

Is Microsoft’s Edge browser really faster than Google’s Chrome? - xfiler
http://cd-rw.org/t/is-microsofts-edge-browser-really-faster-than-googles-chrome/35

======
BinaryIdiot
> For the Edge browser Microsoft has again decided to develop their own
> rendering engine, instead of relying on open source alternatives (Blink,
> Gecko, WebKit). I have to doubt their decision as a browser engine is a big
> development effort and they need to be updating it from now to eternity.

Um, why would they move when they already have an engine? Sure you can argue
they should have moved to WebKit or Gecko or even Opera's rendering engine
years ago but Trident has been improved significantly over the years. Don't
forget Edge is based on Trident (so it's not entirely new or anything as
implied in the post; it provided a good base to rip legacy support out of and
to improve other things).

Beyond that though it seemed fine just kinda felt like the author had a bias
against Microsoft from that first statement where he / she questioned their
rendering engine decisions. I'm also not entirely convinced they tuned
explicitly for the benchmarks they called out; sure they may have but I don't
know that I believe they necessarily would have had to.

~~~
Klathmon
I sincerely hope they NEVER use another engine. Diversity is our friend, and
having multiple engines all on similar terms means that bugs won't end up as
"correct" and it helps push everyone forward.

~~~
giancarlostoro
If they used an open source engine, I would hope it would be that they would
open source their own engine. That would be nice to see. Considering Microsoft
open sourcing other projects, and this particular product they give out
somewhat freely already. Would also allow a community to build up around it,
and report as well as possibly contribute bug fixes.

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ctvo
After sadly verifying Microsoft's claims, author goes on to find third party
benchmarks where they'd lose to make the point he initially wanted to make.

~~~
theg2
"Well these tests don't meet my expectations so lets keep testing using other
benchmarks until I'm validated".

~~~
Gys
Authors explanation:

'It seems like Microsoft has been targeting their optimization effort for the
competitor benchmarks in order to show impressive results for their new
product. When it comes to more intensive and complex HTML5 benchmarks they are
still miles behind the competition.'

Reasonable explanation to me.

~~~
Joeri
I think instead they worked in JavaScript performance, so in js benchmarks
like sunspider and octane they do well. Meanwhile their page loading was not
as optimized, so benchmarks that test loading whole pages such as peacekeeper
don't perform as well.

~~~
Gys
Peacekeeper itself says they focus on js.

[http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/faq.action](http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com/faq.action):

Peacekeeper measures your browser's performance by testing its JavaScript
functionality. JavaScript is a widely used programming language used in the
creation of modern websites to provide features such as animation, navigation,
forms and other common requirements. By measuring a browser’s ability to
handle commonly used JavaScript functions Peacekeeper can evaluate its
performance.

------
Klathmon
It all depends on your workload.

I'm working on a web app that uses typed arrays heavily.

Chrome runs my test case in 2.7 seconds, Firefox in 3.2, and IE Edge in 23
seconds... (ie 11 in 30+)

Now to be fair i developed "for" firefox, checking that it worked in IE and
chrome the whole way, but that is a pretty large performance difference.

Plus i've always hated benchmarks. They are so easy to "game" without real
improvements in actual code. They are great for development and regression
testing, but when used to compare engines i've found they are nearly useless.

All that being said, I applaud the IE team for really sticking to their
promise of improving the browser and it seems they are going to give Chrome
and FF a run for their money soon.

~~~
thekingshorses
> Chrome runs my test case in 2.7 seconds, Firefox in 3.2, and IE Edge in 23
> seconds... (ie 11 in 30+)

I think you are doing something wrong. I have a light app and very heavy SPA
(written really badly with almost 5mb of code, D3 + Highcharts). Still, both
app loads in less than 4 seconds in IE 11, FF, Chrome and Safari.

~~~
Klathmon
It's not page load, its the actual application running.

It does some fairly heavy image manipulation in web workers using typed
arrays. The app loads a little faster in IE (the code comes in just under
1mb), but the runtime of my few test cases are magnitudes slower.

