Firefox beats Chrome as fastest browser

[sinetheo]

I was having a bet at work where I lost surprisingly. The bet was Firefox is and always was the best and fastest browser available. Chrome kicked its butt to the curb since 2009 in every area. Security, performance, ram usage, compliance, etc.

 

I went over to peacekeeper benchmark from futuremark and to my shock Firefox beat Chrome fair and square at it's own game which includes graphics, javascript, image manipulation, and css animations all in HTML 5. 

 

http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/

 

I did a google search and found this http://www.ghacks.net/2014/01/01/areas-firefox-beats-chrome-fair-square/ where the old joke 4 gigs and running with RAM leaks in Firefox was certainly true in Firefox 4.0. But not true anymore in version 32.

 

I am tempted to go back after this as I left for Chrome many years ago. What do you all think?

[Nick H. Supervisor]

<Moved to Browser Discussion & Support>

I've never moved from Firefox as my primary browser since I first tried it.

[Max Norris]

I am tempted to go back after this as I left for Chrome many years ago. What do you all think?

Just my own experiences mind you (with the standard v38 release), but yes, Firefox is pretty fast now, but where Chrome kills it is doing more than one thing at a time. If I open up several script-heavy sites at the same time in Firefox, it slows down to a crawl, never mind locking the GUI. Well, currently, I suspect that'll change dramatically once E10S is finished and fully working. But that aside, I find Firefox a lot more flexible in every possible way.. I like Chrome under the hood but I hate the interface with a passion. If there's something I don't like or is missing in Firefox, no biggie, change it, dead easy. My only other complaint would be Chrome's better multimedia handling. Again, currently.. they need to get moving fast because Edge is looking seriously tempting too and moving at a really quick pace, but let's see how that turns out. Resource usage wise, no comparison, Firefox is far lighter as far as memory goes, but once it goes fully multiprocess that'll change too.

[+Zlip792 MVC]

You are using quite old Firefox version, current version 38.

 

So the difference between version 32, you test with will be more while using latest.

 

Firefox is good and no denying in that but it has some corners left to be polished.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

I am tempted to go back after this as I left for Chrome many years ago. What do you all think?

 

If you can notice a large enough difference to warrant switching, then feel it's worth switching then you should. For me personally It would just be a time wasting exercise as I'm not personally bothered if one web browser is slightly faster than another.

 

I generally say avoid the web browser wars and use which ever works best for you.

[123456789A]

I like Firefox, been using it along with IE. I might be replacing it with Edge later this year if the compatibility is great.

[JustGeorge]

There is no other browser as far as I'm concerned until they have a real, full featured Ad Block Plus extension.

[Boo Berry]

There is no other browser as far as I'm concerned until they have a real, full featured Ad Block Plus extension.

I transcend this 'limitation' by using a system-level ad blocker instead of relying on a browser extension that can be and is subject to the browser's extension API limitations.

 

Ultimately, I care little about these benchmarks, I judge by real-world usage when using a web browser. In my experience on Windows Chrome handles opening multiple tabs and switching between them much more smoothly than Firefox, as there's 'lag' and jank, even with e10s in Nightly enabled. Same with Internet Explorer, but I have high hopes for Edge in Windows 10. Safari feels much more smooth than Chrome or Firefox on the Mac.

[DeusProto]

The Cyberfox fork, which is compiled to use the Intel math kernel library and thus AVX-256, SSSE3 etc rather than slow SSE2 has always been faster for me than Chrome.

 

They also have an AMD optimized version for AMD CPUs but I've no experience with it.

 

I am sick to death of Google's Apple-like heavy handedness with removing features (vertical tab bar, ability to select all tabs by domain or opener, ABILITY TO USE EXTENSIONS not from the Chrome store in the *dev* build, ability to disable plugins, images on a per-site basis from an easy to use slideout frame - recently deprecated as it takes you to GLOBAL settings now). It's become an abhorrent web browser. 

 

The ONLY thing Chrome still does better than Firefox or its forks for me is sync. It has a more robust and complete sync engine - as FF's leaves out a ton of configuration data. So I've started to keep my Cyberfox profile folder in OneDrive to solve that chasm. 

[Boo Berry]

ABILITY TO USE EXTENSIONS not from the Chrome store in the *dev* build).

Firefox is slowly becoming like this too.

[oldtimefighter]

Holy crap! Nine comments in and all are reasonable which may be a first on Neowin. The trolls and ignorant enjoying the sunshine or something?

 

Firefox has been my main browser since before version 1.0 and use it also on my phone and tablet. I am using the 64-bit beta on my work PC and may switch to it on my home PC. Waiting for e10s to make it to beta by default next... Firefox should be in really good shape by fall.

[Ace]

There is no other browser as far as I'm concerned until they have a real, full featured Ad Block Plus extension.

 

What do you mean by real, full featured Ad Block Plus extension?

[Boo Berry]

What do you mean by real, full featured Ad Block Plus extension?

Each web browser has its own extensions API with varying degrees of the required support for an ad blocking extension. Basically, this mean some browsers can block ads/elements better than other browsers when using the same ad blocking extension in both. This is true for Chrome when comparing to Firefox, but Chrome's API has improved greatly over time - I can't find a single instance when using an ad blocking extension where an element can be successfully blocked in Firefox but not in Chrome. The Element Hiding Helper add-on for Adblock Plus is another example - it's available for Firefox but not Chrome because of the limitations.

 

Again, I transcend this by using a system-wide ad blocking application, which eliminates the need for ad blocking browser extensions (and it all blocks ads/elements the same on all websites including HTTPS, regardless of web browser).

[A Real American!]

better use this site:

 

http://beta.html5test.com/

 

it's got all the results from different browsers. And FireFox ain't even in winning streak. Its a nightmare browser.

[Boo Berry]

Always take web browser benchmarks with a grain of salt, that's all I'm saying.

[JustGeorge]

Each web browser has its own extensions API with varying degrees of the required support for an ad blocking extension. Basically, this mean some browsers can block ads/elements better than other browsers when using the same ad blocking extension in both. This is true for Chrome when comparing to Firefox, but Chrome's API has improved greatly over time - I can't find a single instance when using an ad blocking extension where an element can be successfully blocked in Firefox but not in Chrome. The Element Hiding Helper add-on for Adblock Plus is another example - it's available for Firefox but not Chrome because of the limitations.

 

Again, I transcend this by using a system-wide ad blocking application, which eliminates the need for ad blocking browser extensions (and it all blocks ads/elements the same on all websites including HTTPS, regardless of web browser).

What program do you use?

[Boo Berry]

Just did HTML5test for the hell of it.

 

Chrome 43: 526

Firefox 38: 467

Internet Explorer 11: 348

 

Again, a grain of salt needed.

 

Here's Peacekeeper too with Chrome and Firefox. Didn't bother with Internet Explorer 11 this time around...

 

Chrome 43: 3608
Firefox 38: 6380

 

More grains of salt? You know it!

 

What program do you use?

Adguard for Windows. It isn't free, but if you volunteer to become a beta tester you get a free license.