Subscribe via e-mail: - New in Internet Explorer 9 – Part 1: New web standards
- New in Internet Explorer 9 – Part 2: User interface
- New in Internet Explorer 9 – Part 3: Performance
- Internet Explorer 9 – 32-bit vs. 64-bit – Part 1: Download and default browser
- Internet Explorer 9 – 64-bit vs. 32-bit – Part 2: Compatibility
- Internet Explorer 9 – 64-bit vs. 32-bit – Part 3: Reliability
- Internet Explorer 9 – 64-bit vs. 32-bit – Part 4: Speed
- Do browsers matter?
You’ve probably read the news when Internet Explorer 9 Preview 7 was released a while back. Internet Explorer is now the fastest browser in the world! Wow! While I am sure that those geeks who have a somewhat troubled relationship with Internet Explorer will find some benchmarks that show that IE9 is actually the slowest browser, it is worth having a look at the new features that make Internet Explorer perform so well.
Hardware acceleration
IE9 display uses the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to render all graphics and text. This reduces the load on the CPU and thus improves the overall performance while loading pages.
JavaScript-Engine Chakra
The new JavaScript Chakra engine makes use of multiple CPU cores to background compile JavaScript code. It can also use the computer’s CPU.
Modern processor instruction sets
Microsoft isn’t specific about this feature, but it seems it has something to do with Streaming SIMD Extensions 2 and 3 (SSE2, SSE2), which supposedly improve the gaming performance on Intel machines.
Add-on Performance Advisor
Often when a web browser becomes unstable and slow, it is not the browser itself but an add-on that is the culprit. The Add-on Performance Advisor helps you identify those malfunctioning add-ons. IE9 will display corresponding messages in the new notification area. You can also display the load times for each add-on and then get rid of those extensions that slow down Internet Explorer.
I use the IE 9 BETA all the time on my home PC and I don’t find it noticeably faster than when I had IE 8 and I certainly don’t find it to be faster than Chrome or Opera. Perhaps that is because I don’t have a decent graphics card (just the built in one on the motherboard) but then most people are going to be in the same situation so if that is the case then I think its a bit of a bad design really.
Don’t worry, your computer is not the reason why you don’t notice the speed difference. Believe me, you are note alone.