Opera v Firefox speed test results (Stunning win for Opera)

OK, this isn't overly scientific but I came across a site called Stopwatch which measures the time it takes for a specific URL to load. I thought I'd give it a go on some of my regular haunts.

To make things fair I cleaned out the cache in both browsers: Opera 8 beta2 and Firefox 1.0.1

The results are genuine (the last one is bizarre), but speak for themselves:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/ Opera: 3.453 Firefox: 4.46

http://www.network54.com/Forum/goto?forumid=8980 Opera: 1.61 Firefox: 1.625

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/login.php Opera: 0.828 Firefox: 1.15

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/ Opera: 4.563 Firefox: 5.641

http://www.pixcentrix.co.uk/pomo/arts/links.htm Opera: 2.703 Firefox: 3.969

http://forums.mozillazine.org/index.php?c=10 Opera: 3.312 Firefox: 3.703

http://my.opera.com/Words/journal/ Opera: 9.328 Firefox: 9.63

http://www.opera.com Opera: 3.62 Firefox: 4.78

http://www.getfirefox.com/ Opera: 2.875 Firefox: 7.328 (!!!!)

So it's a 9-0 win for Opera |(32.292 seconds in Opera overall to 42.286 seconds in Firefox). Even if you strip out that last result, Firefox comes in at 34.958 over 8 sites compared with 9 in Opera.

Test carried out on a Dell Dimension 4400 with 256kb RAM over a 512kb ADSL connection via Linksys WAG54G router.

This Post Has 10 Comments

  1. TreeGo

    10 Mar 2005

    I'm talking about Max Connections to a Server and Total Max Connections at Tools-Preferences-Network.

    Do you use the defaults of 8 and 20, respectively?

    Nice results. 🙂

  2. ICQ_Eagle

    10 Mar 2005

    Nice result! Just about your connection speed, I think that you confuse mbits with kbits. 🙂

  3. Faded_Mantis

    10 Mar 2005

    Ah its great to see such results. I started usign Opera 4-5 days ago and am very pleased with the result.

    Apart form no spyware detected with spybot search and destroy after using Opera to 2-5 a night with IE.

    Also when I'm told to get firefox by people i'm glad to say that i'm an Opera user, apart form the speed test that you showed here a PCworld NZ review said this..

    "However Firefox was the only one of the 6 browsers we tested (Opera, IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Safari and Firefox) to have an alignment error on a certian page we tested where it alligned the text and pictures wrong.

  4. Words

    10 Mar 2005

    Good point… the settings in Opera are as follows:

    Max conections 8 Max total connections 20 (this is the default)

    Loading: redraw instantly

    Java and Javascript enabled

    Identify as Opera

  5. Jeffredo

    10 Mar 2005

    To make this an apples to apples comparison (well, as close as it can be) you should set a user pref in Firefox to change "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" to "0" to match the "redraw instantly" setting you have in Opera (or set Opera to .250 – Firefox's default). They try the sites again. On a site like http://www.numion.com/Stopwatch that tweaking of the redraw can have a big effect in the times.

  6. Words

    10 Mar 2005

    Jeffredo

    Thanks. That's a good suggestion. Any FF fan care to post instructions on how to do this.

  7. Words

    10 Mar 2005

    OK.. figured out how to reset the redraw speed to 0 in FF. Just a tad more complicated than in Opera….. (sheesh). For the record I created a user.js file in my profile (buried in the heart of Windows) and added this code:

    / Last value in milliseconds (default is 250)

    user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);

    The results? (Opera / Firefox)

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 3.750 / 3.907

    http://www.network54.com/Forum/goto?forumid=8980 2.63 / 3.313

    http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/login.php 0.875 / 0.984

    http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/ 5.344 / 6.47

    http://www.pixcentrix.co.uk/pomo/arts/links.htm 2.688 / 4.110

    http://my.opera.com/Words/journal/ 7.375 / 7.922

    http://www.opera.com 2.906 / 4.188

    http://www.getfirefox.com/ 4.765 / 7.78

    http://forums.mozillazine.org/index.php?c=10 NOT RESPONDING

    (additional site to replace mozillazine)

    http://www.permuted.org.uk/Paul2.htm 2.172 / 2.515

  8. reisio

    10 Mar 2005

    Wow, "an alignment error on a certain page" – that's not vague. :p

    Dare I ask who wrote the article and did the testing? …dare I look at the source code of a website they've made?

  9. AyushJ

    22 Jun 2007

    256kb RAM

    :yikes: 😀

  10. Words

    22 Jun 2007

    Your're the first person in two years to spot that mistake! 🙂

Comments are closed.

Close Menu