kallasoft

Like all internet enthusiasts, I was ecstatic to see Google release a new browser. Unfortunately, like all *nix enthusiasts, my heart dropped at the sight of “Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows” and no sign of a corresponding Linux or Mac version. Fortunately, the good guys over at Codeweavers released a version of Chromium (the codebase for which Chrome was built on top of) for both Linux and Mac. Being the curious little bugger that I am, I decided to give it a go on an old Pentium 4 Ubuntu desktop and my Core 2 Duo Macbook. Granted, my Linux desktop is a little old, but I figured it would be a good candidate for noticing speed improvements.

Since this test was for kicks, I only ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks to get a simple idea of performance. JavaScript, as we now know, was one of the huge performance areas Google tried to tackle with their new process model. The SunSpider benchmark just happened to be a nice test to expose performance benefits (just like it did with SquirrelFish). Here is how Chromium panned out…

Part 1: Linux Results

On the Linux front, I was using a 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4 with 768MB RAM running KDE under Ubuntu 8.04. In the nature of simplicity, Codeweavers offers up a .deb package so the install was a simple one line dpkg command. To be more complete I wanted a comparison between a couple of browsers, so on Ubuntu I picked Opera and Firefox to compare against. I then ran the SunSpider benchmarks with Opera 9.52, Firefox 3.0.1, and CrossOver Chromium v. 0.9. The test was run in each browser one at a time and with no other applications running.

Initially, I thought Chromium felt pretty zippy on the Ubuntu box, and the benchmarks proved it. It was the solid winner in all categories with a speed 3.66 times faster than Opera and 2.08 times faster than Firefox. Each category total was recorded and those values are graphed below (shorter bars are better):

The aforementioned speedup came from the total time benchmark tallies of 9590.4 ms for CrossOver Chromium, 35103.2 ms for Opera, and 19975 ms for Firefox. There was no doubt that CrossOver Chromium was the clear winner here. For the visually oriented the total runtimes can be seen below:

Part 2: Mac Results

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The Mac test machine packs a bit more of a punch with a 2.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor and 2 gigs of RAM running Leopard (10.5.5).

For the installation Codeweavers offers a standard .dmg file that mounts as a disk image. To install you are left to drag and drop Chromium onto the provided Applications alias.

Once all the applications were installed and up to date, I started the benchmark the same as with Ubuntu: one application at a time with nothing else running.

Below is a screenshot of Opera, Safari, and CrossOver Chromium with their respective results.

Once the tests had finished on Safari version 3.1.2 (build 5525.20.1), Opera version 9.52 (build 4916), and CrossOver Chromium v. 0.9 I compiled the results. Similar to the Ubuntu run, CrossOver Chromium for Mac performed very well breezing past Opera and Safari in all of the tests. Here are the individual results for Leopard (shorter bars are better):

The total benchmark tallies for the Mac run were 1592.6 ms for CrossOver Chromium, 6923.4 ms for Opera, and 3934.8 ms for Safari. For this run Chromium turns out to be 4.34 times faster than Opera for Mac and 2.47 times faster than Safari. Of course, Chromium was unquestionably the winner. Again, for a visual taste of the test:

Even though the Chrome Beta was intended for a Windows-based audience, Codeweavers managed to put out a nice appetizer for those lacking (by chance or choice) a Windows installation. This test’s purpose was just to see the performance of CrossOver Chromium compared to existing browsers of the same platform.

Please keep in mind that the software is still Beta, and no native version has been announced for Linux or Mac. That being said, CrossOver Chromium seems to be the sure winner on both test boxes with doubling and even quadrupling the speed of javascript execution comparatively. For Linux and Mac users, this should be a pretty good indication that a speedy new contender in the browser arena will be with us shortly.

Check it out here, and let us know what you think!