Chrome 5 – Fastest Browser

It was hardly a few days back when Chrome 4 became stable and now comes the new version. Chrome is growing fast, within time-span of 2 years, it hits v5 in the developer builds.

The list of changes so far is fairly small for PC users. But the javascript performance improvement is again noticeable. On the contrary, Mac users will notice a bit more of a difference, with fixes addressing plugin stability and crashing while dragging tabs, a slightly improved cookies manager, and minor tweaks to Chrome’s task manager.

On the performance ( the thing that matters most) Chrome 5 speeds-up Javascript execution by upto 22% as per the Sun Spider Benchmark done on Windows 7:

This Makes Chrome 5 dev “World’s Fastest Browser”.

Detailed Results:

TEST                   COMPARISON            FROM                 TO             DETAILS

=============================================================================
** TOTAL **:           1.22x as fast     1116.6ms +/- 1.6%   914.2ms +/- 2.3%     significant
=============================================================================
  3d:                  1.14x as fast      169.8ms +/- 8.9%   149.0ms +/- 9.9%     significant    cube: +/- 15.7%    54.8ms +/- 19.9%     morph:             -                   60.4ms +/- 18.9%    55.6ms +/- 21.8%     raytrace:          1.34x as fast       51.6ms +/- 5.3%    38.6ms +/- 14.5%     significant
  access:              -                   98.6ms +/- 1.9%    95.4ms +/- 6.5%     binary-trees:      -                    4.6ms +/- 36.3%     4.6ms +/- 52.7%     fannkuch:          -                   40.0ms +/- 7.9%    39.0ms +/- 9.3%     nbody:             -                   42.8ms +/- 13.2%    41.0ms +/- 5.3%     nsieve:            -                   11.2ms +/- 24.1%    10.8ms +/- 9.6%
  bitops:              1.18x as fast       95.8ms +/- 13.1%    81.2ms +/- 12.6%     significant  3bit-bits-in-byte: ??                   7.0ms +/- 12.6%     8.0ms +/- 45.3%     not conclusive: might be *1.14x as slow*    bits-in-byte:      -                   16.8ms +/- 9.6%    16.0ms +/- 11.0%     bitwise-and:       -                   29.8ms +/- 23.9%    27.4ms +/- 20.2%     nsieve-bits:       1.42x as fast       42.2ms +/- 20.3%    29.8ms +/- 13.0%     significant
  controlflow:         -                    6.4ms +/- 17.4%     6.0ms +/- 41.4%     recursive:       -                    6.4ms +/- 17.4%     6.0ms +/- 41.4%
  crypto:              1.24x as fast       68.6ms +/- 5.4%    55.4ms +/- 7.9%     significant    aes:               -                   23.6ms +/- 12.7%    21.8ms +/- 14.8%     md5:               1.28x as fast       23.0ms +/- 13.2%    18.0ms +/- 15.4%     significant    sha1:              1.41x as fast       22.0ms +/- 13.3%    15.6ms +/- 21.5%     significant
  date:                1.27x as fast      125.4ms +/- 4.1%    99.0ms +/- 6.8%     significant    format-tofte:      1.34x as fast       61.6ms +/- 8.9%    45.8ms +/- 18.7%     significant    format-xparb:      1.20x as fast       63.8ms +/- 5.4%    53.2ms +/- 7.3%     significant
  math:                -                  113.4ms +/- 10.5%   101.6ms +/- 8.9%     cordic:    1.25x as fast       45.4ms +/- 15.7%    36.4ms +/- 7.1%     significant    partial-sums:      -                   49.2ms +/- 12.9%    47.4ms +/- 16.7%     spectral-norm:     -                   18.8ms +/- 3.0%    17.8ms +/- 24.9%
  regexp:              ??                  37.2ms +/- 9.3%    40.0ms +/- 15.4%     not conclusive: might be *1.08x as slow*    dna:               ??                  37.2ms +/- 9.3%    40.0ms +/- 15.4%     not conclusive: might be *1.08x as slow*
  string:              1.40x as fast      401.4ms +/- 3.3%   286.6ms +/- 5.7%     significant    base64:            1.45x as fast       46.4ms +/- 8.6%    32.0ms +/- 15.8%     significant    fasta:             1.52x as fast       62.0ms +/- 7.4%    40.8ms +/- 18.7%     significant    tagcloud:          1.21x as fast       89.8ms +/- 6.2%    74.0ms +/- 9.8%     significant    unpack-code:       1.28x as fast      130.4ms +/- 16.4%   101.8ms +/- 21.0%     significant    validate-input:    1.92x as fast       72.8ms +/- 13.8%    38.0ms +/- 10.6%     significant

Apart from performance on Windows, there are two key updates. First, Chrome will now use your default downloads folder (i.e. Username\Downloads on Vista and Windows 7)

Now user has more control over the content Chrome displays and executes. User settings for cookies, pop-ups, plugins, scripts, and images are being moved to their own panel. In addition, user can choose to hide Extension buttons from the bar.

You can download the dev channel build .

Update: Opera 10.5 Beta is the NEW Fastest Browser on Earth

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