"Mozilla Corp. may have switched on a new JavaScript rendering engine in the just-released Firefox 3.1 Beta 2, but the browser remains slower than preview versions of two rivals, benchmark scores indicate.

According to tests run by Computerworld, Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 trails both WebKit, the open-source project that provides the core engine for both Google Inc.'s Chrome and Apple Inc.'s Safari, and the most recent version of Chrome itself, in rendering JavaScript. Mozilla's beta, however, is significantly faster than the current production edition of Firefox, and beats the preliminary version of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 8 by a wide margin."

Computerworld ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite in Windows XP three times for each browser, then averaged the scores. In SunSpider, smaller numbers are better. The results were:

1. WebKit, (r39076) -- 900
2. Chrome 0.4.154.33 -- 1265
3. Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 -- 1775
4. Opera 10 alpha -- 3419
5. Firefox 3.0.4 -- 3454
6. Safari 3.2 -- 3574
7. Opera 9.6.2 -- 4007
8. IE8 Beta 2 -- 9584

More:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9123091&intsrc=hm_list