Mini-benchmark of various (mostly Gecko/Goanna based) browsers on XP x86

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Kouto

Mini-benchmark of various (mostly Gecko/Goanna based) browsers on XP x86

Unread post by Kouto »

PRECAUTION !!
This should NOT be treated as 'real-world' values, only as a rough 'reference'/'guide'. I am not recommending one browser over another, or criticising the works of one developer over another. Choose as to whatever suits your needs, I just did this out of boredom.

TESTING PROCEDURE AND ENVIRONMENT
The tests were conducted on a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom N270 (essentially equivalent to an 800Mhz Coppermine Pentium 3 from 2001) netbook with 1GB RAM. The browsers were all at completely default settings at fresh installation using a fully updated copy of Windows XP SP3 Home Edition.

The procedure was:
- Open the browser. Dismiss any 'prompts' like account sign-in, Mozilla's 'Know your rights' button or 'Set as default browser'...
- Navigate to about:blank.
- Open TASKMGR and wait for RAM usage to stabilise, and record it.
- Go to html5test.com, and record the number given.
- Repeat with next browser until procedure complete.

Why about:blank, and not opening up three tabs or some light/heavy browsing pages? Well, I wanted to load the minimal amount possible into RAM because the UI elements in Mozilla-based browsers are pretty much drawn up entirely using XUL (or its fork, UXP)/C++/JavaScript. The only exception to this rule is K-Meleon, which for the most part uses the native Win32 APIs to draw up its UI elements. Plus, websites aren't a good way to benchmark anyway as they can differ depending on whatever content is being served at the current given time anyway, especially nowadays, so might as well just show off the RAM usage that will always be prevalent no matter what.

THE TEST

Major Browsers
Chrome 49.0.2623.112 (Blink 49.0.2623.112): 489, 87MB
Firefox 52.9.0 (Gecko 52.0): 459, 141MB
SeaMonkey 2.49.5 (Gecko 52.0): 423, 133MB
roytam1 Browser Platform
K-Meleon Goanna 76.4.3 (Goanna 3.5): 406, 73MB
New Moon 28.10.3 (Goanna 4.4): 431, 161MB
Serpent 55: 475, 155MB
Feodor2 Browser Platform
Mypal 29.2.0 (Goanna 4.x?): 431, 135MB
Centaury 0.16.0 (Goanna 4.8): 471, 146MB

(Yes, I didn't bother to test Yandex, Otter, Maxthon, or 360 Extreme Explorer. I can't be arsed to install them right now.)

OVERALL?
K-Meleon is the lightest, but the weakest at rendering web pages, sadly, due to being based on an older version of a browser engine that was forked from an already weaker-than-the-relevant-Chrome-at-its-time version of Gecko. However, it does have the advantage of running on non-SSE processors and is clearly very well optimised for such a purpose

Bear in mind while the Atom N270 does support up to SSE4.1, it's still only as powerful as a processor from 2001 that didn't even have SSE2 present, though you could probably go for one of the beefier browsers if you have a better processor.

Chrome 49, which is actually the oldest browser on this list amazingly by a good two or three years; while technically being second lightest and still managing to be the top at rendering (and still being the only one that's semi-usable with web apps like Discord), runs three separate processes. This probably makes it more stable, but do take caution that it may be taxing on an older CPU if you intend to run more than a couple tabs.

Gecko-based browsers also will have better support for modern TLS protocols and ciphers over time: due to Chrome on Windows being reliant on the operating system's cipher suite and protocol support, many modern sites blocking out HTTPS connections not made through TLS 1.2/elliptic-curve cryptographic will not work on Chrome unless you use ProxHTTPSProxy, and even that may fail for JS/AJAX content that constantly needs to reload (which seems to cause loads of issues in Goanna/Gecko anyway, so I guess you're screwed either way).

SIGNING OFF
Hope you enjoyed this comparison, feel free to reply to this. I don't have much more to say now except I probably enjoyed the write-up far more than the actual benchmarking... XD

~Kouto

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