Web Browser Grand Prix VIII: Chrome 16, Firefox 9, And Mac OS X

Benchmark Analysis

In our last installment, Web Browser Grand Prix 7: Firefox 7, Chrome 14, Opera 11.51, we completely dropped the raw placing tables in favor of the analysis tables that more closely reflect the scale of victory. Let's quickly take a moment to go over what these mean.

The analysis tables hold categories for each type of benchmark. For example, Mozilla Dromaeo DOM is represented by the DOM category, while Peacekeeper, the Krakens, and SunSpiders are represented together under the JavaScript category.

Each category has four columns: winner, strong, acceptable, and weak. Winner is obviously the browser that achieves the highest scores for the category. The strong column is for those browsers exhibiting superior performance, but no victory. Acceptable is for browsers that perform neither spectacularly nor poorly, but merely adequately. For tests that measure frame rates, a score near the 30 FPS range gets that browser filed into the acceptable column. The weak column is for browsers that perform poorly or substantially lower than their competitors.

In the event of a complete tie in the analysis tables, we simply go back to the individual benchmarks and look at the raw difference in scores.

The Windows 7-based standings for Chrome 16, Firefox 9, Internet Explorer 9, Opera 11.60, and Safari 5.1.2 are found in the table below.

Windows 7 Analysis Table

Now let's see how Chrome 16, Firefox 9, Opera 11.60, and Safari 5.1.2 fare on the MacBook Air's native platform of Mac OS X.

Mac OS X (Lion) Analysis Table

Without further ado, let's crown our Web Browser Grand Prix VIII champions.