Is Microsoft Edge really the fastest Windows 10 web browser?
Microsoft pushed out Windows 10 build 10240 yesterday to Windows Insider users which is the RTM build of the operating system.
Along with the announcement came the claim that the new default browser of the system, Microsoft Edge, is blazing fast and beating Chrome and Safari on JavaScript performance benchmarks.
Microsoft stated that Edge was beating Chrome on Sunspider by 112%, on Google Octane by 11%, and on Apple JetStream by 37%.
No mentioning of other browsers such as Firefox by the company; reason enough to run the tests on a local system using the following web browsers and specs:
Web Browsers
All web browsers were run with default configurations.
- Microsoft Edge (part of Windows 10, not available standalone)
- Google Chrome Stable
- Google Chrome Canary
- Mozilla Firefox Stable
- Mozilla Firefox Nightly
- Pale Moon Stable
- Opera Stable
- Vivaldi Technical Preview 4
The main specs of the machine
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.30 GHz
- Memory: 8 Gigabyte of DDR3 RAM
- GPU: NVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti
- Hard Drive: Corsair Force GT 180 GB Solid State Drive SATA 3
- Operating System: Windows 10 Build 10240
The benchmarks
- Apple JetStream (higher better)
- Google Octane (higher better)
- Mozilla Kraken (lower better, time in milliseconds)
- Peacekeeper (higher better)
- SunSpider 1.0.2 JavaScript Benchmark (lower better, time in milliseconds)
- WebXPRT 2015 (higher better)
The results
| Apple JetStream | Google Octane | Mozilla Kraken | Peacekeeper | SunSpider | WebXPRT | |
| Microsoft Edge | 191.59 | 29992 | 1152 | 2681 | 87.2 | 370 |
| Google Chrome Stable | 168.6 | 28566 | 1197.3 | 4009 | 184.5 | 419 |
| Google Chrome Canary | 168.21 | 30130 | 1072.9 | 4416 | 205.8 | 383 |
| Opera Stable | 163.49 | 28561 | 1317.8 | 3801 | 194.8 | 409 |
| Vivaldi TP4 | 163.44 | 28990 | 1317.8 | 4368 | 214 | 344 |
| Mozilla Firefox Stable | 164.18 | 27803 | 1218 | 4668 | 185.9 | 433 |
| Mozilla Firefox Nightly | 145.75 | 26684 | 1277.1 | 4451 | 205 | 340 |
| Pale Moon Stable | failed | 19211 | 1645.7 | 2919 | 164.9 | 231 |
The computer was idle while benchmarks were run. Still, some results were puzzling, for instance that Chrome Stable beat Chrome Canary in some benchmarks, that Firefox Stable performed better in all benchmarks than Nightly, or that Pale Moon failed on Apple's JetStream benchmark (it got stuck while running the cdjs test).
Most results are fairly close when you compare them but there are a couple of exceptions:
- Microsoft Edge dominates the Apple JetStream and SunSpider benchmark.
- Edge's PeaceKeeper performance was weak by a large percentage.
- Pale Moon performed considerably worse than other browsers in most -- but not all -- benchmarks.
There is more to a browser than JavaScript performance, especially if the differences in performance are not that noticeable in the real-world.
Microsoft has been right that Edge performs better than Chrome in the browser's the company selected for comparison. It did not perform as well in others though and here it is Peacekeeper more than any other benchmark where it performs badly.
Is Edge the fastest browser on Windows 10 then? The results leave little doubt that Microsoft has improved the performance of the default Windows browser by a lot but since Edge is not beating all browsers in all benchmarks, it cannot be said that it is the fastest browser on Windows 10.
Now You: What's your take on Microsoft Edge and performance in general?
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.