What's the fastest browser? Maybe you're measuring it wrong

I'm not too bothered about my browser using >1GB memory really, it's all about rendering speed & how it handles slow internet for me. Chrome seems to do the best job for my on my 1Mbps internet. I'd like to switch back to Firefox, I've always liked it, but it's noticeably slower to render pages (even on the fibre connection at work).
 
I use fire fox but every time there is an update it sends my sound all funny so i use IE untill i Cba to fix it. As for speed there is only seconds im the loading times ( whats that going to save you ) :D Like every one else has said it more about secuirty than speed.
 
You'll never get me to use IE again.

I used to use FF, but when I used Chrome, I don't care what people say, it was faster for me, it renders faster. If Chrome uses more memory I don't really mind... I guess it finally warrants me buying tons of it. I prefer how it works for some reason.

kd
 
However, heavy tab multitaskers should steer clear of IE9, Chrome (in all its incarnations), and Opera (Beta). Just go with Firefox. With RAM levels quickly reaching 1 GB with just 15 tabs, you'll encounter sluggishness even on faster machines. Again, it simply doesn't matter if you've got 4, 8, or 16 GB of RAM -- a browser taking up 1 to 1.5 GB of RAM quickly reaches the limits of both the Windows' and its own memory management capabilities. Threads and handles run wild, paging starts kicking in, and overall reliability goes down with responsiveness.
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That is a steaming heap of absolute horse manure.

So even if you have 16GB of RAM, you should steer clear of Chrome because it might use 1.5GB of RAM when you open lots of tabs up?! Of course it matters how much RAM you have. How can a program reach the limit of the system's memory management capability when it's using less than 10% of the system's memory? There's no magic way for a browser to induce excessive paging when it's using a small proportion of system resources.

Also, why does it matter at all whether your browser is running 1 thread or 10 from a reliability perspective? Threads don't 'run wild'. The scheduler is designed to cope with this. The mere fact that you have 10 extra threads running won't make an appreciable difference to your system's performance, let alone reliability. I have a strong suspicion that the author doesn't really know what a thread is.

One of the worst things about the Internet is that anyone can be a 'journalist' in an instant - even hapless cretins who don't know the first thing about their subject matter.
 
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Keeping as much system memory available is so 1999. It's there to be used. So long as it doesn't consume half the RAM in the system I don't care.
 
I'd add another vote for Opera, cannot fault it.

I hate IE - especially the default security config. I was installing a clean copy of Win 2008 yesterday, and IE would not even let me view microsoft.com. How mad is that!!
 
Mattus said:
That is a steaming heap of absolute horse manure.

So even if you have 16GB of RAM, you should steer clear of Chrome because it might use 1.5GB of RAM when you open lots of tabs up?! Of course it matters how much RAM you have. How can a program reach the limit of the system's memory management capability when it's using less than 10% of the system's memory? There's no magic way for a browser to induce excessive paging when it's using a small proportion of system resources.
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I agree with you on the first part, I don't think this guy knows what he's talking about.

First he tells us that IE9 spawns a new process for each tab (which I believe Chrome does as well), then tells us because of the process limits, no browser can use more than 2GB of RAM. This isn't true. No tab can use more than 2GB of RAM. However, I have noticed in Chrome that you do end up getting a slowdown if you have a lot of tabs open (especially in porn mode where there's no disc caching), and overall Chrome never uses more than 2GB, which is... weird.
 
Firefox is my favourite browser, but Chrome is the go to guy on a slow system..

I use both for browsing, both with Adblock Plus of course
 
I use a variety of IE, Chrome and Firefox but oddly prefer IE for everyday browsing, probably just because I'm used to it.
 
I used to use FireFox but moved to Chrome a while ago. It works for me and I like its sync function that means it stores all my data and pops it back when I need it, like when I reformat (this weekend windows 8 back to Windows 7).

Now, can anyone tell me how we can tell which browser is the most secure? IE has been found wanting quite often but I doubt it is that worse on security that the others.
 
I'm just testing Firefox and it does seem to be way faster, or just more responsive(my subjective opinion). I used to get pauses with certain websites like BBC IPlayer which I dont seem to get now.
 
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