Google Chrome Beta, Faster than a Tesla Coil

Google has released a new beta of its constantly evolving Google Chrome web browser. Google Chrome 5.0.375.23 Beta brings all of the new features that have trickled into the dev channel builds of late, things like support for the Geolocation API and theme sync, but it also marks a significant improvement in JavaScript rendering speed over the previous Google Chrome beta.

“Today’s new beta release incorporates one of Chrome’s most significant speed and performance increases to date, with 30% and 35% improvement on the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over the previous beta channel release. In fact, looking back in time, Chrome’s performance has improved by as much as 213% and 305% on these two benchmarks since our very first beta,” Mads Ager, software engineer at Google, wrote.

Of course, JavaScript speed improvements in Google Chrome aren’t exactly news. The browser practically started the JavaScript performance ‘war’ blowing every other browser out of the water when it first launched. Everyone else, Mozilla, Opera, even Microsoft, have gained some ground in the meantime, but the Google Chrome V8 team hasn’t been sitting still.

By its own account, Google Chrome is two to three times faster with JavaScript than the first Chrome beta release, which was launched just one year and a half ago. The most impressive speed gains can be seen in Google’s own V8 JavaScript performance benchmarking suite, in which Chrome still reigns supreme.

Still, synthetic benchmarks only appeal to the true geeks among us. While it’s nice to have numbers one can compare, for the average user, they’re going to mean very little. So, Google thought of a way to showcase just how fast Google Chrome was by relating to things that most people knew were fast. And we’re not talking about Ferraris here, we’re talking Tesla coils and potato guns. Check out the video for yourself.




Making the Google Chrome Speed Tests