HTML5 speed test finds IE9, Firefox 3.7 lead the pack in Windows, Chrome a distant last
By Donald Melanson 
posted June 25th 2010 3:01AM
posted June 25th 2010 3:01AM
Curious to see how the latest preview release of Internet Explorer 9 stacks up against the competition when it comes to HTML5 performance in Windows? So was Download Squad, and it's now revealed its findings in some vivid, if not entirely scientific tests. The end result is that Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 3.7 were well ahead of the pack in the 1,000-fish stress test (with Firefox about 5 or 10 percent ahead of IE), while Opera was stuck somewhere in the middle, and Chrome placed a distant last (and maxed out the CPU) -- all with hardware acceleration enabled, of course, although that had to be done via command line switches in the case of Chrome. Head on past the break to check out the four-way showdown for yourself, as well as an earlier test with just IE9 and Chrome.
show me how much memory each are using, then try running them by themselves
I know chrome won't use more than 25MB of ram per tab + 25MB for the browser so if the others use over 50MB of memory it is an unfair test
It's cute that they can push frames more quickly than anyone, but as far as I'm concerned, 83/100 (and rising!) in Acid3 is a far more important achievement for the IE team.
as far as current browsers the order of speed is the other way around
hehe Firefox 3.7 FTW :)
Probably another Microsoft created tool to bash web browsers that are better than IE
Are we talking a fully working IE 9 here or the slimmed down frame with no tabs and no back button?
And what about Safari 5?
As i've been getting back into developing lately after a long break I noticed one thing with how the new markups are rendered. Now this is only from a view of gradients but probably applies to text also, but FF seems faster with their rendering over Webkit based ones. Looking at it i'm guessing Webkit renders it more in a vector style while moz/FF goes for a bitmap.
needs more cowbell
ok, so it can render HTML5 really well using GPU acceleration.... IE 6 can handle HTML 4 really well too, it's the CSS that it has a LOT of trouble with.
If IE9 can beat (or at least tie) the others in accurately rendering CSS3, it will be big news! That would mean we can move up much sooner than I thought.
So IE9 might be able to render more things on screen, but if CSS3 isn't on par with the others, they won't be laid out correctly or look right ;)
I love tests like this. This means in the next few days Chromium will suddenly get a huge performance leap. I get this visual of some of the developers going "Oh no they didn't!" and pop a red bull or something.
the only view of that fish in the test makes me wonder about the objectivity of this test (remember the fish in early vista versions ?)
My favorite part of Firefox is how Flash and that disgusting Quicktime are on a seperate process now. Now when tabs get their own, we'll be good to go.
@VetteDude QuickTime is more stable and fast than flash, on my pc, and especially on my iPhone, or maybe it's just apples videos are shot in a format that works well with it, but a +1 hr keynote was fully buffered in 1/2 a second on QuickTime, and most flash videos, YouTube, etc, mostly YouTube can sometimes not even start, but that's most likely because it has to be converted?
I guess I'd give a crap if there were any actual HTML5 content passing my way.. and I'm quite sure by the time there is Chrome will handle it nicely.
Meanwhile IE will still be a steaming pile of poo...
This may be so, but IE 9 cant even render facebook chat right. And chrome can actually pass the Acid 3 Test, unlike IE or Firefox.
@hayds94 I tested IE9 the other day and was surprised at how low its Acid3 score was. Scary how far back they are on their CSS3 implementation. I was expecting better considering they said they'd have full CSS3 support.
Just shut up and face it. IE8 and lower versions were crap but IE9 is kinda promising for sure. Google fanboys should learn how to acknowledge things not from Google
Wonderful. I'll still continue using IE8 as my primary browser till IE9 comes out.
What about Safari? Who uses Opera as a desktop OS anyway?
3.7? don't you mean 4?
3.7 is never coming out because it was replaced with 4
check the road map
@iams
No, it's Minefield 3.7 a6. That's the official designation of the alpha browser.
Ironically, I can't see the results, because they are embedded as flash videos....
I remember trying this test out, and Minefield absolutely destroyed IE 9. Can't wait till Mozilla finally releases the Firefox 4.0 Beta.
A test that is hosted on Microsoft servers that Microsoft's Internet Explorer runs well?!?
SHOCKING! I will alert the internets, which will post and not notice this fact to just boost readership with what everybody else can see is a thin veil of journalism...
Maybe i'm mistaken but isn't Opera only software accelerated? can't really say that they're all hardware accelerated. The software renderer is designed so that at some point they will be able to hardware accelerate it but I don't think that they have yet.
http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/12/22/
Fantastic bit of "ignore the big picture and go for the punch"!
Go to http://www.html5test.com to see how your browser performs e.g. which functions it supports.
Internet Explorer 8 scores 27, e.g. not much functionality
Internet Explorer 9 scores 84
Chromium OS (the Virtual Machine version) scores 155
Chrome 5 beta scores 197
I am sure Chrome performance will improve further, so thanks MS for providing a good reason for that to happen.
Now keep working on uniformity and functionality...
Looks like Chrome needs to use the GPU like IE9 is right here. That is the difference.
This demo is entertaining and all, but he says it from the start... this is the Chrome developer version using a switch to turn hardware acceleration on.
In other words, when you need to use a switch to turn a feature on, it's because the developers aren't happy with the results yet. It's still a work in progress.
So, this only shows that Microsoft (and others) have a head start in the hardware acceleration area of browsers. For everything else, they're still lagging behind. He even says this at the end of the first video... IE9's javascript performance is *almost* as good as Chrome's. That means it *isn't* as good.
So, as soon as hardware acceleration is ready for prime time (and will likely be on by default or will have a proper setting in the options)... *then* let's compare results. I suspect this to be about a month or two out. In the meantime, don't visit sites that have 1000 fish swimming around using HTML5. You can pull off a demo like that using old-fashioned HTML4 and JavaScript techniques and it would fly in Chrome. Just check out the Chrome Experiments website and see what's possible there. Then, try those same experiments in IE.
CHROME FTW or SRIronware for conspiracy users
Chrome you suck!! Was it made by the same team that works on android ??
least scientific test ever. "surprise the browser I started first is faster."
for this test to be legit it needs to be on four separate computers or atleast not on the same computer concurrently.
You're mother blows all others with speed and convineince
u know, should Microsoft give me a gift. i'm the loyal user of IE. and maybe IE9 is that gift, because this browser is soo greeatz!! damn!
Would like to see safari tested, since apple is touting html 5 so much.
I don't like Chrome, titanium is what it's all about !
Sorry guys, but there's a problem here: Opera DOESN'T have hardware aceleration yet.
And a browser may not be fast just to show little fishs. It need to be fast on everything. And for that, IE9 and Firefox 3.7 still slow.
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/4899/peacekeeper.jpg
Is IE including the HUGE lag when opening a new browser window or tab? Try it out. I could open up chrome about 5 times in the time it takes to open IE.
CHROME FTW