OS: Mac OSX 10.6.7, Windows XP SP3
Browsers: Safari 5.04, Chromium 80114, Opera 11.01, Firefox 4.0, Camino 2.07, IE 8
Benchmarks: Kraken, ACID3, Sunspider 0.9.1, V8 Benchmark Suite v6
| Kraken | SunSpider | V8 | ACID3 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Safari | 11013.8 | 286.8 | 2926 | 100/100 |
| Chromium | 7299.4 | 262.3 | 8253 | 100/100 |
| Opera | 12468.4 | 285.0 | 3410 | 100/100 |
| Firefox | 5580.4 | 253.2 | 3865 | 97/100 |
| Camino | aborted | 2594.0 | 214 | 72/100 |
| IE 8 | aborted | 4312.4 | aborted | 20/100 |
So who has won this round of the browser wars? I would say its a tossup between Chromium and Firefox, with the edge going to Chromium for passing the ACID3 benchmark. It was no surprise that the big loser was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8.
Chromium (the development version of Chrome) was the clear winner in the V8 benchmark, where the larger number is better. It came in a close second with the Kraken and Sunspider scores. It is ACID3 compliant.
Firefox 4 was the clear winner in the Kraken and SunSpider benchmarks, and it came in a distant second to Chromium on the V8 score. Its too bad its not 100% ACID3 compliant or I would have given the top ranking to it.
Safari and Opera were disappointments here. Except for passing the ACID3 test, Safari and Opera trailed Chromium and Firefox considerably. On my Mac Safari came in second to last on the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks, and Opera came in second to last on the Kraken benchmark.
Camino. Well about all you can say for Camino is that it runs. If you’re a Camino fan (and I was a fan years ago), you must ask yourself one simple question: Why? Camino, by far, scored the worst in every benchmark. It didn’t even come close to passing the ACID3 test, and I had to kill the browser because it was stuck in the Kraken benchmark.
Internet Explorer 8 (aka Internet Exploder) was abysmal. It was much worse than Camino, and I had to abort the Kraken and V8 tests because IE was throwing up slow script warnings. They were slow because they were running under IE 8! I feel sorry for you if you rely on this browser. I understand IE 9 is supposed to have big performance improvements, but I don’t have Windows 7 (and therefore IE9) and am not planning on buying it anytime soon.