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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23 Responses to “Google Chrome vs Opera – JS Speed Test”

  1. RNiK says:

    Great comparison man! What about Firefox 3.0.1??

  2. White Shadow says:

    Sure, there are a few Chrome vs Firefox benchmarks. CNet.com posted one yesterday – they tested Chrome, Firefox, Safari and IE.

  3. 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

  4. mike says:

    chrome runs tabs better because it runs each one on there own

  5. White Shadow says:

    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.

  6. XP1 says:

    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.

  7. White Shadow says:

    Okay, I edited the post.

  8. shaq says:

    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…

  9. Boss says:

    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?

  10. Onewho Yawns says:

    Hey,

    Thanks for benchmarking Opera. I first saw the CNET benchmark results which did not include Opera but! included an apologize for not including Opera because. (Not installed on the test system ???).

    I’m currently using Opera, but I guess I’m going to switch over to Chrome as soon as it gets out of beta.

    I’m not going to use it in it’s current state because there are open issues with it. The one that “scared me” most is this one: “100% CPU usage and/or hyper-active hard disk spinning”. It is supposed to be fixed, but…

  11. White Shadow says:

    I’ve seen lots of people complaining that Chrome “must” have AdBlock before they’ll use it, but for me the real obstacle is lack of mouse gestures (their ease of use is very addictive). Well, that and extension support.

  12. Boss (Again) says:

    Opera 10 beta going to come before the end of the year, it’s going to be faster than 9.62
    Then we need to test javascript speed againg.

  13. Ekun OKo says:

    What a waste of time and resources. Why compare Chrome with Opera 9.52? Try comparing the latest of each browser and you’ll have something to say. Until then, this comparison is useless

  14. White Shadow says:

    Those versions were the latest at the time this post was written. Of course, there are newer versions available now.

  15. name that name says:

    opera is the best

  16. name that name says:

    hay just test it for examble type this in the aderess bar in chrome
    download speed is better in opera

  17. name that name says:

    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?

  18. Yanto says:

    The speed of Opera really relates to the low memory it takes. You can see it yourself by running and watch the amount of memory it takes in Task Manager. I really like the built-in downloader of Opera. Quite fast though.

  19. hanum says:

    Opera is innovative and feature Rich. Go Opera.. Go Opera..
    Nice posting. Thank’s for info sharing ^_^

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