According to hardware test specialists FutureMark, Apple Macs are generally “5-10 percent faster” than Windows-based PCs when it comes to web browsing.
FutureMark, best known for its 3DMark hardware benchmarking software, has developed a new test suite for web browsers called Peacekeeper – and after running all the major browsers through it, it found that computers running on Mac OS X were generally zippier at loading up web pages. FutureMark attributes this to the OS’s middleware, which it reckons is more streamlined than that used by Windows.
But the findings don’t stop there – there’s software to compare too. Peacekeeper found that the speediest web browsers were Safari and Chrome – and that Internet Explorer 8 is five times slower than either of them! Oh, and Windows 7 is quicker than Windows Vista for web browsing purposes.
Peacekeeper (available as a free download) tests page rendering using everything from HTML 5.0 to CSS, and rates JavaScript too – the core tests try to recreate the sort of conditions you might encounter using content-stuffed sits like YouTube or Facebook. It cannot, however, test Flash performance at the moment – so perhaps there is more to come from the browser wars…
Out now | £Free | Peacekeeper (via DailyTech)
