Just Talk About Web
Techniques Behind Modern Web
Firefox 3 Faster Than Safari 3 Now
Author: Jimmy2 Mar
“I’m sure what most of you care the most about are the facts, and so I’ve compiled the results of the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark test for each of the different browsers. All of the tests below were performed on the same Windows machine, and the Firefox 3 nightly builds definitely came out on top.” reported Ryan from CyberNet.
“It’s important to know that every time you run the SunSpider Benchmark it conducts each test five times, and the result is the average of the five tests. So it is a rather thorough test, and definitely shows off the speed improvements that Firefox 3 is going to be bringing to the table.” he added.
Here are the results sorted from best to worst:
- Firefox 3 Nightly (PGO Optimized): 7263.8ms
- Firefox 3 Nightly (02/25/2008 build): 8219.4ms
- Opera 9.5.9807 Beta: 10824.0ms
- Firefox 3 Beta 3: 16080.6ms
- Safari 3.0.4 Beta: 18012.6ms
- Firefox 2.0.0.12: 29376.4ms
- Internet Explorer 7: 72375.0ms
“I can just picture Steve coming down on people saying ‘we market this as the fastest browser on the planet!‘ which is tough, as noone stays the fastest for ever. It is a race, and I am sure that WebKit and Firefox will be switching spots a lot in recently years.” said Don Almaer, Ajaxian.
It’s glad to be heard that Firefox become the fastest browser. Yet, as the WebKit team isn’t sitting on their hands, I’m not sure the version 3 of my favorite browser will remain the best in speed until it’s officially released.
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4 Responses for "Firefox 3 Faster Than Safari 3 Now"
I posted a similar set of benchmarks a while ago (see my link), and they’ve been updated a few times. FF3b4 being faster than Safari 3.0 is not very interesting now that Safari 3.1 is out, and is significantly faster than 3.0. That said, you can see on my graphs the huge improvement between FF3b2 and FF3b4. What with FF3 getting better by the day, Opera and Safari passing Acid3, all we need now is for IE6 to die and we’ll all be happy
Despite of any security issues coming up here about whether or not the different browsers are safer thhan each other or security beeing more important than anything else (which I pritty much tend to sign, regarding latest spying attempts and my right on privacy), let’s fixiate on the speed, shall we?
I tried the link above and also a former link regarding Acid3.
I need to mention, that I’m sitting overseas with the java test server propably situated in the US, hence the maybe hughe differences to the results above. So far:
SunSpider JavaScript:
Safari 3.1.1 between 17000 and 23000 ms +/- 0.9%
Firefox 3.0b5 between 10000 and 11000 ms +/- 6.5%
Firefox 2.0.0.14 around 141000 ms +/- 64.7% with unresponsive scripts
Camino 1.6 between 108000 and 172000 ms +/- 160% with unresponsive scripts
I won’t run IE. Not even an 7.0 or 8beta. Forget it. Besides I only found an old IE6.0 on my dusty Windows-PC. But I expect it limping behind the crowd (maybe not behind Camino, but than again, regarding former benchmarks maybe even that).
Acid3:
Safari 3.1.1 failed @ 75/100
Firefox 3.0b5 failed @ 71/100
Firefox 2.0.0.14 failed @ 52/100
Camino 1.6 failed @ 52/100
But not run on default browser setting. I tried with one, not showing any different. I reccon, most privacy concerned users have the deffault settings switched to similar ones anyway, so this should come close of the performance of the browsers in use.
All together, refering to my surf experience, Firefox always did a good job and the knew 3.0 (even beeing still in beta) is lightningy fast and also feels quick.
I’ll use it on my gaming Windows, my Linux and my OsX (besides sometimes Safari).
For safety reasons, I’ll mask my headers, VPN tunnel connections, use proxie networks (such as Tor), switch DNS to proxy remote and encrypt my data and mails.
You must be running an old machine! I’m getting Sunspider totals around the 2500ms mark in Safari on Windows, and I’m only on a 2GHz core duo MacBook.
I’ve switched away from FF3b5 because it was too unstable, kept crashing, slow to launch. 2.0 works ok, apart from the speed. Also what’s with FF3’s weird mouse-wheel scrolling? Seems to have some acceleration curve that means it feels sluggish to start, then you always overshoot.
If you are going to chuck in Firefox Nightlies in there why not chuck in Webkit as well? Also, how quickly are these Nightlies going to make it into the final version? Furthermore, Safari 3.1.1 is probably faster.
I don’t think it really matters anymore. All the browsers have good speed and rendering, what browser you use really depends on what type of user you are, opting for Opera or Firefox if you need a lot of customization. I am happy with Safari on Mac. It is quick and displays all the pages I chuck at it.
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