Which Web Browser Is Best Under Windows 8?

Features
By Adam Overa
published

Welcome to our first-ever Web Browser Grand Prix on Windows 8! Will Chrome remain the reigning Windows champion? Is Internet Explorer 10 going to smash the competition like its predecessor? Does Opera 12.10 finally deliver on what version 12 promised?

The King Is Dead, Long Live The King!

With composite scoring for each major test category, the Web Browser Grand Prix no longer needs the scoring system and weighting brackets it once had. The final score is now simply a geometric mean of the various benchmark results. This eliminates the arbitrary point system and creates accurate placing tied directly to the actual benchmark results. This also emphasizes the areas of testing which you, the readers, felt were most important, as well as decreases the ratio of performance- to non-performance-oriented metrics in our final score.

For those of you who still feel that the buck stops with performance, the next chart is for you. The performance index is a geometric mean of only the five performance categories: load time, HTML/CSS, JS/DOM, HWA, and plug-ins. This shows the relative performance placing of each browser, derived straight from the benchmark scores.

When looking strictly at performance, Firefox 16 manages to beat Chrome 23 on Windows 8 by a slim margin. This is most likely due to Chrome's strangely-long start times. Back on Windows 7, Chrome still holds the speed crown, this time with Firefox in tow. IE10 finishes strong in third place, almost doubling the performance of IE9 on Windows 7. That's not quite enough to keep up with the perpetually-updating browsers from Mozilla and Google, though. Opera ends up in a very distant last place on Microsoft's new OS, yet the Norwegian browser fares much better on Windows 8 than Windows 7.

Since we use the exact same test system and benchmark suite for both versions of Windows, we can now say that, no matter which browser you use, upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8 results in a boost to Web browser performance, period.

Now, let's add the other four areas of testing to see the final outcome. The new championship placing includes all five performance categories, plus memory efficiency, render reliability, security, and standards conformance.

Upon adding the four non-performance metrics, Chrome takes the definitive lead in both operating systems. Firefox places second on both versions of Windows, ceding its performance lead and quite a bit more ground to Chrome in the areas of memory efficiency, security, and standards conformance. IE10 places third on its native Windows 8 platform. That's far from the show-stopping debut that bolstered IE9 just 18 months ago, but also a massive step forward from its predecessor's performance in Windows 7 today. Opera is sandwiched between the two versions of Internet Explorer, finishing last under Windows 8, but outperforming IE9.

So there you have it: Chrome is still king under Windows, and Windows 8 trumps Windows 7. Internet Explorer 10 yields massive improvements in nearly every measure, but it's just not the clean sweep that IE9 was when it debuted.

Although Chrome steals the day, Firefox is seriously eroding Google's hallmark speed advantage. What's more, Mozilla's new JavaScript engine is just right over the horizon. Can Firefox topple Chrome by virtue of its performance? When will Opera deliver the browser that version 12 was supposed to be? Stay tuned.

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Adam Overa
89 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mayankleoboy1
    1. Did you ensure that Opera has Hardware acceleration and WebGL enabled in about:config ? AFAIk, Opera does not enable HWA by default.

    2. I find the over-reliance on "Internet Explorer Test drive" benchmarks disturbing. Most use code that is inefficient and not used anywhere else on the web, making it quite theoretical.

    3. +1 for using Google Octane benchmark. Both google and mozilla agree that this is a good real-world benchmark.