------
harigov
I read it as - the browser is fast at its core but still needs to optimize for
the advanced HTML5 features. I guess it will get better over time. This is a
good start. No matter what people think, this is a great step forward. Web as
a platform is only as open as the variety of rendering engines providing
standards compliant features are. If all the browsers are standardizing on the
same rendering engine, it's not the web platform that is standard but that
particular rendering engine. Even if it is open source, having multiple
competing implementations supporting the same standard is a good thing.
Especially when companies would like to push for features that benefit them at
the expense of overall community.

------
calvin
Issue #1: performance claims based on tests from one device configuration. The
best performance data is gathered from as many sources as possible. In the
spectrum of statistics, one data point is not enough.

Issue #2: "Personally I have found the Peacekeeper results to be a reliable
measurement of web browsers performance." Is there data to back up this claim?

~~~
pcwalton
I doubt Peacekeeper is representative of real Web pages. It primarily
benchmarks things that are easy to measure. Peacekeeper also has several bugs:

* It accidentally benchmarks setTimeout clamping. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=610077](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=610077) is a dependency of peacekeeper. [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=608648](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=608648) is an example in which setTimeout clamping affects the score a lot.

* Its benchmark of array.splice() is extremely strange: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592786](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=592786)

* Its layout benchmarks do not really stress layout and instead either stress basic painting operations or DOM accessors. Most pages do not sit there calling style.top in a loop over and over.

* It sets MozTransform only in Firefox without setting values in Chrome: [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=920659](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=920659)

And so on.

There is no reason to think that Peacekeeper's JS benchmarks are particularly
better than V8's; in fact, they're probably worse, due to the proliferation of
microbenchmarks. You'd get about the same effect by going to jsperf.com and
clicking around.

------
jamespacileo
I believe that Peacekeeper/Browsermark give a lot of weight to WebGL and
related computations, which aren't currently optimised in Edge.

Octane and SunSpider give more weight to the rest.

It'd be very impressive if Edge was faster all round.

------
bithead
_" Also note out previous tests with Linux Mint vs Windows 10 which suggest
that Chrome actually runs faster on Linux than it does on Windows."_

Honestly, _any_ test between a microsoft product and a competitor run on
microsoft's operating system has to be viewed with a grain of salt. What's
interesting here is the degree of trust given to a vendor that has tried to
rig/break even hardware to lock out competition:
[http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/...](http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03020.pdf)

And yes, bg still has a lot of swing at microsoft:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-is-back-at-
microso...](http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-is-back-at-microsoft-
big-time-2014-10)

Worse below, there are people simultaneously believing in a vendor that has
long track record establishing their "rig the game" overarching corporate
strategy and dissing the blog author for doubting the vendor's claims, even to
the extent of accusing the author, who checked only two HTML5 benchmarks, of
going on a witch hunt to find benchmarks that disadvantaged the vendor.

~~~
pmelendez
From the text:

> "If seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work
> and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work."

Maybe I'm being too naive, but this sounds more like he is concerned about
giving away the work rather than locking people in.

I would prefer if these kind of initiative are open source but in my opinion
each company have the right to release as they please the technology they
develop. In my mind, this is the same case that Apple with the Thunderbolt,
and I think is fair that if Apple decide to keep its technology as private
they should be able to do so.

------
pbiggar
The SunSpider benchmark is bullshit, and you shouldn't take anything from it.
In particular, Chrome stopped optimizing for SunSpider with their last JIT, as
they optimized for longer running apps (such as ones you'd find on the web)
but took a hit on SunSpider.

But SunSpider is a really bad benchmark anyway. All benchmarks are bad and
suffer real problems, but SunSpider more than most.

------
coldtea
> _I have to doubt their decision as a browser engine is a big development
> effort and they need to be updating it from now to eternity._

I have to doubt his judgement. Microsoft is a huge software companie, the
biggest in the world. Much more than Apple or Google.

Not only they can do that, but they also need to be in control of their stack.

