Google Chrome: Performance and First Impressions
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 3, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Software
Performance
Chrome launches very quickly, bested only by IE7 in start time:
| Google Chrome 0.2.149.27 | Internet Explorer 7.0.6001.18000 | Firefox 3.0.1 | Safari 3.1.2 | |
| Application Launch Time | ~0.8s | ~0.7s | ~3.0s | ~1.0s |
Measuring web page rendering performance was a bit more difficult to quantify, I tried loading web pages both locally and over the web and came up with the following table (the results are an average of 3 runs, the browser's cache was cleared each time):
| Websites | Google Chrome 0.2.149.27 | Internet Explorer 7.0.6001.18000 | Firefox 3.0.1 | Safari 3.1.2 |
| www.anandtech.com | 2.8s | 2.2s | 3.3s | 4.4s |
| www.digg.com | 4.7s | 2.7s | 4.1s | 3.4s |
| www.slashdot.org | 4.1s | 4.1s | 6.4s | 4.2s |
| www.techreport.com | 1.8s | 1.3s | 2.4s | 2.6s |
| http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/csstest.html | 0.49s | 0.12s | 0.12s | 0.15s |
| http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/jslibs/oldindex.php | 1.7s | 0.5s | 1.0s | 1.0s |
| http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=red&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2 | 1.3s | 2.1s | 1.5s | 1.2s |
| Google Spreadsheet (Radeon HD 4870 Test Results) | 3.1s | 5.0s | 5.4s | 4.8s |
| Google Docs (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 Review) | 4.4s | 2.5s | 6.6s | 3.6s |
Chrome varies from being the fastest of the four to being the slowest, depending on what you throw at it. Even rendering Google’s own application pages ranges from being unbelievably fast (3.12 seconds for my Google Spreadsheet test vs. ~5 seconds for the other browsers) to average (Google Docs).
Chrome never really feels slow, thankfully non-IE browsers are much better off today than they were several years ago (not to mention that even our slowest CPUs are significantly faster - farewell Pentium 4). The simple UI actually gives off the impression that the browser is faster than it actually is in many situations.
Performance is good, well done Google.
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mmntech - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
That's my issue with Chrome. I know a lot of people think ABP is "stealing" the internet but for me, it's become an essential part of browsing. I think that's the only reason why I wouldn't use Chrome as a primary browser.That said, I am quite impressed with the speed of the browser. It's at least as fast as Safari and used half the RAM that Firefox 3 does. It would be ideal for low powered systems such as netbooks with 512mb of RAM or less. It will be interesting to see how the Mac and Linux versions turn out.
granulated - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
....and something along the lines of "Stylish" is ESSENTIAL to me.I'll have another look at it in a few months and see if they've added some customisation options.
evildorf - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
Why not compare to IE8 rather than IE7? After all, Chrome is a 'beta' too.Anyway, I like Chrome's minimal stuff-around-the-edges, but found the window appearance a bit jarring. For my usual Internet browsing, it performs well, though without any noticeable differences from Firefox or IE.
Christoph Katzer - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
As your performance test showed, some sites seem to be much faster and some much slower. Slower until now are almost all German newssites. The popup-blocker worked better in Firefox and I am missing adblock ;)As for the looking it is quite cool, I like the thin and sleek design. Everything seem to work properly without exceptions, just hope the security features hold what they've promised... until now no problems with design of the websites except www.spiegel.de and their ad.
Visual - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
the table on page 4 doesn't fit - the long url http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=red&am...">http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=red&am... in the first column makes it stretch too much, and the other columns disappear under the dailytech articles on the right.phatboye - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
Why was opera not included for comparison? I would like to see a really in-depth review on all the popular current browsers; konqueror, galeon, opera, firefox, safari, ie, chrome, seamonkey, camino and avant.Tegeril - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
Even saying that Konqueror, Galeon, Seamonkey, and Avavnt are popular, current browsers undermines your credibility for suggesting that Opera is a popular, current browser. Which it is not.Griswold - Thursday, September 4, 2008 - link
Well doh, numbnuts. Opera still IS a popular browser.Baked - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
The O fanboys will not be pleased.SonicIce - Friday, September 5, 2008 - link
It's all about the O.