    4. Addition of the "Maze solver" benchmark is disappointing.

    5. Why remove the subjective smoothness ? 95% of the time, subjective smoothness is what lures a person to use a specific browser. People use a browser, not run benchmarks on it all day. Subjectively, no browser can beat Google Chrome. Then comes Opera , Firefox and far lastly, IE10.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    Any technical reason why browser performs generally better in Win8 ? Even the 'WHQL' drivers from Nvidia and AMD arent quite mature for Win8.
    Games and applications did not show any improvement in Win8 over Win7.
    Reply
  • adamovera
    mayankleoboy11. Did you ensure that Opera has Hardware acceleration and WebGL enabled in about:config ? AFAIk, Opera does not enable HWA by default.2. I find the over-reliance on "Internet Explorer Test drive" benchmarks disturbing. Most use code that is inefficient and not used anywhere else on the web, making it quite theoretical.3. +1 for using Google Octane benchmark. Both google and mozilla agree that this is a good real-world benchmark.4. Addition of the "Maze solver" benchmark is disappointing.5. Why remove the subjective smoothness ? 95% of the time, subjective smoothness is what lures a person to use a specific browser. People use a browser, not run benchmarks on it all day. Subjectively, no browser can beat Google Chrome. Then comes Opera , Firefox and far lastly, IE10.1) We use fresh installs at default settings; Opera does not enable HWA by default.
    2) The only IETestDrive tests we use are Psychedelic Browsing and Maze Solver, and IE regularly loses to competitors on both.
    3) Octane was not used because it had issues with IE9 and Opera 12.10.
    4) We definitely need a new CSS test, but the only other options are outdated or on IETestDrive - unfortunately, Kaizoumark doesn't work with IE10.
    5) It's really difficult to see that kind of stuff on a modern test system, but I will say that Chrome and IE10 are about equal in that department, with Firefox and Opera noticeably more choppy right at the beginning of the 40-tab load.
    Reply
  • adamovera
    mayankleoboy1Any technical reason why browser performs generally better in Win8 ? Even the 'WHQL' drivers from Nvidia and AMD arent quite mature for Win8.Games and applications did not show any improvement in Win8 over Win7.Not sure, the Nvidia drivers used were the same version on both OSes.
    Reply
  • And we're also passing the torch from Windows 7 to Windows 8.
    We are going to miss you on Web Browser Grand Prix, Windows 7
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    10447137 said:
    1) We use fresh installs at default settings; Opera does not enable HWA by default.
    2) The only IETestDrive tests we use are Psychedelic Browsing and Maze Solver, and IE regularly loses to competitors on both.
    3) Octane was not used because it had issues with IE9 and Opera 12.10.
    4) We definitely need a new CSS test, but the only other options are outdated or on IETestDrive - unfortunately, Kaizoumark doesn't work with IE10.
    5) It's really difficult to see that kind of stuff on a modern test system, but I will say that Chrome and IE10 are about equal in that department, with Firefox and Opera noticeably more choppy right at the beginning of the 40-tab load.


    1. IMHO, enabling these settings would have made Opera more competitive and this article fairer.

    3. Whoops, misread that. But this is a good benchmark. Robohornet and robohornet pro are complete jokes.
    4. Just exclude the maze solver. Its bad coding, as any web developer can tell you.
    5. Thats exactly what i'm saying. This needs to be factored in the overall score. You want the browser UI to always remain smooth. UI choppiness is unacceptable and sloppy coding. We are not living in the 90's anymore.


    The one thing i dislike in Chrome is the memory bloat when opening many tabs. In the 40tab test, FF uses 600 MB. Chrome uses 1600MB :O. That is probably an iverhead of using separate processes for each tab. That is excellent for smoothness and UI fluidity. But shameful for memory consumption. I guess devs need to find a middle path.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    Both 'mozilla kraken' and 'Google sunspider' benchmarks need to be retired . They are old, and all the major browsers have optimizations to score better on them.
    Plus, they heavily test features that are not used anywhere else on teh web.

    Example : Sunspider makes a billion manipulations to the the "date" variable. Mozilla did not have any optimization for this. So it scored poorly on Sunspider. After numerous 'review sites' started using sunspider to test FF Vs Chrome, mozilla developers had to reluctantly add the same optimisation (which is basically a separate buffer to store the date). Of course, nowhere on the web is the date variable used in this manner. So its optimization for an artificial test.
    Reply
  • wilem_WAR246810
    "The King Is Dead, Long Live The King!" am I the only one who thought of Megadeth?
    Reply
  • deepblue08
    mayankleoboy1Any technical reason why browser performs generally better in Win8 ? Even the 'WHQL' drivers from Nvidia and AMD arent quite mature for Win8.Games and applications did not show any improvement in Win8 over Win7.
    As far as I heard there are significant under-the-hood improvements in Win8, in terms of memory efficiency and multi-core usage.
    Reply
  • epileptic
    Is it Opera x64 or x86? I remember having tested Opera 12 and the startup was very slow. I'm still using 11.64 atm. The only thing keeping me from moving to Firefox is how sluggish the UI feels... I'd also have to find a new mail client. :/
    Reply