Web Browser Grand Prix: Chrome 20, Opera 12, Firefox 13
How do the latest Windows 7-based Web browsers stack up? Chrome and Firefox each have three wins under this operating system; can one become our champion? Or will Opera clean house here, as it did under Windows XP? We set up a new test system to find out.
Test System Specs And Software Setup
Hardware Setup
Test System Specs | |
---|---|
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (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 Radeon HD 7770 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 |
The following table contains the system specs of the local Web server used for our Startup and Page Load Time tests, as well as JSGameBench.
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.
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 June 15th, 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.
Software | Version |
---|---|
Chrome | 20.0.1132.43m |
Firefox | 13.0.1 |
Internet Explorer | 9.0.8112.16421 |
Opera | 12.00 (build 1467) |
Safari | 5.1.7 (7534.57.2) |
Adobe Flash | 11.3.300.257 |
AMD Catalyst | 8.961-120405a-137813C-ATI |
Microsoft Silverlight | 5.5.10411.0 |
Oracle Java | 7.0.50 |
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mayankleoboy1 1.what the benchmarks dont show is that in Firefox , if a tab has a heavy page with a lot of CPU intensive workload, the complete browser UI starts stuttering. That means the browser UI is on the same thread as the page loading.Reply
2. in the 40 tab test, try working in a tab during the loading of the 40 tabs. you will find lots of difference between browsers. FF hangs, Opera and Chrome remain fluid.
3. how about a test where a browser is using 1GB+ RAM and you are trying to open/close tabs. Then see the UI responsiveness. most browsers can easily handle 800MB RAM. but which browser easily handles 1.2GB+ RAM ?
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mayankleoboy1 IE9 does so good on HTML5 HWA accelerated benchmarks because its able to offload more of the processing to the GPU.Reply
i tested this and found that during a HTML5 benchmark, IE9 had the least CPU usage, and most GPU usage amongst all the browsers. -
mayankleoboy1 How many firefox users dont use ADblockPlus ? very very less.Also ABP developer is a regular contributor to the Firefox source code.Reply
maybe you should do a few memory benchmarks with ABP installed just to realistically judge what 99.99% of FF users go through.
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lethalsam i won't ever use a browser a browser WITHOUT AD BLOCK Plus. (ABP)Reply
ABP works wonderful on Firefox, i RARELY see any ad. While I have used ABP on Chrome BUT its doesn't block half the ads.
I know its Not Google's fault, its just that ABP developers are putting more effort with Firefox.
So for me, Firefox > Chrome. -
adamovera @mayankleoboy1: 1+2) Interesting, I'll be looking for that next time 3) That would require a different workload for each browser.Reply
IE9 does so good on HTML5 HWA accelerated benchmarks because its able to offload more of the processing to the GPU. i tested this and found that during a HTML5 benchmark, IE9 had the least CPU usage, and most GPU usage amongst all the browsers.Really interesting, what utility do you use for measuring GPU usage?
How many firefox users dont use ADblockPlus ? very very less.Also ABP developer is a regular contributor to the Firefox source code.maybe you should do a few memory benchmarks with ABP installed just to realistically judge what 99.99% of FF users go through.I'd estimate ABP usage on FF at around 5% or less based on ABP and FF usage statistics. Besides, that would give FF an unfair advantage. -
mayankleoboy1 Really interesting, what utility do you use for measuring GPU usage?
MSI afterburner for GPU. windows task manager for CPU.
@mayankleoboy1: 1+2) Interesting, I'll be looking for that next time
i sent a mail regarding this to Chris. but maybe i sent it too late for this article... -
mayankleoboy1 if you open multiple tabs together in chrome, it can use each CPU core for each tab. so if you have a quad core, and you open 4+ tabs together, the CPU usage will be 100% (using all 4 cores) during the tab loading time.Reply
but if you run 4 instance of dromaeo in 4 tabs, the CPU usage is still 25% (using only 1 core).
so chrome is not completely multiprocessing.
in IE10 beta, if you run 4 instances of dromaeo benchmark in 4 tabs, it uses all the for cores. so we can expect better multiprocessing from IE10 and win8 :)
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adamovera @mayankleoboy1: I got that email yesterday or the day before, this article was completed a few days before that. Sorry, my inbox usually gets a few pages deep after a doing long benchmark-heavy article.Reply
Is Dromaeo (the DOM portion) working in Chrome for you? I could not get it to finish in Chrome or Safari on any of my Windows machines. -
mayankleoboy1 i ran the javascript benchmark that ran fine. Didnt run the DOM benches.Reply
BTW, i run chrome dev version. so that could make a difference.