Using chrome 1, I get a rough SunSpider time of 1450 ms after several runs.

Using and tracking the various Firefox 3.5 betas, and now 3.5pre i have consistently seen times around or under 1400 ms. The new version *is* significantly faster at rendering and executing script... especially script intense sites like Facebook (which feels like its more than 2 times faster)

Using a chrome 2 beta, the sunspider tests were done in around 850 ms, which is sharply quicker. however, I'm sure chrome 2 has bugs and as the bugs get worked out the code will get more complex and slower.

However, i do feel chrome has the upper hand in JS despite these times (despite Fx being 'faster') as a lot of apps on chromeexperiments.com just run better in general. Im not sure if this is because they are simply MADE to take advantage of certain functionality unique to chrome (unlikely) or the trace monkey engine which still could use some better methodology (likely).

Firefox 3.5 is going to be great!

I noticed this phenomenon with car insurance companies, every one is 10% cheaper than the other. While your premium wouldn't ever go to zero, you surely could get one heck of a deal, if you shopped around enough.

Anyway, am I the only one who had the word "Opera" in a post, hyperlinked to the M$ IE8 download page? That's rude bordering on illegal. I was even using Opera at the time.

im using the beta right now. its much much faster than chrome, witch i also have. particularly with dynamic code like javascript. but also due to the efficiency elsewhere, deta transfer has improved noticeably too. where talking about streaming videos and downloads. the important things.

Yes, it is. Try Firefox 3.5 RC1 released today:

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/735-mozilla-firefox-beta-rc.html

I just tried Firefox 3.5 and can feel that it's faster. I have no benchmark, but it's really faster. I have one of the fastest PC's you can get running at 3.5ghz. Not the fastest, but it ranks up there. I wonder if because my system is newer and faster if it can somehow take advantage of some of 3.5's benifits more than an older computer. I click on things and it's like zip, zip, zip... Very instant.