
Chrome 80 Is 30% Slower Than Chrome 75 - leeoniya
https://github.com/krausest/js-framework-benchmark/issues/683#issuecomment-583113382
======
Ajedi32
Chrome used to rely on fixed synthetic benchmarks like this for guiding their
performance optimizations, but quickly realized they aren't a great indicator
of real world performance and ditched them in favor of instead evaluating
Chrome's performance against a collection of popular, real-world websites. See
[https://v8.dev/blog/real-world-performance](https://v8.dev/blog/real-world-
performance) for a discussion of their bench marking methodology.

~~~
the_duke
Related: current Firefox is worse in almost every benchmark, but feels
snappier or at least on par with Chrome on most sites.

~~~
sterlind
I've noticed this too. I think it might be a result of the UX. Unscientific of
me, but Firefox feels like the buttons directly trigger behavior, the page
renders as it comes in, and the content is "closer" to the engine somehow.
Chrome feels like the buttons signal intents and behavior is orchestrated
behind the scenes to feel smooth. They're both good approaches, but Firefox
feels more like I'm driving stick, if that makes sense.

------
hastes
Been on Firefox since Quantum came out and I have to say I don't miss Chrome
one bit. The only honest to god thing that I wish Firefox had was the rounded
edges of the top bar design like Chrome..

Devtools are great, performance is great, battery life on MacBook 16in is
great, Nightly is awesome (has its ups and downs).

I honestly only ever use Chrome to double-check if my CSS styling is cross-
browser. Although I have been using Edge a lot more for this use case, because
I can't stand Google.

~~~
plopz
I wish Firefox would enable the SharedArrayBuffer, multi-threaded performance
just gets destroyed by postMessage. Transferable helps but only works in
situations where both threads dont need the object at the same time.

~~~
digitarald
Coming in 76/77:
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1528294](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1528294)

~~~
plopz
Oh, nice.

------
Medicalidiot
I recently started using Safari over Chrome. I feel like it has better privacy
than Chrome but doesn't have the performance issues that Firefox does. Even
with the recent attention Firefox has gotten on Mac it still is a dumpster
fire compared to Safari in terms of battery life and performance.

~~~
ddavis
Do you have a recommended adblocker for Safari?

~~~
Marsymars
1Blocker. Non-free, but the best content blocker I've found for Safari on
iOS/macOS.

~~~
selectodude
I'm so mad about how they switched to a subscription service (they don't even
make their own lists) and the latest Mac app is now Catalina only (which I
can't use). I prefer Safari but Firefox seems to hit that middle ground
between Safari's locked down excellent battery life and Chrome's garbage
Google bloat.

------
moneromoney
Instead of improving the browser, Google team wastes their time to find a way
to stop uBlock Origin and other AdBlockers. However, very soon they will face
competition from Microsoft, because they also switched to Chromium Engine, so
they will not have any compatibility issues anymore and can improve their
browser much faster than before.

~~~
TheFiend7
I agree, it has been so intolerable I've been using firefox because it just
feels faster. I'm getting really fed up with google projects as of late just
being abandoned.

Like GMail is awful[[https://medium.com/@boriscoder/peeking-under-the-hood-of-
red...](https://medium.com/@boriscoder/peeking-under-the-hood-of-redesigned-
gmail-dd84b532e0f5)] and chrome is on its way.

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warpech
The chart is messed up... Bonus mess points for choosing 1 instead of 0 as the
starting poing on the vertical axis.

My best guess to understand it is:

\- On the horizontal axis, we have consecutive Chrome releases.

\- On the vertical axis, we have total time of benchmark execution, relatively
to Chrome 75

The source of the data is the "js-framework-benchmark"[0] run in a controlled
environment in Chrome[1]

[0]: [https://github.com/krausest/js-framework-
benchmark](https://github.com/krausest/js-framework-benchmark)

[1]: [https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-
benchmark/2020/table...](https://krausest.github.io/js-framework-
benchmark/2020/table_chrome_80.html)

~~~
reubenmorais
Starting at 1 is standard when you're showing measures relative to a baseline.
It's a multiplier. 1.4 = 1.4x measure over the baseline.

~~~
davrosthedalek
The complaint is that the axis is zero suppressed, not that the data starts at
1. The latter is fine, the former a typical dark pattern.

