Google Chrome Speed Tests

These speed tests were filmed at actual web page rendering times. If you're interested in the technical details, read on!
Equipment used:
- Computer: MacBook Pro laptop with Windows installed
- Monitor - 24" Asus: We had to replace the standard fluorescent backlight with very large tungsten fixtures to funnel in more light to capture the screen. In addition, we flipped the monitor 180 degrees to eliminate a shadow from the driver board and set the system preferences on the computer to rotate 180 degrees. No special software was used in this process.
- Camera: Phantom v640 High Speed Camera at 1920 x 1080, films up to 2700 fps
"Why does allrecipes.com in the potato gun sequence appear at once, and not the text first and images second? And why does it appear to render from bottom of the screen to the top?"
Chrome sends the rendered page to the video card buffer all at once, which is why allrecipes.com appears at once, and not with the text first and images second. Chrome actually paints the page from top to bottom, but to eliminate a shadow from the driver board, we had to flip the monitor upside down and set the system preferences in Windows to rotate everything 180 degrees, resulting in the page appearing to render from bottom to top.
"Why does the top one third of the page appear first on the weather.com page load?"
Sometimes only half the buffer gets filled before the video card sends its buffer over to the LCD panel. This is because Chrome on Windows uses GDI to draw, which does not do v-sync.
"The screen wipes are so smooth - how was that achieved?"
The screen wipes up in a gradated wipe because LCD pixels take around 10ms to flip and gradually change color.
More filming details below:
Chrome Browser vs. Potato:
We used a version of the web page allrecipes.com that is accessible when logged in. About four hours into the Potato Gun shoot we decided to use a locally loaded version of the web page to enable more precise synchronization with the potato gun. We finally got the shot we were hoping for after 51 takes.
Chrome Browser vs. Sound:
We loaded an artist page from Pandora.com, a streaming internet radio service directly off the web on a 15Mbps internet connection.
Chrome Browser vs. Lightning:
We used a locally loaded version of weather.com that was legally approved for use in this video (and all the standard website permissions procedures that goes into making videos!)
While we had a super fast 15Mbps internet connection in the studio, any live internet connection introduces quite a bit of variability. To run speed tests on page rendering times, saving locally and loading from the local disk can help reduce this variability.
For behind-the-scenes footage of how this video was made:
• Making the Google Chro...

[@arl961]

2010: Google Chrome vs sound waves. 2020: Google Chrome vs 1TB of RAM.

[@MrWhoever]

7 years later, chrome eats up every single byte of ram it can find.

[@joselozano613]

Got it

[@joselozano613]

Googles good morning

[@Armanii2795]

And my laptop sounds like 0:03

[@falkerhard]

@@Armanii2795 haha :D

[@redwood3723]

Get a better computer. Peasant!

[@irun_mon]

5 years later I just realized it loaded local web files instead of online websites

[@yaltschuler]

+Irun Mon Man, I keep seeing you everywhere! xD

[@irun_mon]

y altschuler really? where?

[@yaltschuler]

Irun Mon One of the "Gboard" videos. :D

[@irun_mon]

y altschuler lol, yeah I've been there. but i am not spammer :p

[@yaltschuler]

Irun Mon Oh, I know, I was just saying that I had seen you. You're like Potato. Or Not Potato. Just an easily recognizable commenter, with a very clever username and eyecatching profile pic.

[@CRXspeedshift]

Really awesome vid! Made me smile the whole time, I love it! Kinda reminds me of the Ken Block DC Drift video

[@csselement]

Creative, artistic, entertaining, humorous...this video has it all. Great work

[@called2voyage]

this needs to be released on tv. of course, it would have to be clipped into three separate tv spots, but it would be awesome.

[@darter9000]

Amazing how quickly Chrome loads from the system hard drive...

[@yousorooo]

+darter9000 More like loading from ram

[@Drustep07]

@@yousorooo U a time traveler?

[@AbdulazizALGH]

The description of this video clearly states that these pages are stored locally, in fact they weren't testing how fast Chrome will download these pages, they were testing how fast it will display(render) them. Funnily, I've seen many people getting lots of thumbs up just by saying these pages were loaded locally.

