by Dave Nocera

Created on: December 24, 2008   Last Updated: February 10, 2012

Google's search engine is clean and fast and I was disappointed to see that Google's Chrome browser has a long way to go before it achieves this elegance. I would easily have sacrificed features for a faster browser, one that uses less CPU or memory, but Chrome lacks these redeeming characteristics. Chrome is a bigger resource hog than both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers.

My study compared Chrome, FireFox and Internet Explorer to a wide variety of tests, I systematically performed the same operations using the three different browsers. During these tests I compared metrics like response time, CPU and memory consumption. I performed the tests multiple times until consistent patterns emerged and these are my results.

In terms of start time, Chrome was the winner, it started on average in 2 seconds, while Internet Explorer took 3 seconds and Firefox took 5. Chrome was also faster in returning Google search results. A typical search that took Internet Explorer or Firefox 2.5 seconds, Chrome returned in less than one second. However, once I started clicking on websites, Chrome's performance went to hell.

I think this was the reason that Chrome was consistently worse than Internet Explorer and Firefox. Chrome engineers decided to develop Chrome using a multi-process model; I observed as many as three chrome processes on my machine at one time. These processes all consume memory and CPU and need to communicate with one another to display a webpage. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer use a more efficient multi-threaded model, which is better because the threads all share the same global address space.

The results of testing showed Internet Explorer was the most efficient on both CPU and Memory consumption. I hate Microsoft, so I didn't believe these results and I ran the test multiple times, but all tests yielded the same results. Internet Explorer was 5-12% more efficient on CPU and as much as 50-200% percent more efficient on memory. Firefox was second, 2-8% more efficient on CPU and 30-80% more efficient on memory.

I also tested the three browsers in minimized mode to determine if any browser was more or less efficient when minimized. I went to www.youtube.com and played the same videos in both full screen and in minimize modes and I found that in most cases when minimized, Internet Explorer uses almost no CPU, while Firefox used 5-10% and Chrome used 10-20%.

On www.myspace.com Chrome failed miserably. Certain MySpace pages include widgets such as the music player. Chrome played the music, but on many occasions when I navigated away from MySpace, Chrome continued to consume CPU as if I was still on the page. Firefox was also a big CPU hog while on MySpace, and again Internet Explorer did ok. However, I did locate some web pages that caused Internet Explorer to consume lots of CPU and Firefox and Chrome behaved normally. I traced these to bad ActiveX code on the website and also one of the biggest reasons I hate Microsoft.

In conclusion, Chrome is still buggy and needs better optimization. It does run faster when you access Google, but you give up that advantage as soon as you start clicking sites. Since I still remember the days when Internet Explorer locked up my machine, so my recommendation is to wait for future releases of Chrome because it will surely get better.

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