~~~
mikeklaas
For multiplicative values, 1 is effectively the zero axis.

~~~
davrosthedalek
I understand what you mean, but no. If you use a linear y-asis, you want to
see for example that it goes to twice the amount, or halve the amount. The
data-to-x-axis distance does this when the zero is not suppressed.

Alternatively, you can go to a log plot, where constant factors produce
constant shifts. But even then, one would typically not put the x-axis origin
at 1 on the y-axis.

------
zyang
Chrome dev tool also starts to lock up if you reload while on a breakpoint.
The dev tool was the main reason I started using Chrome. Really sad to see it
degrade.

~~~
mttyng
That’s what’s happening? Oh man, that really started to be prevalent for me in
the last week or two. Very frustrating.

------
jjordan
I officially gave up on Chrome when they stupidly axed the "Close other Tabs"
feature. They brought it back a version or two later, but that was the straw
for me. I'm not sure what's going on in the Chrome team, but it appears to
have lost its original vision and direction.

~~~
rafaelvasco
Yeah. Right now, I'm using primarily Edgium, then Firefox, as Edgium is
blazingly fast; As Chrome was when it started...

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eh78ssxv2f
AFAICT, the author does not explain it, but why did the author chose this
benchmark? Is it a good approximation of what webpages do in the wild?

~~~
leeoniya
well, it creates a lot of DOM and executes a lot of JS, which stresses both JS
and GC. it also uses the full bootstrap build to stress CSS & layout...which
"modern" websites definitely (and unfortunately) do.

------
gok
…on a set of contrived microbenchmarks.

~~~
leeoniya
nice handwavey dismissal.

to call these microbenchmarks (especially when viewed collectively) for the
purpose of dismissing the results is dishonest at best.

each datapoint on the graph represents a lot of internal metrics (GC, JS, DOM,
layout/css). these aren't some one-liner JS loops. when you have a diverse set
of "microbenchmarks", and they all show the same trend, you can be pretty sure
the results are not "contrived".

------
azhenley
Would be interesting to see this graph for all releases of Chrome. Honestly,
I'd love to see visualizations of benchmarks like this for all big open source
projects!

------
wwwigham
I haven't confirmed it with hard numbers yet, but I think these perf
regressions may also be affecting node; node 13.1 executes our test suite in
about 5 minutes on my workstation, while a canary build of node running the
latest v8 (which I was trying because it fixed a perf regression in debug
stepping performance which first appears in node 13.2) seems to take almost 7
minutes. Now, I thought it was just maybe a consequence of it being a
prerelease build; but seeing this, if it's actually just indicative of broad
perf regressions in v8... I'll be honest, I'd be surprised, since every v8
release blog is always talking about perf _improvements_.

~~~
leeoniya
> while a canary build of node running the latest v8

keep in mind that canary builds might not be compiled with all the typical
release optimization flags turned on.

------
rafaelvasco
Noticed that some Canvas operations, specially pixel manipulation, is like
30~40% slower on latest Chrome compared to latest Firefox;

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qwerty456127
Funny. I always regularly update Chrome in hope it's going to become faster as
they improve the code in newer versions. What a waste. I'm going to stop
updating it now.

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gnusty_gnurc
My first requirement for a browser is that it works with Bitwarden. My second
requirement is that it allows vertical tabs. That's really the biggest asks
for me.

So I started trying out some new browsers recently, and really like Brave for
the out-of-the-box privacy focus. The crypto stuff is novel and I'd be
interested to see where that goes.

Also tried Vivaldi and absolutely love it. Reminds me of the old Opera
(absolute favorite), it's got configurations for everything. Vertical tabs are
a built-in!

I use Firefox from time to time too, but find the interface less polished (at
least on MacOS).

~~~
solarkraft
Firefox fits both of your requirements perfectly, I use both all of the time.
Not only are tabs with the Firefox extension vertically aligned, but trees (I
don't know whether this is the case, I avoid using Chromium-based browsers)!

~~~
gnusty_gnurc
Like I said, I use Firefox with the exact setup as you said, but I find the
interface isn't as slick as Vivaldi or Brave (that's pretty nebulous but so
are most opinions). At least for Vivaldi, I think most people who fondly
remember Opera know what I'm talking about. I don't mean to denigrate Firefox,
I quite like it.

