April 2nd, 2008
Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 - Fastest browser yet!
I’ve had a little hands-on time with Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 now and initial testing shows it to be the fastest browser available.
Over the past few weeks I’ve carried out a number of browser benchmark tests using the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark and I’ve now added Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 to the lineup.
Note: The hardware platform remains unchanged from the previous tests, but to confirm that there were no changes I re-ran some of the tests using browsers already on the list and saw a deviation of less than 2% in the results between the results from today and those carried out previously.
Previously the speed list stood as follows:
- Firefox 3.0 Beta 4
- Safari 3.1
- Opera 9.50 Beta 1
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1
- Firefox 3.0 Beta 3
- Safari 3.0 Beta
- Opera 9.26
- Firefox 2.0.0.12
- Internet Explorer 7
SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark
Well, with the release of Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 we have a new winner. In the benchmark test that I carried out Beta 5 is 15% faster at processing the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark than Beta 4 (raw data for Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 here). That’s a significant performance boost and proves that the dev team has been hard at work optimizing the Firefox code.
Note: Shorter bars means faster JavaScript processing.
Neither version of Opera fully completed the MD5 part of the test, and these results have been omitted.
ACID 3
I also put Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 through the ACID 3 test. Beta 5 beats Beta 4 but both are beaten by Safari 3.1. However, given the work being done on standards compliance I expect that this score will continue to improve up until the browser is released.
Note: Longer bars means better ACID 3 compliance -100 is the top score.
Here’s what the output looks like:
Here’s the reference image (what the output should look like):
Overall
Firefox 3.0 beta just keeps on getting better and better. Performance is up on the previous beta and ACID 3 compliance has improved. This browser’s almost cooked!
Thoughts?
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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