Fastest Browser? What do you think?

[nilsHaus]

On a slow system (XP with 128MB ram), K-meleon. Though having tabs at all will kill your experience, no matter what browser.

[Rappy Veteran]

I think Opera has been the fastest browser for me :)

[raskren]

I find IE's handling of Flash to be quite superior to Gecko and Webkit based browsers. With IE I always have much lower CPU usage and hence a better browsing experience.

The fastest browser I have ever used is the experimental, Webkit-based, Swift.

[blade1269]

Hey,

Any one here tried Flock ....works great and fast

[shockz]

firefox 2

I love firefox... and its my primary browser... but it for sure is not the fastest browser. Its up there in the slow category tbh. Firefox 3 alphas show promise... but thats still awhile away.

[Steve Gosselin]

...Firefox 3 alphas show promise... but thats still awhile away.

>>

The Benchmark

In this benchmark only the stable release (Firefox 2.0.0.4) and the early test release (Gran Paradiso Alpha 5) were compared next to each other. This test was only done to indicate some work that's being done by the Mozilla developers and is by no means any indication for the final product (Firefox 3). For Opera versus Firefox benchmarks, please refer to a diffent post.

To make things fair the situation was set as they were on a clean installation. No cache, no extensions, default memory, connection and redraw settings. Memory and CPU reads where done when they stabilized at a certain point, note that these results may vary on any machine. The test machine is an iMac, 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB of 677 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, an NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256 MB and a Seagate 500 GB, 8 MB cache, 7200 RPM hard disk.

On a first start with Apple's start page as the home page:

- Firefox 2.0.0.4 eats 46.02 MB with 10 threads using 0% CPU power.

- Gran Paradiso Alpha 5 eats 43.35 MB with 10 threads using 0% CPU power.

Loaded 14 international web pages in the category of those you do not share, yet come packed with images, Flash and dirty java script:

- Firefox 2.0.0.4 eats 292.60 MB MB with 9 threads using 25.40% CPU power.

- Gran Paradiso Alpha 5 eats 295.46 MB with 12 threads using 22.20% CPU power.

Loaded IGN.com, GameSpot, World of Warcraft, Dofus and Wakfu.

- Firefox 2.0.0.4 eats 135.46 MB MB with 15 threads using between 21.40% and 47.10% CPU power.

- Gran Paradiso Alpha 5 eats 134.80 MB with 13 threads using 88.10% CPU power.

Lastly we close all the tabs, and leave one empty tab open. When this is done, clear all private data, meaning cache, history, and cookies:

- Firefox 2.0.0.4 eats 63.63 MB MB with 9 threads using 0% CPU power.

- Gran Paradiso Alpha 5 eats 74.55 MB with 11 threads using 0.90% CPU power.

Note: Gran Paradiso is very slow while loading all the pages; the UI (menus, tabs) are very unresponsive, even though CPU usage is only ?15-30%.

Conclusion>

For the time being it's even hard to test Gran Paradiso Alpha 5 as a tester or web developer, the user interface is really slow at the moment during page loading, even if it doesn't use much of the CPU power available. After rendering pages the CPU usage remains extremely high as well. However on the positive side, memory usage seems to have improved a little, meaning the introduction of Cairo and Places (powered by SQlite) hasn't had much of bloated effect on it. Hopefully in the upcoming test releases CPU usage will greatly improve, matching or beating Firefox 2's performance.

>> Firefox 3 will feel like an organic growth

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Firefox has always been slow on macs, the latest Alpha's really more so.

Much faster on Windows or Linux.

Edit: Oh, and Flash using more CPU when hosted in Firefox or such isn't a fault of the browser, it's a fault of the plugin.

[halcyoncmdr]

Firefox has always been slow on macs, the latest Alpha's really more so.

Much faster on Windows or Linux.

Edit: Oh, and Flash using more CPU when hosted in Firefox or such isn't a fault of the browser, it's a fault of the plugin.

But using Flash for the same sites in both browsers means that it does come down to the browser with the memory usage, etc.

[Jamie9]

Opera. Now if only they got their act together and made a decent extension api I could finally ditch firefox... damn that browser and it's lovely extensions :p.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Flash in IE as an ActiveX control, in Gecko it's a Netscape Plugin, in WebKit it's something else.

Of course, memory usage is a different matter (and even then, using lots of memory isn't bad, it's only bad when it's forcing other apps to page and such.

[Bawx]

? Takes for ever to launch: Safari bounces twice, Opera up to 8 times.

? High RAM usage (both with the same amount of tabs and sites): Safari 20 MB Real Memory, 127 MB Virtual Memory. Opera 33 MB Real Memory, 253 MB Virtual Memory;

? Opera has higher CPU usage when loading pages. Safari won't go over 80% in most cases, Opera goes for the full 99%.

