Google Chrome vs Opera - JS Speed Test
With the recent release of the Google’s Chrome browser lots of sites have jumped on it and started churning out reviews. However, most reviews focus on Chrome vs Firefox - for example, I have already seen no less than three articles discussing whether Chrome’s brand new JavaScript engine is really faster than the one used in FF equivalent.
How about some variety, then? Here are the results of five popular JavaScript benchmarks I ran in Chrome and Opera.
Browser versions : Opera 9.52 and Google Chrome 0.2.149.29
V8 Benchmark Suite
Google’s own JS benchmark that was used to tune the new JavaScript engine. Unsuprisingly Chrome fares much better than Opera in this one (a higher score is better).
Dromaeo
Mozilla JavaScript performance test suite. Like the V8 benchmark, it also uses a number of algorithmic, pure-JS tests without any DOM operations. Lower numers are better.
CelticKane Javascript speed test
There’s not a lot of detail available ont what, exactly, this benchmark tests but I included it as it seems fairly well known. Oh, and Opera wins this one 
(lower numbers are better).
Webkit’s Sunspider
Another pure-JS benchmark. Again, lower is better.
SlickSpeed Selectors Test
Runs a number of DOM lookups using various popular JavaScript libraries and frameworks (e.g. jQuery), lower numbers are better. Interestingly, Chrome’s advantage isn’t that clear cut in DOM operations - Opera is faster with 2 frameworks and gets fairly close to Chrome’s performance in other tests.
Note : I had to do some hacking to get it to run in Opera because the test page contains an unsecaped &em;i&em; tag embedded inside a ‘name’ attribute (which is bad and definitely not valid XHTML).
In conclusion, Chrome is way faster than Opera in pure-JavaScript tasks, but Opera comes closes and sometimes even surpasses Google’s browser in the speed of DOM operations.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Great comparison man! What about Firefox 3.0.1??
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Sure, there are a few Chrome vs Firefox benchmarks. Here’s one. Also, CNet.com posted one yesterday - they tested Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:35 am
[...] is still faster if you optimize it, can’t wait to see the full release. Looks very promising. Google Chrome vs Opera - JS Speed Test | W-Shadow.com [...]
September 6th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I am finding Chrome to be lightning fast and it doesnt bog down like FF does after you have opened a lot of tabs and used it a long time (3.0 seems to much better about this) still it doesnt hold a candle to Chrome for speed.
but…
I am finding some small annoyances in Chrome - it is very finicky and dare I say errant about selecting text - it tends to miss characters on the ends of strings of text - also I am finding for some strange reason, specifically in the case of the GeoPress plugin that it will not retain a selected preexisting location when editing a post in WP in plain text mode. I dont use the rich text editor so I dont know about that. I’ll tell the GeoPress devs about it too - thx
September 6th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
chrome runs tabs better because it runs each one on there own
September 6th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Eh, Chrome may have a better tab=process model in theory, but I’m personally very annoyed that many sites cause their tab’s CPU usage shoot up to 50% and more (which doesn’t happen in other browsers). Even if it doesn’t crash the browser it still leads to intermittent freezes.
Frequent freezes aside, browsing with Chrome feels about as fast as using Opera - except Gears-enabled sites, of course.
September 13th, 2008 at 7:17 am
White Shadow, you didn’t write the version numbers of Opera and Chrome that you are using. You should specify them so newer users won’t be confused about newer, faster versions.
September 13th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Okay, I edited the post.
October 5th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
lol .. he did .. but lets just assume that its the latest vs the latest .. but hey, as a major opera fan .. i’ve been using it since it first launched, i give them my salute…
November 1st, 2008 at 2:52 am
Yeah Opera is Faster than FF 3 try opera 9.61 it’s even fasterfor example CelticKane Javascript speed test was 204 ms follow counter part FF 3 7oo ms something sad eh Opera got the fastest javascriot speed more information use these site
celtickane.com/webdesign/jsspeed2007.php
celtickane.com/webdesign/jsspeed.php
extjs.com/blog/2007/07/10/css-selectors-speed-myths/
extjs.com/playpen/slickspeed/
anand-prakash.net/2007/09/best-gets-better-javascript-speed-tests.html
So, your choice make a wise choice?