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:
I love and use Firefox but they took a giant step backwards with FF4 and its slow-movin’ interface.
Perhaps the ‘speed’ of FF5 is simply a return to the status quo under FF3.X?
huh...I just updated my Firefox to 3.6.18 this afternoon.
I appear to be somewhat behind the techno curve.
You’re not alone...
I hope the hype proves true because Firefox definitely has room for improvement. Have used it for years, since it was Firebird, primarily because I like many of its features, but have almost left it for Chrome several times dues to slow loading and excessive stalls, freezes and it rarely closes cleanly (all those program is not responding messages before closing).
Absolutely.
...have almost left it for Chrome several times dues to slow loading and excessive stalls,...
Well, I can say that I've never considered leaving Firefox--while it has been slow for me at times, I like the extensions too much to leave it. I get no popups, no ads, just content.
I love and use Firefox but they took a giant step backwards with FF4 and its slow-movin’ interface. Perhaps the ‘speed’ of FF5 is simply a return to the status quo under FF3.X?I agree. I actually went back to 3.latest.
I just clicked [Help]->[About] in Firefox
and it started downloading FF5... 8.4MB
Now I’m running it....seems OK so far.
When I click "Check for Updates" it wants to DL 4.0.1.
Interesting. I just quit using FF4 because it was terrible. I’m back on IE 9 for now until something more stable comes around.
I loved FF3. I should never have moved to FF4.
I installed the 32-bit Linux version just a few minutes ago. Not a great deal of difference to me yet. We’ll see how it handles daily browsing over the next week or so. I wish Mozilla put out an official 64-bit version.
I am running 4.0.1 under Xubuntu 11.04.
Well, I was running version 4...maybe if you are running 3.x
it just wants to download 4 ?
That’s probably it. I’m running 3.6.18 on this machine now.
I wonder why they didn’t compare it to IE9? IE9 claims to be way faster than those listed. I wish to see if another study proved IE9 was faster as well.
But yeah, I think we all know Chrome sucks :-)
I upgraded to FF 5.0 this morning and see a noticeable improvement in page load speed over the prior version (4.0.1).
Can someone reccommend any good add-ons for FF -
I have added - Ghostery and Better Privacy
I also use Tab Mix plus and Remove It Permanently
Upgraded to 5.0: seems faster starting up and loading pages, but it disabled a bunch of add-ons, even more than usual for Firefox upgrades. Compatible add-on versions usually, but not always are available later.
Will have to see how it holds up after several hours of browsing.
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