After we heard the news of Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 and the new "xap" architecture I blogged about why it would be better to initialise Silverlight objects independent of Silverlight DOM, but how right was I?
Here are the new test results, just be on the safe side I ran the tests on IE8 (self proclaimed better browser)
Figure 1: Browser Zoom at 100%

Figure 2: Browser Zoom at 75%
Figure 3: Browser Zoom at 50%
Figure 4: Browser Zoom at 125%
Figure 5: Browser Zoom at 150%
Verdict:
Deceived by Microsoft, maybe they didn't mean to but still there is no improvement, Silverlight is still DOM dependent, the process of initialisation is however transparent due to <object /> initialisation, this needs to be improved. I'll look deeper into this later whenever I get a chance to, but my instincts tell me that this is due the HTML access from within the managed code.
Download Source Code:
If you know the reason please let me know, please leave your comments.