Posted on 06/22/2011 6:26:22 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Officially, Firefox 5 is scheduled for release tomorrow. However, users of the beta channel have already got their hands on it. One of the promises for Firefox 5 is better performance. We took tested Firefox 5 and benchmarked it against two other browsers - Google Chrome and Opera. We used the latest version of Google Chrome from the beta channel and the latest stable version of Opera - Opera 11.11.
The SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark is a test for the JavaScript engine of the browser. In this benchmark, lower scores (time) means better performance. In our earlier benchmarks, Firefox is always slower than other browsers such as Chrome and Opera. Let us see how well Firefox 5 does.
As you can see from the graph above, Firefox 5 has made huge improvements in its JavaScript engine. It is now much faster than both Chrome and Opera. However, the difference is very small - just 30ms faster than Chrome and 8ms faster than Opera. So, finally Firefox can no longer be considered a slow browser.
Peacekeeper is yet another highly regarded test for the JavaScript engine. Unlike the SunSpider test, Peacekeeper tests the normal JavaScript applications such as animations, navigation, forms etc. In this test, higher scores means better performance. Here is the result:
The result from the Peacekeeper test is very different from that of the SunSpider test. Here, Opera got the highest score while Firefox 5, which did best in SunSpider, performed the worst of the three browsers.
The HTML5 Test is a test to determine how many of the HTML5 and related specifications are supported by the browser. It does not test how well the specifications are supported. Scores are awarded for support of the HTML5 standards and bonus points are awarded for supporting related drafts and specifications. Higher scores are preferred in this test.
In this test, Chrome takes the lead by scoring more than 300 points. Opera and Firefox are neck to neck with Firefox scoring 254 and Opera scoring 255. The performance of Firefox 5, is a huge improvement from that of Firefox 4 which manages a score of just above 200.
This is the time it takes for a browser to start on a machine that has been just restarted. Once the machine has finished loading everything, the browser is restarted and the time it takes for it to load a locally stored file is found out. Obviously, lower cold start time is preferred. Here is how the browsers performed:
Opera takes the longest time to start here at around seven seconds. The other two browsers have almost the same cold start time at a little above four seconds.
A test for warm start was not done because all of the three browsers have a warm start time of less than a second and it was impossible to time it properly.
The different browsers takes up varying amount of RAM. To test how much each of them is taking up, we loaded 25 popular websites and check the memory consumption of the browser after opening every five websites. Extensions, add-ons etc. which are not installed by default are removed. Here is the result:
The result here is staggering. While Chrome takes up more than 1GB of RAM on opening 25 websites, Opera and Firefox takes up a little more than only 400 MB. Firefox and Opera takes up nearly identical RAM throughout, although Firefox takes up a little bit less than Opera.
As you can see, Firefox 5 does very well in four out of the five tests. Here are some of the main points about Firefox 5 from the tests:
Looks like they did the same thing IE9 did. add-ons give them a bad name so they disabled them and make it easier to kill them.
It’s like this. My browser is slow. The vendors found out it was add-ons making it slow so they disable them. Hey my browser is fast now. Oh wait, I’m missing my 100 add-ons. Let me turn those on. Hey my browser is slow. Damn browser sucks.
Download Firefox 3.6.18or the latest 5.0
Firefox 3.6.18
Mozilla Organization - 8.21MB (Open Source)
http://www.filehippo.com/download_firefox/10077
downloaded it yesterday. Can see no real change
*and no real problems - which is very good
thanks for ping
I refuse to use a Google product, for Google is evil.
Thanks ShadowAce
I’ve removed a few add-ons when it was obvious they’d slowed things down. But most of them are only in use for specific functions and shouldn’t affect performance when those functions aren’t in use. 5.0 disabled FoxTab which is very irritating and might cause me to go back for a time.
Xinha Here! 0.17 is absolutely essential for posting to FR.
MR Tech Toolkit 6.0.4, Tiny Menu 2.0.2, and UI Tweaker (Formerly Toolbar Cleanup) 1.7.0 are essential to shrink the amount of screen real estate used for menus. IN combination a much better system than the FF4 hidden menubar IMHO.
THe following was generated using the InfoLister 0.10.4a1 extension:
So much so, that I generally use the command
pkill foxto shut down firefox on my laptop. But it does have some features that I really don't want to do without.
/johnny
Good thing I never downloaded FF4.
Will wait for FF5 and benchmark it myself
It’s like this. My browser is slow. The vendors found out it was add-ons making it slow so they disable them. Hey my browser is fast now. Oh wait, I’m missing my 100 add-ons. Let me turn those on. Hey my browser is slow. Damn browser sucks.
Tab Mix Plus will replace several of those.
The FireFox/Mozilla automatic spellchecker - on any web site text input box - is wonderful.
If it’s anything like previous major releases, the memory leaks will be twice as bad and it’ll hog 100% of CPU as it reaches 2 gigabytes memory usage after browsing for 15 minutes.
If you spend a lot of time on FR, you should definitely get the mapmonkey extension and use the following scripts:
- FR Posting Form Enhancer; and
- FR Tree Viewer
This will make following threads and posting comments much easier for you. Highly recommended.
Thanks for the list!
D’oh, that’s Greasemonkey not Mapmonkey.
However, the one user I wrote it for has stopped posting so much on FR, so I haven't used it in quite a while.
Not even sure where it is, though I could probably track it down.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.