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)
(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)
(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)
(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)
(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)
(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!