If you want me to I can provide screenshots of Activity Monitor showing the above memory usage.

Opera uses an interface rendering engine completely independent of Mac OS X itself (which is probably also the reason why Opera uses much more resources). You can customize the living hell out of it and it will still look out of place. It's default "Aqua" inte- for lack of a better word - - has nothing to do with Mac OS X anymore. Writing a good looking Aqua theme (superficial only of course) yourself can take days if not weeks with the proper amount of knowledge which most people don't posses in the first place.

Doesn't matter how many features you remove from the main window you still will be confronted with them every time you acces a customize panel (which are also much more complex than anything you'll find on Mac OS X), Preferences or the Menubar. Which can be a pain and really starts getting in your way after a while. Truly customizing everything to your own likings can really take a while. Safari on the other hand takes about 5 to set up and adjust and has a true Aqua interface right out of the box.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Opera as a browser on Windows but compared to almost any other Mac OS X application it's interface is just very poorly designed. Not to mention the fact it feels much more responsive and quicker under Windows XP.

My problems with the browser are based on a Mac OS X user point of view only and like I said before it all depends on what you expect from a browser.

Open up almost any application's Preferences that's truly coded for Mac OS X and you'll see the difference.

Waaaaay off topic and I do apologize. that sig/avataer set is insaneeeeeeeely awesome! I'm saving them just to see them everyday.

[raskren]

Waaaaay off topic and I do apologize. that sig/avataer set is insaneeeeeeeely awesome! I'm saving them just to see them everyday.

Sarcasm?

[beanboy89]

I'm very surprised that there has yet to be any mention of K-Meleon in this thread. I've always found it to be one of the fastest browsers, especially on older computers.

[Louie usmc]

Firefox. hands UP ! ! !

[KenAF3]

Firefox. hands UP ! ! !

Firefox 2.0 stock isn't that fast, but some of the optimized versions are pretty good.

The fastest Firefox build -- according to a number of different benchmark pages -- is Tete's build, which has optimized versions for the Core2 Duo, Athlon64, Athlon, etc.

http://www1.plala.or.jp/tete009/en-US/software.html

1. Download and extract the latest build for your processor. I suggest the PGO (VC++ 2005 SP1) build for SSE/SSE2 processors:
   http://www1.plala.or.jp/tete009/software/m...009-sse-pgo.exe
   
2. Download the latest tmemutil.dll for your specific processor:
   http://www1.plala.or.jp/tete009/en-US/soft...ml#TMOZDLL_BETA
   
3. Extract the tmemutil.dll file to the new Firefox directory, overwriting the old version.
   
4. Download and copy tmemutil.ini to the Firefox folder.
   http://www1.plala.or.jp/tete009/software/m...la/tmemutil.ini
   
5. Download and extract tbind.exe to the Firefox folder.
   http://www1.plala.or.jp/tete009/software/mozilla/tbind.zip
   
6. After running Firefox for the first time (and creating a profile), exit Firefox and run tbind.exe.
   
7. The next time you run Firefox, install the Fasterfox extension:
   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1269
   

It's too bad that Apple is the only one to compile a browser with Intel's C++ 10.0. If others were use that compiler with Firefox, I think we'd see some further improvements with that browser on the Core2 Duo.

[coolwulf]

For displaying web pages, K-Meleon is way faster than Opera

[Harlem39s Finest]

on MY PC firefox 2 is the fastest.

[nXqd]

I use Opera for 2 months and now I change to Firefox again.

I found that Firefox is faster :)

nXqd

[Yorak]

I tried Safari when it first came out for Windows. It was absolute rubbish. Now it still has font rendering problems, but most of the major problems have been fixed. I tried it again today and I must say, it is speedy. Let me break down the browser speed:

Opera > Firefox 2 (tweaked or with Fasterfox) > Safari > Firefox 2 (stock) > IE7

About a week ago I switched back to Opera from a long long run with Firefox. I still use Firefox for GMail (as Opera has weird problems with it; usable but FX suits me better for it). I use IE7 for a few different game sites. I'm using Safari right now as I write this, but I'm itching to close it and open Opera. Not because Safari sucks, but because Opera is so great.

[Robgig1088]

Dillo beats everything. Lightning fast (and VERY lightweight).

[Zmark]

SeaMonkey seems the fastest on my machine.

[Staale]

It was very slow on mine =/

I say Opera.

[Ji@nBing]

Opera. Hands down (tweaked out of course).

[eonDxD]

I also user Opera.. Opera is really fast..

[solardog]

Dillo beats everything. Lightning fast (and VERY lightweight).

thats what she said. :dog: