DailyTech - Browser War: Firefox 3.6a1, Opera 10.0, IE8, Safari 4, Chrome 4 Benchmarked Part I

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Internet Browser War: Firefox 3.6a1, Opera 10.0, IE8, Safari 4, Chrome 4 Benchmarked Part I
Jason Mick (Blog) - September 8, 2009 7:59 AM

57 comment(s) - last by dramatic.. on Sep 10 at 4:47 PM

What browser is the best? We have the information you need to decide

Last week Opera 10.0 was released in its final form. DailyTechhad covered the development process of the browser exhaustively, so some may have been surprised not to see a piece on the browser. That's because we were working on something, special -- a complete review of not just Opera 10.0, but all next generation browsers.

We have extensively benchmarked all of the next generation browsers -- Safari 4, Opera 10.0, Firefox 3.6 alpha 1, Internet Explorer 8, and Google Chrome 3 and 4. In this first segment we will look at basic features, install time, and browser launch times of these next gen browsers, in comparison to previous editions. In the second segment, we will look at CPU and memory usage, and briefly look at browser security. And in the third and final segment, we'll look at performance in CSS and Javascript benchmarks, as well as a basic rendering benchmark.

1. User Interface and Basic Features

Let's first look at browser features:

Browser	License	Prompts to Make Default on Install	Prompts to Make Default on Open	Uninstall Shortcut	Uninstall Option to Delete Personal Data	Spell Checking	Colorized Tabs	Favorites Tiled Homepage	Built In Mail Client	Compression Boost Option
Opera 9.6	Proprietary	No	Yes, popup	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Opera 10.0	(same)	Yes, Unchecked	Yes, popup	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Firefox 3.5	MPL, MPL/GPL/ LGPL tri-license, Mozilla EUL	Yes, Unchecked	Yes, popup	Wizard Via Control Panel	Yes	Yes	Via add-on only	Via add-on only	Via add-on only	No
Firefox 3.6	(same)	Yes, Unchecked	Yes, popup	Wizard Via Control Panel	Yes	Yes	Via add-on only	Via add-on only	Via add-on only	No
Chrome 2	source- BSD Executable – Google Terms of Service	Yes, Prechecked	Yes, in frame	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
Chrome 3	(same)	Yes, Prechecked	Yes, in frame	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
Chrome 4	(same)	Yes, Prechecked	Yes, in frame	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No
IE 8	Proprietary	Yes, Unchecked	Yes, popup	No, and harder to reach in Control Panel	No	Add-On (IE-Spell) only	Yes	No	No	No
Safari 3	Engine – GNU LGPL Everything Else - Proprietary	No	Yes, popup	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
Safari 4	(same)	No	Yes, popup	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	No

As you can see, when it comes to the user interface, Opera arguably leads the pack, with the most built-in interface features (favorites tiled homepage, built in mail client, server-side compression, etc.). Firefox is a close second, with the most features supported, if you install add-ons (though add-ons decrease performance and can cause compatibility issues). This assessment does not include security, which we'll look at in a later piece.

2. Installation

Google's Chrome is the easiest to install. Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, on the other hand, is the hardest to install, by far, requiring a full system reset. In retrospect, the controversy over IE 8 asking at installation if you want to make it your default browser, seems rather silly. In fact, all the browsers ask you this on startup, and Google even goes so far as to pre-check an option during the install to make Chrome the default browser. We do like how Google's post-install browser check is incorporate as a less obtrusive browser window frame, rather than the popup that the others used (all the browser allow users to permanently dismiss these inquiries).

In our first benchmark, we did a clean install of each browser and measured the time the install took, using a lightweight, hotkey-driven timer for time measurement. As you can see from the chart to the right, Internet Explorer (as with the uninstall) was the worst, taking the most time (by-far) and requiring a full system restart. Chrome 4 was the best, taking a mere 11.4 seconds to install after double clicking the installer package (Note: Time to import bookmarks, etc. was not included in this time, just the time to complete the actual install).

3. Application Launch Speed

Our second benchmark looks at browser launch times. We again used the hotkey timer and this time measured the time it took for the browser window to appear after double clicking. Page-load was not necessary, the times measured indicated the time to get the address bar to a responsive state.

In our first run, we launched the browser "cold" after a full system restart. Averaged over three trials, Chrome by-far launched the fastest, with Chrome 4 being the fastest of the Google browsers. In close second was Opera 10.0. Firefox 3.5 was strangely slow, taking 10+ seconds in more than one trial, so we launched it five times (stock install, no add-ons). We finally concluded, that this was expected and not an error. In the end Firefox 3.5 was the slowest to launch, but Namaroka (Firefox 3.6 alpha 1) launches much faster. IE 8 was the second slowest in the cold launch trial.

In our second run we launched the browser "warm" after having already launched it once. As can be expected, due to caching, the browsers launched significantly faster this way. For warm starts, Chrome was yet again the fastest, while Opera and Safari came in second, though both of these browsers curiously showed slower start times in their latest versions (Opera 10.0 and Safari 4) than in their previous versions (Opera 9.6 and Safari 3).

In the next segment we'll look at memory and CPU usage. We'll also examine how the browsers stack up in security.

Note: Note: All benchmarks were performed in 32-bit Vista on a Sony VAIO laptop with 3 GB of RAM, a T8100 Intel Processor (2.1 GHz), and a NVIDIA 8400 GT mobile graphics chip. The number of processes was kept consistent and at a minimum to reflect stock performance.

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RE: Compression Boost Option

By dramatic on 9/10/2009 4:47:52 PM , Rating: 2

Google "Opera Turbo" - it's a proxy-based page shrinker for users on limited bandwidth, with an on-off button on the status bar. Extrapolated from their Opera Mini mobile product.

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