Everything is Permuted

Tales of a South Downs fox... and other ramblings

Opera v Firefox speed test results (Stunning win for Opera)

Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:00:52 AM

OK, this isn't overly scientific but I came across a site called Stopwatch which measures the time it takes for a specific URL to load. I thought I'd give it a go on some of my regular haunts.

To make things fair I cleaned out the cache in both browsers: Opera 8 beta2 and Firefox 1.0.1

The results are genuine (the last one is bizarre), but speak for themselves:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/ Opera: 3.453 Firefox: 4.46

http://www.network54.com/Forum/goto?forumid=8980 Opera: 1.61 Firefox: 1.625

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/login.php Opera: 0.828 Firefox: 1.15

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/ Opera: 4.563 Firefox: 5.641

http://www.pixcentrix.co.uk/pomo/arts/links.htm Opera: 2.703 Firefox: 3.969

http://forums.mozillazine.org/index.php?c=10 Opera: 3.312 Firefox: 3.703

http://my.opera.com/Words/journal/ Opera: 9.328 Firefox: 9.63

http://www.opera.com Opera: 3.62 Firefox: 4.78

http://www.getfirefox.com/ Opera: 2.875 Firefox: 7.328 (!!!!)

So it's a 9-0 win for Opera |(32.292 seconds in Opera overall to 42.286 seconds in Firefox). Even if you strip out that last result, Firefox comes in at 34.958 over 8 sites compared with 9 in Opera.

Test carried out on a Dell Dimension 4400 with 256kb RAM over a 512kb ADSL connection via Linksys WAG54G router.

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Comments

TreeGo Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:00:52 AM

I'm talking about Max Connections to a Server and Total Max Connections at Tools-Preferences-Network.

Do you use the defaults of 8 and 20, respectively?

Nice results. smile

ICQ_Eagle Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:00:52 AM

Nice result! Just about your connection speed, I think that you confuse mbits with kbits. :-)

Faded_Mantis Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:00:52 AM

Ah its great to see such results. I started usign Opera 4-5 days ago and am very pleased with the result.

Apart form no spyware detected with spybot search and destroy after using Opera to 2-5 a night with IE.

Also when I'm told to get firefox by people i'm glad to say that i'm an Opera user, apart form the speed test that you showed here a PCworld NZ review said this..

"However Firefox was the only one of the 6 browsers we tested (Opera, IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Safari and Firefox) to have an alignment error on a certian page we tested where it alligned the text and pictures wrong.

Words Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:00:52 AM

Good point... the settings in Opera are as follows:

Max conections 8 Max total connections 20 (this is the default)
Loading: redraw instantly

Java and Javascript enabled

Identify as Opera

Jeffredo Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:00:52 AM

To make this an apples to apples comparison (well, as close as it can be) you should set a user pref in Firefox to change "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" to "0" to match the "redraw instantly" setting you have in Opera (or set Opera to .250 - Firefox's default). They try the sites again. On a site like www.numion.com/Stopwatch that tweaking of the redraw can have a big effect in the times.

Words Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:00:52 AM

Jeffredo

Thanks. That's a good suggestion. Any FF fan care to post instructions on how to do this.

Words Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:00:52 AM

OK.. figured out how to reset the redraw speed to 0 in FF. Just a tad more complicated than in Opera..... (sheesh). For the record I created a user.js file in my profile (buried in the heart of Windows) and added this code:

/ Last value in milliseconds (default is 250)
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

The results? (Opera / Firefox)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 3.750 / 3.907

http://www.network54.com/Forum/goto?forumid=8980 2.63 / 3.313

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/login.php 0.875 / 0.984

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/ 5.344 / 6.47

http://www.pixcentrix.co.uk/pomo/arts/links.htm 2.688 / 4.110

http://my.opera.com/Words/journal/ 7.375 / 7.922

http://www.opera.com 2.906 / 4.188

http://www.getfirefox.com/ 4.765 / 7.78

http://forums.mozillazine.org/index.php?c=10 NOT RESPONDING
(additional site to replace mozillazine)
http://www.permuted.org.uk/Paul2.htm 2.172 / 2.515

reisio Thursday, March 10, 2005 12:00:52 AM

Wow, "an alignment error on a certain page" - that's not vague. p

Dare I ask who wrote the article and did the testing? ...dare I look at the source code of a website they've made?

AyushAyushJ Friday, June 22, 2007 3:27:53 AM

256kb RAM


yikes bigsmile

Words Friday, June 22, 2007 6:28:04 AM

Your're the first person in two years to spot that mistake! smile

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