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Safari 3.1 is fast ... but so is Firefox 3.0 Beta 4

A little over a week ago I took a look at Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 and I benchmarked this latest release against the current browser lineup. Yesterday Apple released Safari 3.1 so the browser landscape has now changed. It's time to see how Apple's latest browser fits into the big picture.
Written by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, Contributing Writer

A little over a week ago I took a look at Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 and I benchmarked this latest release against the current browser lineup.  Yesterday Apple released Safari 3.1 so the browser landscape has now changed.  It's time to see how Apple's latest browser fits into the big picture.

Apple makes some bold claims relating to Safari.   Have a read of this:

The fastest web browser on any platform, Safari loads pages up to 1.9 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2.

And it executes JavaScript up to 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 4 times faster than Firefox 2.  What does all that mean for you? Less time loading pages and more time enjoying them.

To put these results into context you have to also read the small print:

Performance measured in seconds. Testing conducted by Apple in March 2008 on a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo-based iMac system running Windows XP Professional SP2, configured with 1GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 2600 with 256MB of VRAM. HTML and JavaScript benchmarks based on VeriTest’s iBench Version 5.0 using default settings. Testing conducted with a beta version of Safari; all other browsers were shipping versions. Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection, and other factors. [emphasis added]

Now if I'm going to pull Apple up over anything it's over the use of iBench.  iBench 5.0 is a benchmarking fossil.  It was released November 2003 and it's safe to say that a lot has changed since then, especially as popular websites are now loaded with JavaScripts and make heavy use of AJAX.  Benchmarking a modern browser (and OS) with an old tool seems pointless to me and the results should be taken with a liberal pinch of salt.  But it does highlight a problem that when it comes to browser benchmarking tools, there isn't much to choose from.  iBench might be old (and obsolete) but there's not much else to take its place.  We either have to rely on benchmarking against live sites and put up with all the variables introduced by server load, lag times and local traffic bottlenecks, or alternatively rely on synthetic benchmarks which have little in common with the real world.

There are dozens of tests out there that look at page loading times and page rendering speeds, but I don't feel happy using any of them, and as a result I'll leave out any discussion of page loading and rendering.

I'm going to confine testing to two tests:

  • SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark
  • ACID 3

Testing will be carried out on the same hardware and software platform as previous tests were carried out on.

The tests -->

SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark

Apple isn't kidding when it says that Safari 3.1 is fast.  In my SunSpider JavaScript benchmark it is only narrowly beaten by Firefox 3.0 Beta 4. 

Safari 3.1 is fast, but so is Firefox 3.0 Beta 4
 

Note:  Neither version of Opera fully completed the MD5 part of the test, and these results have been omitted. 

Raw results available here.

Based on these results, Safari 3.1 is neck and neck with Firefox 3.0 Beta 4, about twice as fast as Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 and Firefox 3.0 Beta 3, four times faster than Firefox 2.0.0.12 and, well, about seven times faster than Internet Explorer 7.

Just for completeness I decided to run the same benchmarks on a smaller cross-section of Mac OS X browsers on the Mac mini that I have here.  In this test Safari 3.1 beat both Safari 3.0.4 and Firefox 2.0.0.12 and 3.0 Beta 4.

Safari 3.1 is fast, but so is Firefox 3.0 Beta 4
 

Safari 3.1 is one speedy browser.

ACID 3 

To round off this set of tests I ran Safari 3.1 through the ACID 3 test to see how it performed.  The result - it did remarkably well.  It easily beat all the other browsers in the lineup:

Safari 3.1 is fast, but so is Firefox 3.0 Beta 4
 

Here's the output:

Safari 3.1 ACID 3

Still a fair way to go though before it passes the test:

ACID 3 reference
 

Closing thoughts

Well there you have it.  Safari 3.1 is fast.  Compared to performance pigs such as Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2, the latest incarnation of Safari flies.  But put it up against Firefox 3.0 Beta 4 and the browser faces still competition.  Both appear to be highly optimized for speed and performance.  Still, it's good to see that speed is back on the agenda for browsers. 

Thoughts?

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