Chrome for Mac Beta Nearly Matches Safari in JavaScript Benchmarking

[*LTD*]

This doesn't take into account the horrible sluggishness of Safari's interface, nor is it representative of Safari's ludicrous memory usage. To date, I've never seen Chrome or Firefox use over 1GB RAM, but Safari is atrocious.

Honestly, just look at this memory usage from a WebKit nightly. How is this acceptable?

That seems excessive. I'm running the latest Webkit nightly (Intel 64-bit, ver. 4.0.4 (6531.21.10, r51881)), using only 287mb of Real Mem.

Your numbers seem way out of line. I've never heard of such a thing. Were you doing anything out of the ordinary with the browser? Was there a memory leak or something?

Slightly OT:

Is it just me, or is Firefox really starting to lag behind? Seems WebKit is THE engine to use these days. I'm willing to bet that even in Beta, Chrome runs better and faster than the latest stable release of Firefox for Mac. Or am I reaching with this one?

 

[str1f3]

Their Javascript core is new. It's called V8.

http://code.google.com/p/v8/

http://code.google.com/apis/v8/design.html

V8 has been out as long as Chrome has been out. It's also been out the same amount of time as Safari's Squirrelfish/Nitro.

Anyone expecting any significant performance from beta to final product is kidding themselves. The Javascript engine won't change.

Big surprise. Safari and Chrome are equally fast except Safari has deeper ties into the OS. People are excited over Chrome because it's made by Google.

 

[str1f3]

That seems excessive. I'm running the latest Webkit nightly (Intel 64-bit, ver. 4.0.4 (6531.21.10, r51881)), using only 287mb of Real Mem.

Your numbers seem way out of line. I've never heard of such a thing. Were you doing anything out of the ordinary with the browser? Was there a memory leak or something?

Slightly OT:

Is it just me, or is Firefox really starting to lag behind? Seems WebKit is THE engine to use these days. I'm willing to bet that even in Beta, Chrome runs better and faster than the latest stable release of Firefox for Mac. Or am I reaching with this one?

Firefox is a nightmare. It's the slowest of the three and I've stopped using it and now use Camino as my second browser.

 

[Maserati7200]

This doesn't take into account the horrible sluggishness of Safari's interface, nor is it representative of Safari's ludicrous memory usage. To date, I've never seen Chrome or Firefox use over 1GB RAM, but Safari is atrocious.

Honestly, just look at this memory usage from a WebKit nightly. How is this acceptable?

That is ridiculous. Safari usually only takes 1-1.5 GB on my comp...

It's a big deal for ordinary Windows users who know no better than IE...we Mac users have had Safari since the very beginning, which has ALWAYS been the fastest browser that exists...that's all.

Idk how long you have been a Mac user, but we haven't had safari since the beginning. When we got our iMac G4 in 2002, it came loaded with IE for Mac (YUCK), there was no such thing as safari yet. That was probably one of the worst browsers ever. Safari didn't exist until 2003, and before then the main browsers for Mac were FF, Camino and IE. Also, it is impossible for Safari to always been the fastest browser that has ever existed, because there were many other browsers before Safari, and there was a fastest out of those browsers. There have been browsers since the late 1980's, there has been Sfari since 2003. Therefore Safari couldn't have been always the fastest. Which one? IDK.

 

[*LTD*]

That is ridiculous. Safari usually only takes 1-1.5 GB on my comp...

Idk how long you have been a Mac user, but we haven't had safari since the beginning. When we got our iMac G4 in 2002, it came loaded with IE for Mac (YUCK), there was no such thing as safari yet. That was probably one of the worst browsers ever. Safari didn't exist until 2003, and before then the main browsers for Mac were FF, Camino and IE. Also, it is impossible for Safari to always been the fastest browser that has ever existed, because there were many other browsers before Safari, and there was a fastest out of those browsers. There have been browsers since the late 1980's, there has been Sfari since 2003. Therefore Safari couldn't have been always the fastest. Which one? IDK.

Chimera? Omniweb?

 

[polaris20]

IDK about benchmarks, but page loads are considerably faster than FF or Safari on my machine, it seems. And if Chrome on Mac is like Chrome on Windows, it'll be more secure than the rest of the browsers.

 

[mikes70mustang]

She's a beauty . . .

Hmm, i didnt know Google ran off of a chevy motor

 

[blackhand1001]

Hmm, i didnt know Google ran off of a chevy motor

I am more of a ford guy myself.

 

[AidenShaw]

She's a beauty...of an antique!

She's a beauty . . .

OMG. That's a classic (in the sense of Mac OS Classic) engine.

A carburetor - QuadraJet from the mid-60s - instead of fuel injection?

A distributor? Wow, my last car with a distributor was an '89.

Cam in block, rocker arms, two valves per cylinder? Isn't 4 valve DOHC the norm now?
_______________________


Or maybe *LTD* meant the engine as a metaphor for Apple's use of rather outdated components in many shiny new systems. Then, it's spot on!

 

[DualShock]

Um, how can this even be a fair comparison?

Chrome on OS X is still only 32 bit (per Google). 64 bit is coming later.

Safari is 64 bit by default.

So unless Computerworld forced Safari to run in 32 bit mode (which is not mentioned at all in the article), it's not a true 's to 's comparison.

It's possible that if Safari was running in 32 bit mode, or a 64 bit Chrome existed, the results may be a bit closer, or even reversed.

It's been shown that 64 bit Intel apps may run faster than their 32 bit counterparts because of extra CPU registers and some other goodies in the AMD64 architecture.

 

[airplaneman]

Just look at the macrumors forums. All the posting options are missing.

