Google claims up to 60x speed boost for Chrome 7

September 16, 2010 By Laura Khalil

Google developers claim they've already seen Chrome 7 outpace its predecessor by a factor of 60 in some instances, thanks in part to hardware acceleration.

While most news this week has centered around the beta release of Internet Explorer 9, Google has released some exciting information about the upcoming Chrome 7 Web browser. Google claims that it will be up to 60 times faster than Chrome 6, and will have superior graphics performance via GPU acceleration.

Chrome has developed the reputation as the browser to beat when it comes to speed, and this announcement ups the ante for all browsers.

“These early numbers show up to 60x speed improvement over the current version of Google Chrome,” said software engineer James Robinson, writing on the Chromium Blog. “With Google Chrome’s fast release cycles, we expect to be able to get these enhancements to users quickly and add new performance improvements over time.”

Google is also working on 3D graphics capabilities for Chrome 7. This will bring new capabilities to the web browser for developers, resulting in more modern games, impressive photo galleries, 3D data visualizations and virtual environments. Google created this video to give you an idea of what the future might look like in Chrome.

So how will it compete with Internet Explorer 9?

One thing is clear — Internet Explorer 9 is a browser to be reckoned with. If you can get over the fact that it’s made by Microsoft, the company seems to have learned from past mistakes. It’s also likely to get more love from Web developers — Internet Explorer 9 adheres to Web standards more so than any previous version of the browser.

Ultimately, we won’t have the answer to that question until both browsers are released to the general public. Internet Explorer 9 is currently in beta and a developer version of Chrome 7 is now available, with a stable release expected later this fall.

Showing 14 comments

Moonfire Bogdan at 11:05pm 24th September 2010 Can it get faster?
ioman at 1:28pm 16th September 2010 Microsoft is still the market share leader at over 50%. I was referring to IE9 being the fastest browser out there, not market share though. And with Chrome 7 coming out, Microsoft will not be the fastest again.
1. CBASS at 1:50pm 16th September 2010 Ohh Neighborhood Troll you jus got served
2. Neighborhood Troll at 3:46pm 16th September 2010 Actually, according to independent testing done by Engadget, Microsoft's IE9 still performs more slowly than Chrome 6. So again, Microsoft still hasn't came out from being behind. Granted, it was done by a single user (Joanna Stern) across a few different machines, but her tests shows Chrome as faster in each perceived-speed and benchmark category. Microsoft's only valid claim to performance is with the GPU technology, which is an uneven playing field due to the fact that Chrome does not have an equivalent technology implemented yet. I can guarantee that by the time a practical application (as in a website using it for purposes other than technology demonstration) of this new technology emerges, Chrome will be leading the benchmarks in it as well. (Mildly related, you will note that Google has been working toward the O3D webpage-3D standard for quite some time.) Thanks for the assumption that I meant market share when you meant speed. Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/15/internet-explo...
  1. ioman at 3:54pm 16th September 2010 Funny, because another benchmark video from Downloadsquad (sister site for Engadget) shows IE9 blowing away Google Chrome in HTML 5 speed tests. http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/06/23/internet-... Other speed tests: http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/25/html5-speed-te... http://gumballtech.com/2010/09/15/ie9-vs-chrome-6...
    Neighborhood Troll at 4:34pm 16th September 2010 Nice try. Let me explain each of your links for you, since I'm not convinced that you actually read them. The first, DownloadSquad, shows Firefox 4 as faster than IE9. Further, Chrome does not have support of GPU-acceleration to the same extent that Firefox or IE9 do--this is shown by the fact that Chrome maxes out the CPU. (In other words, Chrome is still software rendering the page, but being compared to browsers which are hardware-rendering.) The second, Engadget, is simply a reposting of the DownloadSquad results with commentary from Engadget. Why you listed this under "Other speed tests", I'm not quite sure. The article from GumbalTech is showing Chrome 6 as faster than IE9. Let me quote the part that you probably didn't read: "Chrome won by 0.67s." So since it seems like you've forgotten my initial statement, let me place it again: "I'd agree with you, except for the fact that 'fall behind again' implies Microsoft ever came out from being behind." I did not ever say that Chrome was the fastest, I simply asserted that IE9 is not. The fact that IE9 will beat Chrome6 on very specially designed tests does not disprove my statement, especially when the same results show that Firefox 4 beats IE9.
    ioman at 4:38pm 16th September 2010 "IE9 won the majority of the tests (6 out of 10)." Keep trying.
    Neighborhood Troll at 5:48pm 16th September 2010 One note before I leave: Your source for that was IE9 vs Chrome6. IE9 is still unreleased while Chrome6 has been out for a while. If we were to compare the unreleased versions of each, Chrome 7 (which is 60x faster as pointed out by this article) would blow IE9 away. Ok. Goodbye. :)
    ioman at 5:51pm 16th September 2010 Agreed that Chrome 7 would be faster. But I do not agree with you on IE9 etc. Good day sir. :)
    
    ioman at 4:40pm 16th September 2010 Did you even watch the video at DownloadSquad? Chrome is crippled. As in frozen. Ice baby.
    Neighborhood Troll at 5:22pm 16th September 2010 If you're referring to the one that you linked to, then yes I did watch it. And I watched the one that they list as updated from the following day ( http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/06/24/4-way-htm... ). Did you? Firefox wins that one. And you have still not responded to the fact that Chrome doesn't support hardware-acceleration yet, so comparison is moot. As for the IE9 winning a majority of the tests (6/10), it was barely. In overall speed, Chrome still won. I could pick an arbitrary group of websites to test and I'm confident Chrome would still lead in overall speed, and probably majority of websites. A sample of greater than 10 would be needed to prove this single, isolated aspect where IE9 is supposedly "faster". (And if such a test were to be run, it should also aim to emulate user-activity; activity that doesn't simply open 10 websites from specified URLs. For example, clicking on the first link of each page and measures time between pages on a single website.) Despite being a Chrome-user you seem pretty intent on finding any way to say IE is better. I'd equate your last comment to be losing 5-matches of Soul Caliber, then saying "Ice baby" after winning one against an opponent without a controller (aka, hardware acceleration). In any case, I have other places to troll. Bye :)
ioman at 12:42pm 16th September 2010 And this is why Microsoft will fall behind again. I use Chrome and love it. And I love that Google is constantly updating it to be more efficient and faster.
1. Neighborhood Troll at 1:08pm 16th September 2010 I'd agree with you, except for the fact that "fall behind again" implies Microsoft ever came out from being behind.
  1. ioman at 1:52pm 16th September 2010 My reply below.