Time to benchmark your browser with Peacekeeper

Futuremark, long known for their professional PC benchmarks 3DMark and PCMark, has been branching out quite a bit in the last couple of years. Besides launching a game studio, they’ve also been creating online benchmarks, including Peacekeeper—a browser performance test that measures JavaScript functionality. From their FAQ:

JavaScript is a widely used programming language used in the creation of modern websites to provide features such as animation, navigation, forms and other common requirements. By measuring a browser’s ability to handle commonly used JavaScript functions Peacekeeper can evaluate its performance.

Futuremark has been able to collect 1.6 million results over two years, building a database of results that helps people compare browser (and by association, CPU performance) on any Internet-capable device—including desktops and notebooks,tablets and smartphones.

They recently sent out a press release with some of the latest performance numbers from their new version of Peacekeeper:

Browsers ranked by performance on a Windows PC with Intel i7-2600K processor
(higher scores are better)

1. Chrome 14.0.835.202 – Peacekeeper score 4382
2. Opera 11.51 – Peacekeeper score 4190
3. Internet Explorer 9.0 – Peacekeeper score 2503
4. Firefox 7.0.1 – Peacekeeper score 2456
5. Safari 5.0.5 – Peacekeeper score 1744

For devices where the user cannot change the browser, for example some smartphones and tablets, Peacekeeper offers a straightforward way to compare the performance between competing devices.

Popular devices ranked by browser performance
(higher scores are better)

1. Apple iPad 2 (iOS 5) – Peacekeeper score 372
2. Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 – Peacekeeper score 350
3. Acer Iconia W500 – Peacekeeper score 345
4. Samsung Galaxy S – Peacekeeper score 275
5. Apple iPhone 4 (iOS 5) – Peacekeeper score 197

Peacekeeper scores are in operations per second or rendered frames per second depending on the test. When browser X scores twice as much as browser Y it means that for a given test either:
– X ran twice as many operations as Y in the same time period
– Or X ran the test in half the time as Y
– Or X rendered the test with twice the frame rate of Y

Peacekeeper is free, and can be run at the Futuremark website. You can also connect your Facebook account if you’d like to save scores and compare them.