New Firefox JavaScript engine is faster than Chrome's V8

[iconoclast]

Well I certainly hope that FFv3.1 works better because I just tried the full render at http://nontroppo.org/timer/progressive_raytracer.html and while it took a mere 19.534 seconds on GC, It took 527.876 seconds on FF 3.0.1.

Basic Render took GC 1.099 seconds vs FFv3.0.1 's 2.056 seconds.

As for the tests on http://dromaeo.com/ :

GC - 369.80ms

FF v3.0.1 - 1367.40ms

I'm installing the latest version of Opera and FF right now (which I will then make the above change) and post the results here.

Full results. FF sucks at full raytracer renders hands down:

									   Full Render (s)	Basic Render (s)	Dromaeo (s)
Firefox v3.0.1						   527.876		   2.056					   1.3674
Minefield 3.1bpre					 540.949		   1.816					   0.922
Google Chrome						19.534			 1.099					   0.3698
Opera 9.52							   20.282			 1.016					  0.1466
Safari 3.1.2 (525.21)				26.547			 1.516					   1.6644

All Three tests

Just the Basic Render and Dromaeo

Edited September 6, 2008 by iconoclast

[ObiWanToby]

Does 3.1 Alpha 2 have tracemonkey?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080...y-released.html

[arrrgh]

Does 3.1 Alpha 2 have tracemonkey?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080...y-released.html

No, TraceMonkey started landing after they had already split Alpha 2 for QA.

[ObiWanToby]

Cool, I was confused by the wording.

(which is still under development isn't enabled by default in alpha 2)

Makes it seem like it could be enabled.

[arrrgh]

Well I certainly hope that FFv3.1 works better because I just tried the full render at http://nontroppo.org/timer/progressive_raytracer.html and while it took a mere 19.534 seconds on GC, It took 527.876 seconds on FF 3.0.1.

There probably will be some small improvements as they land more TraceMonkey code and improve overall Gecko performance but I doubt the raytracing bench mark will be one of their main targets so I don't see Firefox 3.1 improving things a lot in that particular benchmark. So far only the SunSpider shows the true (future) promise of TraceMonkey/3.1.

Makes it seem like it could be enabled.

Yeah, they are confused.. easy mistake to make when TraceMonkey landed several weeks ago and Alpha 2 was just released today. But Alpha 2 has been in QA the whole time. If you want to try TraceMonkey then the nightly builds are the only option.

Edited September 6, 2008 by macel

[Crazysah]

Go Chrome! But where is Opera? Wasn't that faster than FF3?

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

That raytracer has a lot more to do with the DOM as well.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

function javaSphereColour(x,y){
  x=x/121.5-1;
  y=-y/121.5+1;
  var x2y2=x*x+y*y;
  if (x2y2>1){
	return('black');
  }else{
	var root=Math.sqrt(1-x2y2);
	var x3d=x*0.7071067812+root/2-y/2;
	var y3d=x*0.7071067812-root/2+y/2;
	var z3d=0.7071067812*root+0.7071067812*y;
	var brightness=-x/2+root*0.7071067812+y/2;
	if (brightness<0){
	  brightness=0;
	}
	return('rgb('+Math.round(brightness*127.5*(1-y3d))
			+','+Math.round(brightness*127.5*(x3d+1))
			+','+Math.round(brightness*127.5*(z3d+1))
			+')');
 }
}

That's the most intensive bit of JS, but it's not what makes the test slow, this is:

function drawBlock(x,y,level){
  var node=document.createElement('div');
  node.style.fontSize	   ='1px'; // workaround for Internet Explorer
  node.style.position	   ='absolute';
  node.style.left		   =(x*level)+'px';
  node.style.top			=(y*level)+'px';
  node.style.width		  =level+'px';
  node.style.height		 =level+'px';
  node.style.backgroundColor=getPointColour(x*level+(level-1)/2,
											y*level+(level-1)/2);
  renderAreaElement.appendChild(node);
}

This is called for each "pixel" rendered, the raytracer test is a DOM speed test.

For reference, here's the modded function in my version, in which a full render takes 3 seconds:

function drawBlock(x,y,level,ctx){
	ctx.fillStyle = getPointColour(x*level+(level-1)/2, y*level+(level-1)/2);
	ctx.fillRect ((x*level), (y*level), level, level);
}

[Echilon]

It is, indeed, faster. My results:

• Firefox 09/01/2008 Gran Paradiso Nightly: 5100ms
  
• Firefox 09/02/2008 Minefield Nightly w/o Tracemonkey: 4500ms
  
• Firefox 09/03/2008 Minefield Nightly w/ Tracemonkey: 2100ms
  
• Google Chrome: 2800ms
  

I'm very impressed.

They're impressive benchmarks, looking forward to 3.1 (Y)

[The Teej]

The process thing is utter crap, try putting this into the address bar: qwer%:

see what happens ;)

What the hell? This doesn't make Firefox or IE7 crash, what gives? Why does it only crash Chrome?

EDIT: It's actually qwer:%, not qwer%: :p I was wondering why you was trying to direct me to House of the Dead on Amazon :laugh:

[wellofsouls]

So far only the SunSpider shows the true (future) promise of TraceMonkey/3.1.

well, now the Sunspider shows the true promise of V8 and SquirrelFish too, since with the latest Chromium snapshot it's now head-on with, if not a bit faster than, TraceMonkey. And with the latest webkit nightly that jumps 100+ in revision number, it reclaims the speed crown in Sunspider.

However Mozilla has drastically updated their Dromaeo test so now TraceMonkey is king in dromaeo.

