Firefox 3.6.6 vs. Chrome 5.0.375.99 on "slow" machine.

[McRat]

Just put Ubuntu 10.04/32 on an old Compaq Presario with 1gb ram, 64mb onboard video, AMD Sempron chip. It had XP on it, but it would not accept Service Pack 3 after many tries. Ubuntu install went flawlessly, even the wireless.

I went to test the internet connection using Speedtest.net, and Chrome was jerky (Flash Required) and yielded 13mbps max after a few tests. Firefox hit a reliable 25mbps with much smoother animation.

So I went to Hulu to see if it was the speed test, or the actual performance. Well, not really. Yes, certain parts of Flash page loading were much choppier with Chrome, but both struggled badly about the same at full screen video (less than 1 fps avg), with Firefox getting a slight edge. Certainly not the 2:1 indicated by the Flash based SpeedTest.net.

All the other machines I put Ubuntu on had significantly more CPU, Video, Ram, and they will stream at full screen without hesitation. If anything, Chrome had done slightly better at Flash pages and video than Firefox did when there was a lot of CPU.

But on older speed limited hardware, seems Firefox is a better choice.

[Noz3001]

Try Firefox 4 b2pre vs Chromium 6.0.467.0

[gradinaruvasile]

Well in my experience Chrome (Chromium) works better on a Dell D630 (P4@1800/512MB RAM/Ati 7500 mobility video with Ubuntu 8.10) than Firefox.
Chromium is way faster and extremely stable + i have seen even 50+ tabs (half with flash content) opened in a session and worked well...
Firefox (3.6 updated) on the other hand struggled (the computer became unbearably slow in the process) after 8-10 tabs and crashed often (no extensions installed mind you).
So Chromium is a clear winner for me.

[nilarimogard]

From my few months of using Chromium at home and on my netbook and Firefox at work - all of them daily, I can tell you what to expect: Chromium with ~30 or so tabs open will take up to 1 GB of RAM after a few hours of heavy usage (I have a few screenshots at home with this). However, Chromium with just 2-3 tabs open will only use a low amount of RAM. On the other hand, Firefox never goes past ~400 MB of RAM in usage for me, even with ~30 tabs. But it also uses a lot of RAM with just 2-3 tabs open.

So basically: Firefox (or better yet Switftox - which is Firefox optimized for your CPU) if you constantly have a lot of tabs and Chromium for a few tabs only.

[Bapun007]

Firefox works good for me and then opera . I never like chromium . Firefox works fast .

[doorknob60]

I think Flash is to blame there. Stupid flash...In my experiences Chromium is faster for everything, except sometimes flash is a little sluggish. Flash is most stable on Firefox. I think it's my fault for installing a ton of addons in Firefox, but I install some of the same ones in Chromium and it stays fast, so yeah :P

[McRat]

I think Flash is to blame there. Stupid flash...In my experiences Chromium is faster for everything, except sometimes flash is a little sluggish. Flash is most stable on Firefox. I think it's my fault for installing a ton of addons in Firefox, but I install some of the same ones in Chromium and it stays fast, so yeah :P

Yes, it's Flash doing it.

Normal pages at 25mbps load instantly regardless of which browser you run.

I hate Flash, but it's pretty well established. If you limit yourself to non-flash pages, you find that as each day goes by, you can "see" less and less of the internet.

[aladinonl]

For me, Chromium is the fastest. Opera and FF are about the same. But Opera Linux has out-of-process plugin for a very long time.

[earthpigg]

my experience, on my very powerful i7 machine, my atom netbook, and playing around with p4 computers:

chromium/chrome is faster on older hardware, except at flash stuff.

firefox is king of flash, and on powerful computers not significantly slower than chrome at the rest.



as a result:

-if on weak machine, keep both installed, but only open firefox when you want to watch flash videos on fullscreen.

-if on powerful machine, keep only firefox installed.

[NightwishFan]

I would think Webkit would be faster, but I have known Firefox to perform fairly reliably on an old machine. That is one of the reasons that butterflied into why I now use open source.

[Warpnow]

I used a pentium 2 for a bit. Firefox would not even run. You could try to start it, but it would take over an hour to run. It wouldn't load pages at all.

Chromium, on the other hand, ran, and did pretty well if I avoided flash sites. Opera, too, ran, and had much better flash than chromium but worse overall.