Google Chrome Javascript Performance
Ok, so I knew the V8 javascript in the new Google Chrome was supposed to be fast, and I noticed that my day to day javascript apps seemed to run faster and sleeker, so I decided to give it a test.
Using the Sunspider Javascript benchmark, I decided to test Google Chrome, Firefox 3.01, and IE 7.0 head to head.
I used a decidedly underpowered machine, running nothing but the browser, Notetab Pro, and the Windows Task Manager. I had no other browser windows open. My antivirus and firewall were turned off for the occasion.
Chrome chewed through the tests in a respectable 2773.4ms per iteration. The machine only has about a Gig of ram, but the CPU usage on the task manager never seemed to get above 20-25%.
Firefox 3.0 ran a good bit slower, only managing 5173.4ms. The CPU usage still didn’t seem too bad, only occasionally even coming close to 50%.
Internet Explorer was a complete dog. I could have taken a nap. Their dismal performance was 66211.4ms, making G-Chrome 22 times faster. Not 22%, but 22 Times. 2200%. I could see the CPU usage peg 99% and stay there for several seconds at a time.
I imagine on a faster machine, Internet explorer might only be 9x slower. I come to that number by comparing the performance of several of the subsets that managed to keep from totally using up the entire CPU.
I expected improved performance, but had to be genuinely surprised by numbers like these. V8 Javascript was 2.5 times faster than Firefox 3.0 and 22 times faster than IE 7.0. Wow.
While I was in, playing around, I did check on the Chrome memory usage. I’ve seen people writing numbers claiming minimal CPU usage, but you must remember - each tab is a separate process. Open 4 tabs and check your CPU performance. With 5 tabs (one of them the New-Tab, functioning as a favorites page), I had 7, count them SEVEN, chrome processes running, anywhere from 6.5MB to 37MB, most in the 13MB to 18MB range, for a total of 118.5MB.
If you like to have a half-dozen or more tabs open in your browser, you’ll certainly see the difference with G-Chrome.
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Steven Pratt
I have had problems with javascript, some scripts just run in Google Chrome. Here is one example of the top of my head:
http://www.ninjavideo.net/applet.php
Am I missing something? (when opened in FireFox sun java starts. GChrome did nothing.)
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In review of GChrome, I love the spell checker came in very handy when writing this comment!
For some reason I cannot play videos on youtube with google chrome do you know why, I need some help.
Please and thanks.
Both of you might want to check out the ‘Google Chrome Help Group’ on Google Groups.
The V8 JS still needs a lot of work as some scripts don’t run at all (Especially on facebook).
The ones that run, run indeed fast.
What about firefox 3.1 alpha? it should have a really fast js engine too.
@Nick - I’ve heard about the Facebook JS issues, but strangely enough when I visit my pages I haven’t run into them. But thanks for the info, I’ll keep looking into that one.
Nice work on this article. If you can put in what version of Java you have installed, I think that would be helpful to the readers. Java says that Chrome has full functionality and is best used on Version 6, update 10 (or later).
http://www.java.com/en/download/faq/chrome.xml
Java has nothing to do with Javascript.
[...] been the talk of the town with the recent release of Google’s surprise browser, Chrome. The discussion over JavaScripting has covered its notoriously sluggish history, while others spoke of bad [...]
FYI, results for Safari 4 are amazing : 1026.2ms +/- 2.3%
Test was done on a macbook 2.16Ghz/2GB with many applications including firefox with many tabs and other heavy apps.