Google Chrome Achieves Record Performance with New Optimisations

Google revealed in a blog post that Chrome has achieved the “highest score ever” on the Speedometer 3 test. The purpose of the benchmark is to evaluate browser performance, and browsers built on top of Google’s open source browser engine typically perform the best. According to Google, since August 2024, the Chrome browser’s performance has increased by 10%. It is important to note that Speedometer 3.1, the most recent version of the benchmarking tool, has now supplanted the one that Google uses.

By attaining the highest score to date on the Speedometer 3 benchmark, Google Chrome has set a new benchmark for browser performance. The creation of Speedometer 3, an industry-standard benchmark, involved open cooperation between the main browser vendors. It gauges how fast and effectively browsers do tasks on the real world web. It evaluates a wide range of functions, such as parsing HTML, processing JSON and JavaScript, laying out CSS, rendering text and pixels, and dealing with the Document Object Model (DOM).

In a blog post, Chrome Product Manager Thomas Nattestad stated that the firm concentrated on “refining fundamental rendering paths across the entire stack” and that since August 2024, the browser’s performance has improved by 10% on the Speedometer 3 test. Other browsers including Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Vivaldi also employ Google’s open source Blink rendering engine.

Google claims that Chrome’s engineering team has been working to enhance the browser’s basic rendering mechanism over the past 12 months. Since August 2024, Speedometer 3 scores have increased by 10% as a result of these updates. The enhancements include better CPU cache efficiency and optimized memory layouts across the DOM, CSS, layout, and painting components, which help cut down on needless memory use.

On the Speedometer 3 benchmark test, Chrome 137 (stable) received 51.43 points, whereas Chrome 138 (beta) and Chrome 139 (dev) received 51.83 and 52.35 points, respectively. The success of recent versions is displayed in a graph that the corporation released, which shows a steadily rising score.

The company claims that a MacBook Pro running macOS 15 with an M4 processor was used to conduct the Speedometer 3 benchmark. A consortium of companies, including Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and Mozilla, created the benchmark test that evaluates browser performance. But not every browser manufacturer releases their Speedometer results on a regular basis.

The business claims that in order to improve Chrome’s performance, it examined workloads on the Speedometer 3 test, which gauges how responsive a browser’s rendering engine is. Google also looked into the features that Chrome used the most.

As a result, the business was able to optimize workloads, improve trash collection, concentrate on the correct code, and make “targeted optimisations” to Chrome’s browser engine. The blog article provides additional information on the company’s enhancements for technical users.

Since August 2024, the browser’s score has risen by 10% as a result of these improvements. Additionally, the business disclosed that since May 2022, Chrome’s Speedometer 3 score has risen by 72%. Note that Chrome’s result on Speedometer 3.1, which replaces the Speedometer 3 test, has not yet been disclosed by Google.

Along with improving the browser’s ability to store and retrieve necessary information, the team also made handling text and data faster. They worked on improving the speed and appearance of text, particularly when utilizing Apple’s text technology.

Google claims that people are greatly impacted by these technological advancements. The company calculates that the enhanced performance may save 58 million hours annually if every Chrome user browses for just 10 minutes per day. This equates to about 83 lifetimes of waiting for websites to display or react.