Tests were done on a 64-bit version of Ubuntu 9.10 with minimal non-interactive processes.
Firefox 3.5.6 Sunspider Results - 2030.4ms
Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 Sunspider Results - 891.4ms
Looks like Firefox 3.6 is ~2.25 times faster with JavaScript then Firefox 3.5!
Explanation: TraceMonkey got a 64-bit just-in-time compiler in Firefox 3.6!
Compared to Chromium (latest build):
chromium-browser 4.0.283.0~svn20091226r35283-0ubuntu1~ucd1~karmic Sunspider Results - 368.8ms
Chromium is still the king of JS performance on Ubuntu.
Another interesting comparison:
Firefox 3.5.6 (32-bit) running on Wine - 880.4ms
Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 (32-bit) running on Wine - 769.0ms
Looks like the Windows version (Firefox 3.5) beats the Linux version by a large amount! Firefox 3.6 is less of difference, but it still beats the Linux version. I couldn't test it with a 64-bit build, only 32-bit version is available. One explanation is the 32-bit version of Firefox is more optimised (ie, the JIT'er).
Here is a nice chart (X axis is "Execution time in milliseconds"):
Another benchmark: IE 8 on Windows 7 - 3923.0ms (Just to put things in perspective)
Now onto Peacekeeper. Peacekeeper is a benchmark that tests a number of different things, including JavaScript performance, DOM performance, and rendering.
Here is the Peacekeeper results (Ubuntu 64-bit) - Compiz is enabled:
Here is Peacekeeper result on Windows 7 (64-bit) - Aero is enabled:
Firefox 3.6 has also improved in this benchmark, but it's not as drastic (most of 3.6's improvements are to it's JS engine). This is a benchmark where Linux totally defeats Windows, especially in rendering. Seem's Xorg's hardware acceleration is destroying Windows's lack thereof.
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