Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

By | September 9, 2011 | 35 Comments

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1Web browser benchmarks on Windows and Mac OS X.

With the recent Firefox and Google Chrome releases, TomsHardware has decided to test all the competitors in both Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

There’s no time to waste, so let’s dive into the results.

Startup Time

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Page Load Times

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Proper Page Loads

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

JavaScript Performance

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Flash

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Silverlight

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

HTML5

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Memory Usage

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

Results

Windows 7

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

According to results, Google Chrome takes the lead in Windows and is followed by Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari.

Mac OS X Lion

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) vs. Firefox 6 vs. Google Chrome 13 vs. Opera 11.50 vs. Safari 5.1

As for Mac, Safari comes first while Google Chrome and Opera shares the second place.

For even more details, visit the original post.

[Thanks, DWBH]


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • SlashZaku

    I’m on a Dell Dimension 2400 w/ 512mb of RAM and aside from Safari, Chrome is the only one that runs like crap.  Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer run fine/decently but Chrome seems to has this issue for me where it takes forever to load a page and that’s pretty much the only reason I don’t bother (only reason I do have it installed is because it handles Flash better than Firefox).  Anyone know what the issue could be why pretty much all the others run fine but Chrome/Chromium wouldn’t?

    • DM

       you cant set the number of network connections in chrome, so its limited to the default

      you should really buy more ram, its cheap as chips these days. even my ancient pc has 1.5gb

    • DM

       you cant set the number of network connections in chrome, so its limited to the default

      you should really buy more ram, its cheap as chips these days. even my ancient pc has 1.5gb

  • facepalm

    Sorry.

    i cant really trust whatever the heck is posted by toms hardware..

    i just cant really trust their articles no matter what..

    i just cant..

    • grg

      y u mad LMAO

    • Anonymous

      Indeed, the last time they ran their very unscientific tests, they were asked how they measured memory consumption, and their response was a very flawed “using Windows Task Manager”.
      Someone had to explain to them what a working set was…

      I would take anything these lot say with a VERY big pinch of salt.

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

      Clearly you can’t and you shouldn’t trust them. They claim Chrome has best memory management… @#$%^!? 

  • Armin

    I would be really curious to see how Maxthon fairs against the top five browsers. I guess I could say the same about ChromePlus, Comodo Dragon, Avant, and others.

    • Mikah

      Why don’t u install it & run some benchmarks its not complicated & doesn’t take long.
      I installed it last month & ran the peacekeeper benchmark Maxthon  scored a respectable 12,500 compared to Chrome’s 15,600 & Opera’s 17,000.
      On the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark it was slow with 269.4ms compared to Opera’s 167.5ms
      I didn’t test IE9 & Chrome as I know they are both a little faster than Opera on Sunspider.

      As a browser I would rate Maxthon way behind the main browsers.
      The UI is not very customizable obviously got most of their ideas from the Opera browser which is far better. The Mouse gestures work OK & the Speed Dial is not a bad implementation but the One Note feature is terrible if you want to see how Notes should be done check out the Opera browser.

      • M1ks

        Opera has stole from Maxthon!

  • Ghjghnyky

    im living in a location far away from where the Huffington Post server is, yet i get better scores with Firefox than whats said in the benchmark

  • IE & Opera FanBoy

    all these TOP browsers have only millisecond difference, for me these results shows me as all are same (unless there is huge difference). For normal users the performance of all the TOP browser in general looks the same.  Today If a browser has to convince me, then they need to have (since all the browser has decent speed these days).
    (1) Super fast startup speed
    (2) Clean User interface.
     
    (3) Minimal space usage.
    (4) More standard support.

    • Ghjghnyky

      it has to render pages correctly too, something Opera still cant do

      • Mikah

        If thats the case I wonder why Opera won the proper Page loading test ?

        • Nobody

          maybe because opera could properly load only one page?

          • Mikah

            And the other browsers had trouble makes sense.

        • Thgjgfsdf

          Opera cant properly load pages like Yahoo! Mail, Google Search .. also Firefox homepage

          Firefox and Chrome, for a change, can load everything correctly.. all Opera has is speed, it cant compete with the others

          • Mikah

            I have no problem at all opening those pages,  what is the difference with how Firefox open’s those pages ? can’t see any difference myself.

          • Anonymous

            No problems with any of those sites here.

            Have you just come from 2005?

            These days sites HAVE to code for Opera, as clearly if they don’t their site won’t work on the worlds most popular mobile browser, but if they DO follow webstandards, their site works on everything.

            The braindead and lazy web developers are finally waking up to this.  A small amount of effort upfront reduces the pain down the road.

          • Nobody

            you can sell this bullcrap about ‘following standards’ to younger and inexperienced like you

            people in the know are aware of stuff like industry standard and stuff like bad specs and each browser having its own implementation. or like – all browsers having one, opera having another.

            guess which one has problems? :)

            and opera mini.. dont get me started on it, it ‘handles’ webpages, using them is neither enjoyable nor full-featured. opera mini on most pages displays and offers only the most basic experience. hardly something hard to achieve

            as for facebook, twitter etc not working in opera – ofc it does ‘work’ but compare differences in available/working features and youll see that ff/chrome/s/ie give you much more than opera. in most cases it is operas fault of doing everything their own way.

            market DOES NOT CARE ABOUT OPERA own way.

