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I want to see if the “quality” of a page affects the ability of the browser to download and render the pages faster. Also, I want to see if network speed has any affect on the ability of browser to the load the pages faster. From a technical point of view (browserscope), both browsers have network similar capabilities – both browsers can load from 6 hosts at once and have a maximum of 35 connections open at one time.

Summary results

Chrome vs Ie8 Homepage testing – 20mbit network connection

Chrome vs Ie8 Homepage testing – 1.5mbit network connection

All of the site were selected from the previous full download speed audit in July. Full results and videos of all 40 tests are available on the Google docs spreadsheet.

Key findings

• Chrome is at least 51% faster than IE8 faster across all tests. There was some “glitches” where IE8 was faster by a couple of seconds eg. On Geekzone.co.nz, IE8 loaded the page 2 secs faster than Chrome.
• IE8 and Chrome were more evenly matched for the top optimised pages. For DSL speed, it was a tie 5-5 between Chrome and IE8, 20mbit it was 7-3 in favour of Chrome.
• The most interesting point of the tests was for the slowest and least optimised sites, Google Chrome loaded slow and poorly optimised websites a lot better than IE8. Google Chrome was hands down winner (40-0) for the slowest and poorly optimised sites for both network speeds (1.5Mb and 20Mb) . Chrome was between 41%-114% faster than IE8!
  

  Full Results

  Test results for 20Mb net connection (Office broadband speeds)

  Test	Chrome Tests Faster	Chrome % faster	Chrome Ave Secs faster	IE8 Tests Faster	IE8 % secs faster	IE8 Ave Secs faster
  Top 10 optimised homepages	7	40%	0.33s	3	70%	0.88s
  Worst 10 optimised homepages	10	46%	0.8s	0	0%	0s
  Top 10 fastest homepages	7	50%	0.3s	3	105%	0.5s
  Top 10 Slowest homepages	10	114%	5.02s	0	0%	0s

  Test results for 1.5Mb net connection (Home broadband speeds)

  Test	Chrome Tests Faster	Chrome % faster	Chrome Ave Secs faster	IE8 Tests Faster	IE8 % secs faster	IE8 Ave Secs faster
  Top 10 optimised homepages	5	35%	0.58s	5	38%	0.74s
  Worst 10 optimised homepages	10	41%	1.49s	0	0%	0s
  Top 10 fastest homepages	6	56%	0.56s	4	31%	0.58s
  Top 10 Slowest homepages	10	68%	7.18s	0	0%	0s

  Bottom Line

  We’ve confirmed that Chrome is the fastest browser and it will load bad websites faster than IE8. So if you want to experience the web as fast as possible, make sure your using Chrome. Do you need another reason to switch?

  This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 at 9:18 pm and is filed under All Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.