Google Chrome in a runaway lead for browser performance supremacy

The runaway train you see at the bottom of your screen there is Google Chrome. And yes, that splash of orange at the bottom of the platform-by-platform breakdown very graphically illustrates what we've been saying for the last few months: Chrome's platform of choice is Windows XP, the one with the smallest footprint that's deployed on the greatest number of netbooks -- the hardware platform where Google is working to make a breakthrough.

Usually Microsoft Internet Explorer isn't even a topic of conversation with regard to performance tests, except to point out that the older IE7 is our baseline. But over the past few weeks, IE8 has made news by marching the opposite direction, with security fixes and a Jscript update bogging down IE8 speeds quite noticeably. It's also created the only situation where the Windows 7 version of a browser is faster than the XP version; as you can see elsewhere, XP typically provides the much faster platform, although with Opera of late the difference is more minor.

Nowhere is Google's concentration on Windows XP more pronounced than in the Nontroppo CSS rendering test, where Chrome's XP scores continue to double its scores on Vista. Another trend worth pointing out here, though, is how well both Firefox and Opera perform on this test on Windows 7 (the blue line in the middle) compared with the other platforms -- for Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 and both stable and beta versions of Opera, XP is actually the slowest of the three Windows versions.

Chrome's performance on classic benchmark scores in the new JS Benchmark battery is phenomenal; and here, Chrome 4 on Windows 7 posts a higher score than on XP, which is not Chrome's usual pattern. The new JS Benchmark is about the interpreter's capability to handle complex, highly nested mathematical problems, which is more related to how the browser will run Web apps than render Web pages.

Mozilla's highest score yet on the Acid3 compliance test from the Web Standards Project comes from the latest Firefox 3.7 Alpha preview build: a 96%. Before long, we could be seeing all the non-IE browsers posting perfect 100% scores, making Acid3 almost a non-factor.

Safari's most impressive scores have always come from the SunSpider test on Windows XP, which are much better than even Chrome's scores on Vista and Windows 7. But it's Chrome's scores here on XP that are the true phenomenon, and the real indicator that Google builds Chrome to fly on the most popular Windows for netbooks.

Next: The rest of the field...