Web Browser Grand Prix 3: IE9 Enters The Race

By Adam Overa
published

With highly-anticipated Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 now available, along with recently released Google Chrome 10, superb Opera 11, newly updated Apple Safari 5.04, and rock-steady Mozilla Firefox 3.6, this is going to be quite an interesting race.

Performance Benchmarks: Page Load Times

As a result of requests from our readers sending in feedback, we've moved the Page Load Times test Web pages from the local hard drive of the test machine to a networked Web server. This makes the test environment much more applicable to the real world, yet still avoids the unexpected variability encountered when measuring page load times from live sites.

Google

Good old Firefox 3.6 is still the fastest Web browser when it comes to loading the world's most frequented Web page, Google.com. Microsoft's brand new IE 9 takes a second-place finish, followed by Opera and Safari. Surprisingly, Google's own Chrome is the slowest Web browser to load its own page.

YouTube

IE9 wins again, loading YouTube nearly 200 milliseconds before second-place finisher, Opera. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari come in third, fourth, and fifth, respectively.

Yahoo!

Google Chrome finally has a win here in WBGP3, beating Microsoft's latest by less than a hair. Safari places a respectable third, while Firefox and Opera bring up the rear, more than 400 milliseconds later than Safari.

Amazon

Internet Explorer 9 again takes the top spot, with arch-rival Firefox only ten milliseconds in tow. Chrome and Safari fill the third and fourth spot, with Opera trailing behind them by over 400 milliseconds

Twitter

IE9 kills the competition, loading Twitter in 286.2 milliseconds. Second-place finisher Safari takes nearly 450 ms to finish this test. Opera, Chrome, and Firefox round out the rankings.

Adam Overa
244 Comments Comment from the forums
  • pirateboy
    I wonder how much microsoft paid tomshardware not to include Firefox 4 RC1
    Reply
  • cruiseoveride
    Now everyone is going to switch from Chrome to IE?
    Reply
  • bison88
    Nice comparison Adam. I think people don't give MS credit for IE9 because of their history with web standards and lack of competition with updating their browser since they destroyed Netscape so many years ago. Hopefully they have their head in the game and continue with a somewhat constant update cycle. Currently the transition from IE8 to IE9 was somewhat FireFox'ish with speed instead of waiting for another revision of the OS. The browser definitely surprised me, some quirks here and there that are definitely noticeable and the Chrome/FF influence is obviously present. I wish them luck as the competition heats up.
    Reply
  • andy5174
    Will there be a " Web Browser Grand Prix 4: Firefox 4 Enters The Race " after Firefox 4's release (22 Mar)?
    Reply
  • illuminatuz
    i felt the speed once i switched from firefox to chrome and now chrome to IE..
    but there is no mention of any addon/extentions for IE..
    i mean there is no comparision on who's got nice addons and startup time "with" addons.. since users tend to use web browsers with addons knowingly or un-knowingly..
    it would be better if you include those two comparisions as well.. and who takes advantage of GPU and all..
    Reply
  • winner4455
    Won't take that long for IE to lag behind.
    Reply
  • illuminatuz
    winner4455Won't take that long for IE to lag behind.lol
    maybe not!!
    and FFS why doesnt that "submit my comment" button not working in IE!! I am using chrome for that ;(
    Reply
  • turboflame
    I like how this article was released one day before Firefox 4 is released.
    Reply
  • dimamu15
    duck it, i stick to firefox.
    Reply
  • Scanlia
    Is there a wrong picture on the efficiency page? The 40tabs graph comes up as GUIMark 2?
    Reply