Browser benchmarks: IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari
Published: 23 May 2008
Test setup
To test the performance of browsers when handling Web 2.0 technologies, we used the iBench 5.0 test suite and SunSpider, a Javascript benchmark.
iBench evaluates browser performance by measuring how fast HTML, XML and JavaScript is handled. The web pages are held on a local web server. SunSpider, which (unlike iBench) is available online, concentrates solely on JavaScript performance. Tests are grouped into nine categories, including 3D, bit operations, cryptography and string processing; there are several tests within each group. The benchmark runs each test multiple times and calculates an error range.
Obviously the speed of the hardware platform is a crucial variable. In our browser tests under Windows Vista and Mac OS 10.5.2 Leopard, we used the following components:
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6 |
| Memory | 4x 1GB Aeneon Xtune DDR3-1333 |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Extreme Q9650 (3.6GHz) |
| Hard disk | Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB ST3750640AS |
| Graphics card | ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT |
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