          • Micheal Winger

            “These days sites HAVE to code for
            Opera, as clearly if they don’t their site won’t work on the worlds
            most popular mobile browser, but if they DO follow webstandards, their
            site works on everything.”

            In terms of Standards, Opera is one of the farthest behind on almost everything, and has been for the longest time.  Opera currently sits in between IE 7 and IE 8 for web standards implementation as well as usability (which isn’t saying much).  IE 9 has pulled itself up and is doing a decent job, but it still doesn’t keep up with either firefox or chrome.

            Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (on Windows, this is exclusive for Safari) are the three browsers that are closest to upholding standards.

            In terms of my note to Safari on windows, the OS X version of Safari has a lot of issues with small things that aren’t a problem on the Windows version.

      • Anonymous

        Even IE9 keeps bumping into compatibility problems, so that comment doesn’t make sense.

    • Anonymous

      Chromes “Instant Pages” feature is really impressive.

      • ForeverOpera

        opera “reload instantly” works wonderfully too but there is a bug that the developers refusing to fix

        you might say that chrome copy this feature in opera(dont let me started who copies who etc.. etc..)

        dont get me wrong chrome is copying opera features thats been in ages for so long..if thats the case why should i use another browser(chrome) when there is a better one and has built in hidden features for so long(opera)

        i just hope they fix it before shipping 12 final

  • Mikah

    Opera’s latest snapshot now scores 100% on the Ecma test 262 hell of a turnaround from last place.
    Opera’s HTML5 test score improves to 311
    Still the fastest on Peacekeeper on my PC
    http://clients.futuremark.com/peacekeeper/results.action?key=6eQT

  • http://awesomewallpapers.wordpress.com/ Ben

    I will never use Chrome because of its horrible tab management.  Look at this screenshot to see what happens when I open around 80 tabs in Chrome:http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/930/screenshot2011091416331.png With firefox I can see each tabs’ name and endlessly scroll across.

    • Mikah

      You can set the tabs to do that in Opera as well but I much prefer the Windows panel with a lot of tabs.
      http://thumbs.myopera.com/sz/colx/stve10/albums/5142082/windows%20panel.JPG

      • Mikah

        I’d better post it again for those without 20/20 vision
        http://files.myopera.com/stve10/albums/5142082/windows%20panel.JPG

      • http://awesomewallpapers.wordpress.com/ Ben

        That’s a slick setup you have there.  I like the url bar at the bottom.  Man, if Opera only had a deep library of extensions, I would probably use it as my default browser.  I have around 50 essential addons that I use in Firefox and I can’t find replacements for them in Opera.(or Chrome for that matter)

        • Mikah

          Having the address bar at the bottom near the keyboard makes it a lot easier to spot spelling mistekes  when you’re typing.
          Don’t need many extensions with Opera  my favorite is slim scrollbar that pops up as needed.

  • KP

    Just FYI for anyone researching Browsers and actually takes the time to read the comments,

    The Total Placing ranking chart is flawed – For one thing, Firefox has a total of 25 and Safari has 27.  These should equal 26, because that is the number of tests, obviously.   So somewhere in those numbers Firefox should have one more and Safari one less.   First mistake I noticed.

    Second mistake, labeling Chrome as the “winner”.    Of course I would need to look at the degree of difference in the Browsers who took first place, 2nd, etc…  For example, a 1st place win that is 2x better than 2nd place is obviously worth more than a barely 1st place finish.   Each Browser needs to have a # given to them which represents the degree of their ‘win’ over the other browsers, then compare #’s at the end.   This ranking system based on 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc, does not really accurately show a winner.

    For one thing, Chrome has 10 first place, 3 second place.   While it is correct to say that Chrome has the most first place results, this is ignoring the fact that browsers like Firefox & IE have 15 and 16 results that finished in 1st and 2nd place.  This is more than Chromes 13 results which was 1st or 2nd place.

    So you see, while Chrome may have finished 1st more often – it fell behind the others as far as 2nd place is concerned.   Still – the problem is the ranking system.  It is necessary for us to make #’s like I referenced earlier to get a more accurate portrayal of the browsers and where they stand.

    Personally, as far as I’m concerned they are all so similar that the deciding factor really comes down to which you prefer and what you do on your browser the most.  I will be sticking to Firefox simply for the community and addons.   Yeah they add another .5 or even 1 second to my boot time, but what is 2 seconds vs .5 seconds really?   Either way I scratch my face and it’s loaded..

    ps:  as far a linux is concerned though, chromium > all.

  • Anon

    Why do people here seem to have a grudge against Google? lol 

  • Goggle

    I don’t get the obsession with bloody browser speed tests. This is not a good way to judge how good a browser is or not. Besides, speeds vary on different computers anyway. I’ve used all the major browsers and have ended up using Firefox as my main one as several in-built features plus a couple of plugins are more to my liking than the other browsers. Who cares if its a couple of seconds slower than other browsers? 

«
»