Performance - BBC and HEXUS load times
Alongside stability, a browser's key feature for today's demanding audience is performance. To see how Google Chrome fares, we've recorded the time taken to fully load three popular websites; BBC.co.uk, YouTube.com and of course HEXUS.net.
| BBC.co.uk load time | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time in seconds, lower is better | ||||
| Chrome | IE8 | Opera 9 | IE7 | Firefox 3 |
| 0.76 | 1.48 | 1.3 | 1.71 | 1.24 |
What d’ya know? Google's first attempt at a browser literally races out of the gate. On our mid-to-high-end test system, Chrome manages to fully load BBC.co.uk in under a second (0.76 seconds to be exact) - a feat that the other four browsers were unable to achieve.
| HEXUS.net load time | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time in seconds, lower is better | ||||
| Chrome | IE8 | Opera 9 | IE7 | Firefox 3 |
| 3.19 | 4.63 | 4.41 | 5.71 | 4.26 |
Moving onto HEXUS.net, and it's more of the same. Chrome manages to load the content-packed website in 3.19 seconds, faster than its four direct competitors. With Firefox, Opera and IE8 taking 4.26 seconds, 4.41 seconds and 4.63 seconds, respectively, there isn't a whole lot to separate them. However, the most pedantic of users will note that Chrome is technically the quickest - albeit by a fractional margin.