Video shows IE9's GPU acceleration crushing Safari 5

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Hoping to swipe a little wind from Apple's sails, Microsoft has posted a video comparing the next version of Internet Explorer to Safari 5. Despite being lauded as the swiftest browser under the sun, Safari 5 fails to trump IE9's graphics hardware acceleration in the demonstration clip embedded below. Mind you, IE9 is still in a pre-release state, so who knows where the finished product will stand, but things can only improve.

The video (requires Silverlight) depicts a couple demos from the IE9 Test Drive site, which is home to well over two dozen different browser-related tests. Of two tests shown, IE9's performance was smooth, mostly remaining above 50 frames per second in the first and 25 in the second. Meanwhile, Safari 5 was barely able to crack double digits and actually dipped to 1FPS more than once.

What does that mean for everyday browsing? Well, we'll just have to wait and see. It's worth noting that things aren't so pretty for IE9 in other benchmarks. The recently released Platform Preview build lags behind the competition in Acid3 – but again, it's not completed yet. You can download the IE9 Platform Preview here, but realize that it's a pretty raw experience right now.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/39239-video-shows-ie9s-gpu-acceleration-crushing-safari-5.html

 

[Vrmithrax]

Not exactly a fair and unbiased comparison... Microsoft's browser showing a video that requires Microsoft's Silverlight video component... Little bit of stacking the deck there, wouldn't you say?

But, then again, any time Apple gets their "we are the best" attitude thrown back in their face is a great day in my world, so I won't complain too loudly

 

[jink]

IE9? Never heard of it. Does Microsoft still make browsers? How well does this IE9 run on OSX?

 

[paynetrain007]

Vrmithrax said:
Not exactly a fair and unbiased comparison... Microsoft's browser showing a video that requires Microsoft's Silverlight video component... Little bit of stacking the deck there, wouldn't you say?

But, then again, any time Apple gets their "we are the best" attitude thrown back in their face is a great day in my world, so I won't complain too loudly

But again Silverlight is a new standard. Just like Flash. I would expect any half decent browser to be able to run it well. I prolly wont use IE9 Chrome and Firefox are still the best out there. But any time Apple is proven that they're products are junk and Microsoft's are superior its a good day in the neighborhood.

 

[Jibberish18]

Well for one it's using GPU Acceleration. Lord knows what sort of GPU is in that thing and how it's been optimized to use it. For two, by the time IE9 comes out, it'll still technically sort of be yesterdays news. WIRED.com had a good article about this. Its not that Microsoft can't build a fantastic web browser, its just that their model doesn't seem to allow them too. Look at the kinds of speeds browsers such as Chrome 5/6 and Opera are pulling out without any type of GPU acceleration. What do you think they'll be like when and if they adopt a similar tactic? And what sort of GPU's will IE9 work on? No one asks that question. Integrated? Dedicated? Direct X 9? 10? 11? Open GL? Etc.

BTW, I'm not really an IE8 bashing type of guy. I use it often for certain tasks (Work related) and its not a bad browser just in case you were thinking I was hating.

 

[Guest]

OpenCL

..........

 

[Guest]

So, Microsofts unreleased piece of software is better than Apple's current and shipping software? In other news, AMD's unreleased processor from the future is better than Intels current and shpping CPU's.

 

[tonylukac]

I don't know what all the hype is about Safari/Chrome. So many websites run like crap on them; they are just oversimplified. They are never gonna replace my Firefox, and IE will always be around since so many (like 20%?) websites simply REQUIRE this.

 

[fwilliams]

Well thank gooness is is only about 20% of websites that require IE. It use to be about 90%. Hopefully in the future any website will work with any browser.

 

[paynetrain007]

tonylukac said:
I don't know what all the hype is about Safari/Chrome. So many websites run like crap on them; they are just oversimplified. They are never gonna replace my Firefox, and IE will always be around since so many (like 20%?) websites simply REQUIRE this.

I agree Firefox is my preferred browser but I've started only using it for certain tasks because its slow and is a memory HOG.

 

[9Nails]

I really wanted to see how far GPU accelerated web browsing has come, but the link in the article above took me to a video that was temporarily unavailable. So I've found an alternate link here: http://www.microsoft.com/showcase/en/us/details/15d27371-7e05-400f-8705-1feab2bd2cec#

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Thanks for the note 9Nails, I've swapped the links in the post.

 

[Guest]

You do know Firefox has a much much better memory management than Chrome, right? Lol It's all a placebo effect.

 

[Zeromus]

Not GPGPU, graphics rendering.

 

[Guest]

Doesn't matter how fast you make IE, I still won't use for anything, it sucks and is more unsecure then any browser out there.

 

[Guest]

Hey! I can post as a guest and say stuff sucks!!! Why? Well I dunno why either.

 

[Guest]

It's only the video recording of two browsers being tested that is in Silverlight format. The test suite itself is HTML5.