BATTLE: IE9 Preview VS. Google Chrome - SPEED TEST
While Apple recently claimed Safari 5 is the fastest browser, that has proven to be incorrect in multiple tests. In fact, Google Chrome is the fastest (on Windows). So, with Microsoft's new claims that the third release of Internet Explorer 9 preview smokes any other browser, I thought I'd put them both up for battle to see which really stands out for day-to-day use.
Here's how it worked. Both were installed on a brand new fresh Administrator account on my computer. None of the sites visited on either browser were previously visited on either browser, so it was a fresh start for both. My laptop was cranked up to High performance and the specs are 2.1GHz AMD Dual-Core Mobile Processor, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. Great, we got that out of the way. Now let's reveal the websites visited.
A total of six websites were visited, although two were basically benchmarks. The four main websites were NY Times, Bitts (here), YouTube, and Mashable. If anyone has ever read articles on Mashable, you'll probably agree that it's one of the slowest loading websites you've ever encountered, which is why it was included in the test. The other two were a DHTML benchmark with a bunch of bouncing balls with five added to the mix every few seconds, and which ever browser hit 50 FPS first lost that round. And then one of Microsoft's own little IE9 tests was an "Amazon Bookshelf" which gathered the top selling books and loaded them onto a shelf using swift animations and the HTML5 canvas element. Here's the results:
It's clear from these results that IE9 is in fact faster than Google Chrome 5 for the most part. Everything was really swift, animations were terrific, and it was definitely a speed machine. That is, of course, with the exception of the DHTML test which didn't even come close. IE9 quickly got to that 50FPS after only 35 seconds -- and it started at 65 -- whereas Chrome started at around 150 and took its time dropping.
There are a few things to note about the new IE9 browser. First is, upon loading NY Times for the first time, the browser crashed and I received the dreaded blue screen of death, which is just a stability issue I'm sure because it's a preview. Second, Microsoft seems to be taking a new font smoothing approach that just isn't working out. It seems to aim at Safari, but text just looks awful in the browser. Third, while IE9 is fast now, bare in mind that the browser right now is in a very minimal state. Let's see if that speed can be kept up after browser development is complete.
Microsoft, with your speed and enhanced HTML5 + CSS3 support, keep up the good work.
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