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Chrome 10 pushes the browser speed barrier

10.03.2011
As Web sites become increasingly complex, streaming media becomes more common, and applications migrate from PC-client-based to Web-based, it becomes increasingly important for browsers to be as fast and responsive as possible. In fact, if you spend most of your life in Web-based apps, a speedy browser has gone from being a nice-to-have to a must-have.

The just-released Chrome 10 comes with speed improvements that make Web sites load faster and Web-based apps run more quickly. It also offers a revamped Options interface, such as improved security and better syncing. Put them all together and you have a winning upgrade.

Chrome has always been speedy, and with this release it gets even faster. Version 10 incorporates Google's new Crankshaft JavaScript engine, which the company first showed off in December. , claims that Crankshaft offers a 66% improvement in JavaScript performance as measured by the V8 benchmark suite.

In order to see how Chrome 10 compares to its rivals, I ran the using a Dimension 9200 with a 2.40GHz Core 2 Quad processor and 2GB RAM running Windows Vista. I ran three sets of tests on each browser and averaged the results.

Results showed that Chrome has caught up to the long-time speed champion, Opera. Chrome 10 averaged 312.23 milliseconds (ms) to complete the tests, while Opera 11.01 averaged 309.97ms -- a virtual dead heat. Safari 5.0.3 came in at 406.933ms, with Firefox 3.6.15 well behind at an average 978.37ms and Internet Explorer 8 lagging at 5,035.07ms.