We all love benchmarks! With the recent release of new versions of some of major browsers, and as a small diversion over the weekend, I ran five well-known browsers against five well-known JavaScript micro-benchmarking suites using my laptop. The results are reproduced below. I have ranked the results for each benchmark suite from best to worst.
Celtic Kane – old version (current version was unavailable)
(Smaller is better)
| Opera 11 |
|
77 ms |
| Safari 5 |
|
93 ms |
| Chrome 10 |
|
119 ms |
| IE 9 |
|
152 ms |
| FF 4 |
|
154 ms |
Kraken 1.0 (Mozilla)
(Smaller is better)
| FF 4 |
|
7,555.6 ms |
| Chrome 10 |
|
8,439.8 ms |
| Opera 11 |
|
12,918.8 ms |
| IE 9 |
|
16,551.9 ms |
| Safari 5 |
|
19,099.8 ms |
Dromaeo (Mozilla) (all JavaScript tests)
(Bigger is better)
| Chrome 10 |
|
457.53 runs/s |
| IE 9 |
|
403.96 runs/s |
| FF 4 |
|
386.74 runs/s |
| Opera 11 |
|
369.49 runs/s |
| Safari 5 |
|
257.42 runs/s |
V8 v6 (Google)
(Bigger is better)
| Chrome 10 |
|
7,737 |
| FF 4 |
|
3,111 |
| Opera 11 |
|
3,050 |
| Safari 5 |
|
2,319 |
| IE 9 |
|
2,119 |
SunSpider 0.9.1 (WebKit)
(Smaller is better)
| IE 9 |
|
249.8 ms |
| Opera 11 |
|
289.9 ms |
| FF 4 |
|
295.2 ms |
| Chrome 10 |
|
309.0 ms |
| Safari 5 |
|
353.9 ms |
So, what does this prove? Absolutely nothing! It's impossible to pick an overall winner from these results, or even to determine any particular trend. I'll provide two observations, however. First, comparative micro-benchmarking remains as problematic as ever. Pick your preferred test to 'prove' whatever you wish. Second, competition between browsers remains fierce. As a result, JavaScript performance has improved massively across the board in the last couple of years. That's great news. It means we are all winners!