All browsers were already in memory and the following pages were each loaded once to avoid cache issues: Digg, CNN, Ghacks and Facebook. The results were pretty astonishing and I’m still thinking that some of the slow loading times might have been caused by a server hickup or a short prob with my Internet connection although I did not see any signs for that on my part. Another possible cause could be add-ons that have are already working in Firefox.

The most astonishing values are two page loading times of Firefox 3. It tool 13.17 seconds to load Digg while Opera needed 5.59 seconds and Internet Explorer 8 only 5.28 seconds. The second huge difference was encountered on Facebook where Opera 9.5 was the fastest browser with a loading time of 1.95 seconds.

Internet Explorer 8 followed with 2.83 seconds and Firefox 3 needed 22.60 seconds to load the page. Firefox on the other hand was the fastest browser when loading my site with 1.9 seconds followed by Opera with 2.38 and Internet Explorer with 4.83 seconds.

The same can be said for the loading time of CNN where Firefox needed 2.94 seocnds, Opera 3.38 seconds and Internet Explorer 8 4.58 seconds.

The only two values that stick out are the Firefox loading times of Facebook and Digg. Anyone here who would like to test the speeds on their connection and post the results in this thread ?

I conducted some speed tests with various browsers, including Firefox 3, Firefox 2, Opera 9.22 and Internet Explorer 7 and decided to test Opera 9.5 to be able to compare results. All browsers were tested against the following three websites: Digg.com, Cnn.com and Google.com.

It turned out that Opera 9.5 is faster than every other tested browser when opening google.com but slower in opening digg.com and cnn.com than both Firefox browsers were back then. I know that digg.com and cnn.com have dynamic homepages and digg had a interface change since then as well.

I therefor decided to test both sites with Firefox 2.0.0.6 and Firefox 3 as well to get better results. The average loading time of digg.com for Firefox 2.0.0.6 was 3.38 seconds which still 0.40 seconds faster than Opera’s loading time. Opera 9.5 turned out to load the website 1.4 seconds faster than Firefox 2.

It’s not possible to really claim that Opera 9.5 is faster than Firefox or vice versa but it can definitely be said that Opera 9.5 is faster than the latest Opera browser which means the Opera team is one a good way. Can’t wait to use the final version of it.

Read More:

Opera 9.5 download
Opera 9.5 Changelog
Browser Speed Comparision