------
aj7
And I bet it still doesn’t show Captchas all the time.

------
butz
Nowadays all browsers are extremely fast, but unoptimized and 3rd party script
ridden web apps/sites are causing them to feel slow.

------
pier25
I didn't know krausest also did browser benchmarks. It's a great idea
considering he has all those test cases.

------
Waterluvian
I had a recent experience that forced me to better understand the development
process of Chromium.

My OpenLayers mapping application suddenly got VERY slow. tl;dr: Chromium team
had made an optimization change to canvas `getImageData` which slowed it to
~1/40th performance in some cases. It was frustrating to have to convince them
this is a problem at all.

But what frustrated me more was how they came to decide to sacrifice
performance in one way to benefit it in another. I'm sure they came to the
conclusion somehow, but it ended up just utterly breaking apps that are
already out there. One teacher struggled with a school-board-wide course that
just didn't function because the main software was broken by this.

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=100184...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1001845)

~~~
strictnein
> I'm sure they came to the conclusion somehow

My money would be on that it improved performance on something google related:
maps, youtube, etc

------
tartoran
Perfect timing to switch browsers!

~~~
neltnerb
I spent an hour yesterday with two different websites trying to place an order
on Firefox (to name and shame, CVS and shutterfly). I eventually gave up and
used Chrome to place an order, but sent a note telling CVS that they lost my
business because their website is broken on Firefox.

Please, more people switch to Firefox. Chrome is breaking the internet.

~~~
_bxg1
Something I realized recently is that all of these sites have analytics. They
can see exactly what percentage of their users are on Firefox, and that will
directly drive their dev priorities. Using Firefox isn't just a symbolic
gesture; it's a direct vote in its favor.

~~~
dexen
_> all of these sites have analytics._

The analytics is most likely blocked by common adblock rules. And present-day
Firefox users are quite likely to be advanced users, running adblock.

Thus Firefox ends up being under-represented in the analytics.

~~~
ohazi
Do as blockers typically block the user agent? Or have people just gotten lazy
and only bother looking at JavaScript generated analytics logs and not actual
server logs?

Or have user agents devolved to the point where every browser lists every
other browser and you genuinely can't tell them apart anymore?

Seems like you should still be able to identify the browser without a fancy
analytics package.

~~~
PeterisP
> have people just gotten lazy and only bother looking at JavaScript generated
> analytics logs and not actual server logs?

Yes.

On the other hand, if you're running adblock, many sites probably don't care
how and if the site works for you.

~~~
marcosdumay
Sites that are directly taking your money should care. Or, at least, I would
expect them to, but they don't seem to care at all.

------
SeanFerree
Why does Chrome have to update so much?

~~~
andrewguenther
Chrome's release strategy is actually quite interesting.

[https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs/process/release_cycle.md)

They release often for the same reasons you would do continuous deployment.
Release a little, but often. It helps them to better isolate regressions in
the field and deliver non-critical security fixes quickly.

I know I say that it helps them prevent regressions and this post is talking
about regressions, but it's also work keeping in mind that Chrome telemetry is
insanely extensive. I'd wager that in the field, to the typical user, that
Chrome 80 is actually faster than 75.

------
amazingbrowser
So... Netscape all over again? :D

------
ajross
So... a meta point: this is another example of a submitted story that
_absolutely flies_ up the rankings, currently sitting right at the top of HN
after 20 minutes, despite no particular reason to be there.

It's not a rigorous test, there's no data on other browsers or earlier
versions, it's a github issue on one particular js/DOM benchmark detailing a
likely regression. There aren't any details I can see on what hardware is
tested. Even if you wanted to start researching chrome performance, this is a
bad place to start.

So why is it up so high after just a few minutes and 54 upvotes?

~~~
_bxg1
I think the number of comments factors in, and maybe even viewership. It also
seems like the _rate_ of upvotes matters; I've seen single-digit posts rise to
the front page. For better or worse the algorithm seems to prioritize posts
that people are interested in, not necessarily posts that people have
indicated to be high-quality.

~~~
keanzu
There's a 'overheated discussion detector'

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16020089)

A good rule of thumb for this effect is when the number of comments on a
submission exceeds its score.

