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February 25th, 2009, 11:07 GMT · By

Safari 4 Kills IE 7, Firefox 3 - SunSpider Benchmark

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The new Safari 4 (Beta)
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Apple released the fourth major installment of Safari yesterday. The beta release promises a totally new experience, as well as the fastest yet, which it provides, benchmark results have revealed.

The software-focused folks at Cnet UK grabbed Apple's Safari 4 Beta and decided to benchmark it using “both a PC running Windows XP SP2, and a Mac running OS X 10.6 with all updates applied.” However, we're pretty sure Cnet's editors meant to say Mac OS X 10.5.6, since a benchmark using the current developer build of Snow Leopard wouldn't be relevant to Mac users.

Using the SunSpider suite of JavaScript tests to determine which browser was the quickest, testers showed that Safari 4 beat every existing browser in terms of speed on commonly used operating systems and platforms.

The team of testers shockingly revealed that on a Windows PC, Safari was “a whopping 42 times faster than Internet Explorer 7, just over six times faster than Internet Explorer 8, 3.5 times faster than Firefox 3, and 1.2 times faster than Google Chrome.” Full benchmark results available below the graphs.

Review image Review image Review image

Safari 4 Benchmark graphs
Credits:
Cnet UK


Safari 4 Beta on a PC with a 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo:
1) Safari 4 (Total time: 910ms)
2) Mozilla Minefield 3.2a1 (1,136ms)
3) Google Chrome (1,177ms)
4) Firefox 3 (3,250ms)
5) Opera 9.6 (4,076ms)
6) Internet Explorer 8 (5,839ms)
7) Internet Explorer 7 (39,026ms)

Safari 4 Beta on Mac OS X (2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo):
1) Safari 4 (Total time 967ms)
2) Minefield 3.2a1 (969ms)
3) Firefox 3 (3803ms)
4) Opera 9.6 (7322ms)
.

Safari 4 is touted by Apple as “the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac and Windows PCs.” The fresh version of the Mac specific web browser introduces the new Nitro engine, which allegedly runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.

Download Safari 4 Beta (Free)

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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: bart on 15 May 2009, 21:47 UTC reply to this comment

While this is still true Opera is now avaible in version 10. Bad thing is that it' horribly slow: ~10000 on my system, where FF3.5Beta4 is far better with 2500.

I'm confused with Minefield. I've been testing v. 4.0a1pre in the past but it is curently unavaible for download.

I'm sorry for Opera 10alpha. Hope they will fix it soon.


Comment #2 by: Lee on 17 May 2009, 17:51 UTC reply to this comment

Tried Opera, it gives me page renderring problems. I'd like to use Safari as my default, but it seems way behind Firefox 3 in terms of customization & security. And this is from a Mac user. I feel Safari is missing a lot that Firefox has. Opera would have it but for some fatal flaws.
Why are all the tests about speed? Who cares how many milliseconds faster they are? It's about function (security, customization etc..).


Comment #3 by: chrome on 25 Jun 2009, 09:48 UTC reply to this comment

everyone, safair 4 is lieing about the bench mark and same for minefield. google chrome is the fastest web-browser in the world, and bill gate even said so. so i suggest people download google chrome, and make it their default web-browser.


Comment #4 by: wickywills on 03 Aug 2009, 15:58 UTC reply to this comment

@chrome

Firstly, reading your comment, you sound about 10 years old and like one of those kids who started the "my dad's better than your dad....." arguments.

Secondly, Safari 4 isn't lying (try using a dictionary also!) - run SunSpider yourself. I just have, and Safari 4 was clearly fastest on both my Mac (Leopard) and my PC (Vista 64bit). Safari 4 was also the first browser to get 100/100 on the Acid 3 test. Personally I still prefer to still use Firefox with the release of 3.5 now, due to its wealth of features and new-found speed, though its personal taste which browser you use really.

Unfornantly, as a web developer, I still have to code for all major browsers (including IE6!!).

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