So everything has now been fixed so that the benchmark intended to show the vendor's own browser as the fastest, shows the vendor's own browser as the fastest now :laugh:

And it seems the Javascript speed war is heating up :D

[PiracyX]

Just because Firefox's latest nightly build beats the JavaScript rendering on Google's Chrome browser doesn't mean it is better.

Chrome is a better browser than Firefox and always will be.

Still disappointing on where this leaves Opera. Still the best browser regardless.

[The Teej]

Just because Firefox's latest nightly build beats the JavaScript rendering on Google's Chrome browser doesn't mean it is better.

Chrome is a better browser than Firefox and always will be.

Still disappointing on where this leaves Opera. Still the best browser regardless.

- No RSS Support

- No Bookmark Manager

- No Print Preview

- No plugin support

- No dedicated search bar

- No picture zoom

I really like Google Chrome and all (I still have it installed after all, and still use it from time to time), but it's seriously lacking a bunch of needed features/features that make Firefox really awesome. I know Google Chrome has its pluses (seperate tab processes, V8, inbuilt html debugger, cleaner UI), but quite frankly the cons outweight the pros right now. Chrome is *not* the better browser, most definitely not. It's got it's advantages, but moreso it has its disadvantages. Come Chrome 1.0 though, Chrome is definitely going to be a major contender.

While I worry about a 5 browser race (IE, FF, Opera, Safari and now Chrome), Chrome offers innovative features and definitely earns its right to the party, and healthy competition always pushes everyone.

[DELTETHISACCOUNT]

- No dedicated search bar

I'm not trying to nitpick on you or anything, but there is a reason for that. The address bar IS the dedicated search bar. If you set your presets correctly, searching for anything on any website is much easier on Chrome than on any other browser.

For example, lets say you set your keyword for Wikipedia to 'w' and you wanted to pull up Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia article. All you would have to type in the address bar is 'w Hillary Clinton' and it will pull up her article. Wanted to search for pink bunny slippers on Yahoo? Type 'y pink bunny slippers'. But please note that these are not the default settings. You have to set the keywords for your search engines first.

Just wanted to clear things up a bit.

[The Teej]

I'm not trying to nitpick on you or anything, but there is a reason for that. The address bar IS the dedicated search bar. If you set your presets correctly, searching for anything on any website is much easier on Chrome than on any other browser.

For example, lets say you set your keyword for Wikipedia to 'w' and you wanted to pull up Hillary Clinton's Wikipedia article. All you would have to type in the address bar is 'w Hillary Clinton' and it will pull up her article. Wanted to search for pink bunny slippers on Yahoo? Type 'y pink bunny slippers'. But please note that these are not the default settings. You have to set the keywords for your search engines first.

Just wanted to clear things up a bit.

Well hot damn, that's awesome :D I'm going to remove that off the list then, actually, because I consider this to be an improvement over the standard dedicated search bar. Many thanks for that tip there :) Time to sort out my keywords hehe.

EDIT: Or, I would do, if Neowin didn't time you on how long you can edit >>'

Edited September 8, 2008 by The Tjalian

[DavidM]

You can do the same in FF3, go to the search bar, click on arrow, select "manage search engines" click on search engine and edit the keyword. The in the address bar type the keyword - g=google for me, so it's "g neowin" and there you go. Google searches for neowin.

I'm simple g=google, l=live, a=ask and w=wiki. :)

[megamanXplosion]

Opera has had the ability to search from the address field using "g keyword" for a very long time and you can customize it to include other search services.

[wellofsouls]

yup, Opera has those search shortcuts for ages.

what Chrome does is to completely merge the address field with the search box, so just entering search terms in the address field and press enter will go to a search with the default search engine (which is by default google).

At first the lack of a dedicated search box feels like something at miss, but after a couple days, I have to say it's becoming addictive. Now I'm really used to just entering what I want to search in the address field and press enter, that when using Opera now it feels a bit tedious to look for the relatively small search box at the upper right corner, or enter a "g " at the beginning of a search.

but at the same time I still like the existence of a dedicated search box... oh well...

Something that Chrome is clearly lacking is the URL drop-down selection arrow and list, which proves to be quite intimidating to those less computer savvy people.

[XerXis]

Correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I know the normal JavaScript still has to be converted to machine code whereas with V8 this step has already been done and therefore much faster, even on slower PC's! Also as far as I know ALL browsers except for Chrome run in a single process whereas Chrome has a process for each tab. So if for example, one tab on a normal browser freezes the browser will fall over as opposed to Chrome being able to handle one or two tabs freezing and not have the browser crash and burn! Anyone who knows a little more about this please feel free to elaborate!

IE8 also has each tab sandboxed in its own process :) But their javascript performance is horrible :p

[C++]

Clearly, once again Google benefits the consumer through competition, whether you use their product or not. It's like when they took us out of the 2MB Inbox world, all over again.

[Glowstick]

Real word code on website don't work that way. Most of the code is not executed several times in a loop. Most of the code is just executed once.

For cases where the code is executed just once the engines that do so well on Sun spider are not going to be as performant.

When I'm using these so called Web 2.0 sites, the code's repeatedly executed for all and everything I want and do.

[magik]

Clearly, once again Google benefits the consumer through competition, whether you use their product or not. It's like when they took us out of the 2MB Inbox world, all over again.

+1 (Y)

[CGar]

Firefox can also be set up to use a search engine via the address bar (I don't think it does the keyword for each search engine though)

http://www.liewcf.com/blog/archives/2005/0...ess-bar-search/

[Bazenga]

+1 (Y)

+1000.

[wellofsouls]

When I'm using these so called Web 2.0 sites, the code's repeatedly executed for all and everything I want and do.

Yup, and Google said it right at the start of their comics, that they want to build a browser not for the traditional websites that's more about text and picture presentation, but for complex web apps.