OrphanShadow

Contents:
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1/. Introduction
2/. Peacekeeper
3/. SunSpider
4/. Google V8
5/. ACID3 Compliance
6/. Conclusion
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Hey folks!

What this article intends to do is show the characteristics of some of the more popular browsers available for the Mac OS X operating system, specifically the newest iteration of the OS, 10.6 Snow Leopard.

To that end, I have gathered a total of 5 browsers for the test today:

• Safari 4
• Firefox 3.5
• Opera 10
• Flock
• Camino 1.6

Due to the nature of 10.6 and its 64-bit applications, in the interest of fairness I have also included results from Safari 4 when forced to run in 32-bit mode also.

To put the browsers through their paces, I have devised a benchmark run consisting of the following tests:

• Futuremark's Peacekeeper Benchmark
• Sunspider Javascript Benchmarks
• Google V8 Benchmarks
• ACID3 Compliance Tests

Across the next few posts you will find the results from the tests ran.

For reference, all testing was done on my late 2008 Unibody MacBook, the specs of which you can find in my post-sig.

So, without further ado, lets start the show.

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OrphanShadow

As it is pretty plain to see, Safari dominates the Peacekeeper benchmark in both of its iterations. Firefox comes up 2nd, and Opera 3rd. The two other, Gecko-based browsers fall far short of the performance mark.

One interesting anomaly worth noting here is that 32-bit Safari actually outperforms 64-bit in this test, which is curious when taking into account the 64-bit nature of Snow Leopard. It may just be that the 64-bit code needs time to mature, but we shall see.

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OrphanShadow

Wow

Whether it is a problem with its Mozilla v2 Gecko engine, or some incompatibility is hard to say, but Camino's Javascript performance here is WAYYYYYY off the mark. Opera 10 feels the heat too, coming second from last. Hopefully the Opera team are working on Javascript performance for the 10.10 release.

Elsewhere, Safari 4 is dominating yet again, with the 64-bit version flexing its muscles and taking first place, although Firefox somewhat closes in on it in these tests.

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OrphanShadow

Another Safari victory here. There isnt really much competition. We are seeing again here that 32-bit mode seems to have a higher performance than 64-bit, although I would still attribute that to teething problems of a 64-bit platform transition.

Firefox comes a very distant second. Flock is rather competitive in this benchmark, which could be because of its roots being in Firefox 3.

Opera still doesnt seem to be cutting the mustard here, either, and I wont even mention Camino...

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OrphanShadow

This is certainly an interesting one.

Safari and Opera both pass here with flying colours, but all the Gecko based browsers seem to struggle. Firefox probably comes the closest to a full 100% score, but its still not perfect. Flock and Camino both had visible rendering glitches during the test.

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OrphanShadow

What we see in these benchmarks may simply be a case of Apple's tight integration with Safari and Snow Leopard. Without fail Safari has dominated every benchmark in the suite, although it is clear from the 32/64-bit comparisons that 64-bit Safari still has a few small issues that need ironing out.

Firefox has been closest throughout the tests to beating Safari, although sometimes the speed differences between even those 2 are night and day. Word is going around that Mozilla is working at bringing 64-bit versions of its web browser to the masses, so maybe this situation will shift.

Opera is also disappointingly slow considering how 'fresh' it is. It has a nice UI and good standards compliance, but these tests show it just doesn't sit in the same league as Firefox and Safari.

Camino was a poor performer, dare I say it was close to IE8 in how shockingly poor it was?

Flock showed promise among the underdogs, sometimes outperforming the much more mature Opera, although if it wants to be seen and heard it needs to work on its performance instead of catering to the niche market for 'Social web browsers'.


At the end of the day though, these are all just numbers. You could run these benchmarks for hours, but at the end of the day, different things appeal to different people. Its up to you guys to decide.

~[O.S]~

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zelix

im retarded edit

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Dawlish7

For me its just addons that's it, if chrome has addons i would be all over it the same with safari also i have never liked opera for some reason, thanks for posting these

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R.I.P - XAslanX Amigos

dham

Notice how good apples browser is compared to Microsofts. -_-

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The Hundred Gunner

This was my experience when using windows XP x64. 32-bit consistently beat out anything 64-bit could do, in every benchmark (0.5s - 1s faster in Super Pi, 200-600 points higher in 3D Mark 03, 10FPS better on average in Doom 3, etc.)

So maybe this is the source of my performance drop since switching to SL.

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"I just talk the way I see things... If that's offensive to you... I'm sorry; you're a loser." - Michael Savage

"But you would be amazed by how many people think that the only reason to have a computer is to play games, and that playing games is all that anyone with a computer does." - dangerousHobo