I wrote a post the other day giving speeds of various browsers running the SunSpider JavaScript Benchnark tests.
Since writing the post Firefox has released Firefox 3.0b3 and Robert made me aware in the comments of the previous browser speed post that Opera 9.5 beta was released so I decided to check those two browsers as well.
on Vista the performance times came in at:
Opera 9.5b – 16,293.6ms
Firefox 3.0b3 – 19,345.4ms
WebKit r30123 – 8,920.2ms
While on OS X:
Firefox 3.0b3 – 9,822.4ms
Opera 9.5b – 8,953.6ms
WebKit r30123 – 5,744.8ms
So while the Opera 9.5b browser is the second fastest browser tested and is showing very respectable times, it is still taking nearlt twice as long as the Safari Webkit browser to render pages.
Note, I re-tested the WebKit so that the results of these browsers would be directly comparable. It is also worth noting that Firefox 3.0b3 is significantly faster on Vista than was Firefox 3.0b2 while on OS X Firefox 3.0b3 is only marginally faster than Firefox 3.0b2.