? Chrome works fine here. Remember it's a Beta, not a final release. Furthermore, I love Chrome because, as mentioned earlier, it uses less resources (1/3 the memory!) than Safari, which is great.

 

[ski1ski1]

V8 has been out as long as Chrome has been out. It's also been out the same amount of time as Safari's Squirrelfish/Nitro.

Anyone expecting any significant performance from beta to final product is kidding themselves. The Javascript engine won't change.

Big surprise. Safari and Chrome are equally fast except Safari has deeper ties into the OS. People are excited over Chrome because it's made by Google.

You totally misinterpreted my post. I was responding to a poster that claimed the javascript engine in Chrome was already developed by someone else like webkit. But since you brought it up, V8 performance has greatly increased since Chrome's first beta appeared a year ago.

 

[str1f3]

Um, how can this even be a fair comparison?

Chrome on OS X is still only 32 bit (per Google). 64 bit is coming later.

Safari is 64 bit by default.

So unless Computerworld forced Safari to run in 32 bit mode (which is not mentioned at all in the article), it's not a true 's to 's comparison.

It's possible that if Safari was running in 32 bit mode, or a 64 bit Chrome existed, the results may be a bit closer, or even reversed.

It's been shown that 64 bit Intel apps may run faster than their 32 bit counterparts because of extra CPU registers and some other goodies in the AMD64 architecture.

You're looking too deep into it. It's about which browsers are the fastest today. When Google comes out with 64bit, then it will be retested. As it is, you're going to wait awhile seeing as Chrome has just recently started allowing extensions (not even on Mac yet) and there will be a version for the Mac long after Windows.

You totally misinterpreted my post. I was responding to a poster that claimed the javascript engine in Chrome was already developed by someone else like webkit. But since you brought it up, V8 performance has greatly increased since Chrome's first beta appeared a year ago.

Cool.

 

[*LTD*]

OMG. That's a classic (in the sense of Mac OS Classic) engine.

A carburetor - QuadraJet from the mid-60s - instead of fuel injection?

A distributor? Wow, my last car with a distributor was an '89.

Cam in block, rocker arms, two valves per cylinder? Isn't 4 valve DOHC the norm now?
_______________________


Or maybe *LTD* meant the engine as a metaphor for Apple's use of rather outdated components in many shiny new systems. Then, it's spot on!

Well, Google V8 engine, so . . . there's your Google V8 engine.



As for testing . . .

I tested Safari, the latetst WebKit nightly build, and Chrome on Sunspider.

Safari beat Chrome easily, and the WebKit nightly blew both our of the water. Just for kicks I tested NewNewsWire's built-in browser, and it nearly equaled Chrome! Then again, both are WebKit-based.

 

[DoFoT9]

i wonder where the latest IE compares

 

[iMaggot]

It's a big deal for ordinary Windows users who know no better than IE...we Mac users have had Safari since the very beginning, which has ALWAYS been the fastest browser that exists...that's all.

"the fastest browser that exists" lol yeah and it crashes more than any browser that ever exists to

 

[DoFoT9]

"the fastest browser that exists" lol yeah and it crashes more than any browser that ever exists to

i dont know what your doing but mine never freezes :\

 

[tuck5649]

that has got to be the stupidest, most misleading graph I have ever seen

 

[star-affinity]

Can someone tell me why Safari doesn't have the "Reopen Closed Tab" function?

Seriously, it's the ONLY reason I use FireFox instead. I much rather use Safari! Very annoying.

In the History menu there's ”Reopen Last Closed Window” and ”Reopen All Windows from Last Session”.

Is that what you're looking for?

 

[christian_k]

This contrasts with the Windows platform, where Computerworld previously found Chrome to be the top performing browser in the same testing suite, clocking in at 30% faster than Safari for Windows.

No surprise IMHO.
Chrome was a Windows program at the beginning, so they have done more optimization for that platform, maybe optimal Windows performance was the reason for some internal design decisions.

Safari in contrast was designed and optimized to be a good OSX browser, I think performance on Windows has much lower priority for Apple.

Christian

 

[djellison]

we Mac users have had Safari since the very beginning, which has ALWAYS been the fastest browser that exists...

Really? Safari ALWAYS the fastest browser? Are you taking into account the beach-ball minutes per day I have to put up with?

I've not used Safari once since Chrome Beta was released. No point.

 

[Stridder44]

i wonder where the latest IE compares

Believe it or not, IE 8 is actually a huge step forward. Now that is by no means to say that anyone should get it, hahaha let's not talk crazy talk here. It's still a POS, but compared to IE 7 (or even the dreaded IE 6) it's a saint.

It's a big deal for ordinary Windows users who know no better than IE...we Mac users have had Safari since the very beginning, which has ALWAYS been the fastest browser that exists...that's all.

Um, the first public release came out in late 2003. It didn't even become the default browser till 10.3 Panther. I'd hardly call that "since the very beginning." And it most certainly has not always been the fastest browser hahaha. Don't get me wrong though, it's still my favorite (in OS X anyway).

 

[DoFoT9]

Believe it or not, IE 8 is actually a huge step forward. Now that is by no means to say that anyone should get it, hahaha let's not talk crazy talk here. It's still a POS, but compared to IE 7 (or even the dreaded IE 6) it's a saint.

i would believe that. i remember some benchmarks a few months (years?) back. IE7 was about 20x slower then safari, IE8 was only 6-8x slower then safari. so yea it does seem decent compared to the other ones.

its just so... clunky! coding in html is so difficult for IE (for n00bs like me anyway).

 

[No1451]

Interesting, I've been using chromium nightlies but this might be decent. I'd use safari but by the time the beachball goes away and I can actually do anything chrome has usually already loaded my page

 

[*LTD*]

that has got to be the stupidest, most misleading graph I have ever seen

How so?