Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 - Fastest browser yet!

I've had a little hands-on time with Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 now and initial testing shows it to be the fastest browser available.

Over the past few weeks I've carried out a number of browser benchmark tests using the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark and I've now added Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 to the lineup.

Note: The hardware platform remains unchanged from the previous tests, but to confirm that there were no changes I re-ran some of the tests using browsers already on the list and saw a deviation of less than 2% in the results between the results from today and those carried out previously. 

Previously the speed list stood as follows:

1. Firefox 3.0 Beta 4
2. Safari 3.1
3. Opera 9.50 Beta 1
4. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1
5. Firefox 3.0 Beta 3
6. Safari 3.0 Beta
7. Opera 9.26
8. Firefox 2.0.0.12
9. Internet Explorer 7

SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark 

Well, with the release of Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 we have a new winner.  In the benchmark test that I carried out Beta 5 is 15% faster at processing the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark than Beta 4 (raw data for Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 here).  That's a significant performance boost and proves that the dev team has been hard at work optimizing the Firefox code.

Note:  Shorter bars means faster JavaScript processing. Neither version of Opera fully completed the MD5 part of the test, and these results have been omitted. 

ACID 3 

I also put Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 through the ACID 3 test.   Beta 5 beats Beta 4 but both are beaten by Safari 3.1.  However, given the work being done on standards compliance I expect that this score will continue to improve up until the browser is released.

Note:  Longer bars means better ACID 3 compliance -100 is the top score.

Here's what the output looks like:

Here's the reference image (what the output should look like):

Overall

Firefox 3.0 beta just keeps on getting better and better.  Performance is up on the previous beta and ACID 3 compliance has improved.  This browser's almost cooked!

Thoughts?