware Setup

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Test System Specs
Operating System 1 Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
Operating System 2 Apple OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.1 (64-bit)
Processor Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.3 GHz (quad-core)
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 (F10 BIOS)
Memory 8 GB Crucial DDR3 @ 1333 MT/s (2 x 4 GB)
Graphics Asus GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1 GB GDDR5 (PCIe 2.0 x16)
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 W max)
Case Zalman MS-1000 HS2
CPU Cooler Scythe Mugen 2 Revision B
Keyboard Logitech Wireless Keyboard K320
Mouse Logitech Wireless Trackball M570

Windows 7 Test Installation

OS X 10.8 Test Installation

The following table contains the system specs of the local Web server used for our Start and Page Load tests, as well as JSGameBench.

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Local Web Server Specs
Operating System Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server Edition "Precise Pangolin" (32-bit)
Processor Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.41 GHz
Motherboard Biostar P4M80-M4
Memory 768 MB DDR @ 333 MHz
Graphics Nvidia GeForce FX 5500 128 MB DDR (AGP)
Storage Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600AAJD, 160 GB EIDE, 7200 RPM
Optical 1 Hitachi-LG DVD GDR-8163B
Optical 2 Hitachi-LG CD-RW GCE-8483B
Extra Packages Apache2, MySQL Client, MySQL Server, PHP5, PHP-GD, PHP5-MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, SSH, Node.js, NPM

The table below holds additional information on the test network.

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Network Specs
ISP Service Cox Preferred (18 Mb/s down, 2 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 August 25th, 2012. Power management and automatic updates were disabled before testing.

All the software we installed, including the exact version number of the browsers tested, is listed in the table below.

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Software Version
Chrome 21.0.1180.83
Firefox 15.0
Internet Explorer 9.0.8112.16421
Opera 12.02 (build 1578)
Safari 6.0 (8536.25)
Adobe Flash 11.4.402.265
Microsoft Silverlight 5.1.10411.0
Nvidia Driver (Windows-only) 301.42
Oracle Java (Windows-only) 7.0.70
Java for OS X (OS X-only) 2012-004
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