------
threeseed
Not sure what the point of this is. Microsoft never argued that Edge is faster
than Chrome at everything. They specifically said it was faster for certain
benchmarks.

But the author is upset because it isn't faster for the specific benchmarks he
prefers. If it's slower at Peacekeeper does that specifically mean that the
browser is now slow ?

And then weirdly Mint/Linux comes into the argument as though it has any
relevance to Edge. Nobody is switching operating systems because of browser
microbenchmarks.

~~~
StedeBonnet
Why so negative?

The post 1st validates Microsoft claims whether they hold. His tests show that
Edge is faster on SunSpider/Octane, but not by the margin that Microsoft
suggested. The article also points out that old HW is used as the test bench
and that HW will make a difference.

Then the article expands the scope to other benchmarks, and there is a
(subjective opinion) that Peacekeepers results hold in real world.

I can't see where the author is upset. Rather I see a typical geek hobbyist
experiment and the results posted to a FORUM community - not to a professional
or scientific publication.

------
Trombone12
Absent from both the original blog post and the OP is Mozillas kraken test, is
firefox simply dismissed as slow these days, and their benchmark just
discarded to the annals of time?

From arewefastyet.com they seem to be doing ok, (even if they keep testing
some really slow chrome version for some reason) and so it seems strange they
are being left out.

~~~
21echoes
Yeah it seems rather ridiculous to me that Firefox isn't mentioned here --
Firefox consistently beats Chrome on the three major benchmarks (SunSpider,
Octane, and Kraken).

------
kmfrk
I really hope browser races doesn’t get boiled down to performance, but also
things like resource-hogging, which has made it practically impossible for me
to use Chrome on my MacBook.

If Edge can be to Windows 10 what Safari is to OS X, I’ll try to do what I can
to move my browser workflow to Edge as much as possible.

------
zobzu
In use on common webpages edge feels very snappy. At least as much as firefox
and chrome. Good enough for me.

------
ricklancee
i'd rather they implement more stuff

[http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+10,ie+11,ie+Edge,firefox+39,c...](http://caniuse.com/#compare=ie+10,ie+11,ie+Edge,firefox+39,chrome+43,safari+8)

------
FriedrichNahme
Security, privacy and usability are much more important to me than raw
performance.

~~~
lern_too_spel
For those three and web standards support, things look even worse for Edge.

~~~
calvin
Based on what evidence?

IE11 has pretty solid web standards support:

[https://status.modern.ie/?iestatuses=implemented&browserstat...](https://status.modern.ie/?iestatuses=implemented&browserstatuses=&browsers=chrome,firefox,opera,safari&ieversion=11)

And Edge promises a lot more.

~~~
lern_too_spel
It's significantly worse than Safari, and that's saying a lot.
[http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html](http://html5test.com/results/desktop.html)

------
borplk
First thing I thought was the law of headlines

~~~
eli
Except in this case the answer is somewhere between "yes" and "sometimes"

------
thisjepisje
Betteridge's law of headlines hehe

------
mythz
TL;DR

> What to make of these results? It seems like Microsoft has been targeting
> their optimization effort for the competitor benchmarks in order to show
> impressive results for their new product. When it comes to more intensive
> and complex HTML5 benchmarks they are still miles behind the competition.

~~~
theg2
As I posted on another comment, the TL;DR is more like this:

"Well these tests don't meet my expectations so lets keep testing using other
benchmarks until I'm validated".

~~~
mythz
His conclusion stands, he's got 1/2 of the claimed perf gains from the using
the benchmarks the Edge Team advertised, but when tested against other
Independent benchmarks Edge's performance falls dramatically short, making it
reasonable to deduce Edge is optimized around the benchmarks the PR team is
advertising.

~~~
heinrich5991
It's unclear how these additional tests were selected. If the criterium was to
find a benchmark where Chrome performs better, then you can't conclude much
from this.

~~~
sp332
The IE team has said that they prioritize features based on how they are used
on the most popular websites. I'd like to see a benchmark that was just the
wall-clock time to load the Alexa Top 1,000.

