The BIG browser benchmark (January 2013 edition)

It has only been a couple of months since the last Big Browser Benchmark but there has been enough changes to warrant a re-running the tests. There's also a new benchmark test to put the browsers through their paces.

Let's pit the leading browsers against four of the toughest benchmark tests available to see which one is triumphant. Here are the browsers that will be put through their paces:

•Chrome 24
•Chrome 23 (left in the listing for comparison with newer release)
•Firefox 18
•Firefox 16 (left in the listing for comparison with newer release)
•Opera 12
•Internet Explorer 9 (32-bit)
•Internet Explorer 10 (32-bit)
•Safari 5
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Here are the tests that the browsers will face:

•SunSpider JavaScript 0.9.1: A JavaScript benchmark developed by Apple's WebKit team in 2007 with a focus on real-world problem solving;
•V8 Benchmark Suite: A pure JavaScript benchmark used by Google to tune the V8 JavaScript engine;
•Peacekeeper: FutureMark's JavaScript test which stress-tests features such as animation, navigation, forms and other commonly utilized tasks;
•Kraken 1.0: Another JavaScript benchmark developed by Mozilla. This is based on SunSpider but features crucial benchmarking enhancements;
•RoboHornet: A Google-led open-source browser benchmark.
•Octane: Google's new benchmark, based on the V8 test suite.
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All testing carried out on a Windows 7 (32-bit) machine, running a P8600 2.4GHz dual-core processor, 4GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card.

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