[@andyfromdc]

Great Stuff! Should be interesting for any IT professional... I really wish managers understood what is really happening in SOA and other networked application code! Keep up the great work in solving Application Performance Pain Points!

[@Luingar]

Interesting. My experiance with chrome is.....[Out of memory]

[@judybelt5151]

Marina Jose

[@judybelt5151]

I thought jose was with me we have been going together and living with each other for I year and 6months Judy belt and jose meza wre are suppose to be a coplehe lives with me judy I belt

[@boshort5882]

DCC

[@Monkeyman33331]

THIS IS RELLY EPIC!!

[@cjquest]

Excellent tests.

[@maciek8860]

times before Chrome was eating less than 8GB of RAM

[@theLuigiFan0007Productions]

Ah yes, I remember those times. They were good times.

[@8749236]

Cause programmers are taught to stop worrying about RAM usage and put as much data into RAM as possible now-a-days.. to reduce application's response time..

[@maciek8860]

Thats true sadly

[@theLuigiFan0007Productions]

Dennis Liu BoB son Though that's true, I don't completely agree with that philosophy. Especially with SSDs, high performance HDDs, and RAID becoming more popular, on disk cache shouldn't be a problem. All that really does it make things suck for cheaper systems, that have a minimalistic 4GB. Granted MY originally having 4GB till a few weeks ago is pretty shit, but I shouldn't need to feed a browser 5GB. Firefox, which is what I primarily use nowadays, also eats a lot of memory. But, it's a bit more reasonable 500-ish MB with whatever it precaches and 100MB per additional tab. So generally around 1-2GB. Chrome IS a noticeable bit faster, but I'd like to use my RAM for other things too. I don't usually close my browser unless I need to completely max out my memory usage. XD

[@8749236]

Honestly, I do not even know why they need that much memory. Each page should only be dozen MB and thats it.. even if you have 100 of them, it should only be 1 or 2 GB instead of 4 or 8...

[@isakelia6703]

My Internet Explorer crashes so hard that my car is jealous.

[@lance_nickel]

LOL

[@hjolinn]

Best speed test ever !

[@Gr8t4all94]

Awesome video! :D

[@yousorooo]

5 years later, just realized you are pressing the forward button instead of actually loading the page...

[@kristantitedja8301]

Use this tool to get alot of them for free!! facebook.com/Gun-Simulator-Generator-1586442581576260?pidid=7b3dd556-efd5-49ea-a448-a3fb486bcd89 Google Chrome Speed Tests

[@woobilicious.]

Rendering the page from cache is probably more accurate reflection of chrome's speed than loading it over a slow internet connection (which is going to overshadow just how fast chrome can render a page).

[@Ioganstone]

@@timothyjholloway Funny how after saying "Negligible" you present a false dichotomy - either cache and RAM or site server and no RAM, much like making children stupider with spanking or "living in their own world" and isolation.

[@NoorquackerInd]

NICE GOOGLE, GREAT JOB ON SAVING HTML!

[@8749236]

+Noorquacker Ind. They did explicitly mention they are testing rendering time, not download time >>.. So there was nothing wrong of saving HTML on disks.. (Since disk I/O is much more stable than network connections) Furthermore, How do you get accurate rendering time on a live webpage? How can you remove the download time of webpage? What if you got a bad internet? What if ISP suddenly decided that: I'll reduce network speed by half for 2 month? What if the server got DDoSed? There are just too many if`s..

[@user-ry8be3pp2v]

+Dennis Liu ครบ

[@JuanRuizS]

Love it. Want to see more commercials like this.

[@JohnWatersJH2o]

Coolest Test Comparison In the World!! Rock On Chrome!

[@daffaftrivaldy]

when you got no working to do

[@CheckEmGG]

Does caching AllRecipies count as faster than a potato?

[@shaneoconnor7243]

[@WaffleThief]

I don't use Google Chrome. I just find these wordless commercials somewhat relaxing. I come back here every few months just to enjoy two minutes of almost uninterrupted silence.

[@RobertCarlson89]

I like the Closed Captions on this

[@YAHELOHIMGOD]

GC crashes too much! But I still love it!

[@coshiro1]

Please give us an update on your thoughts about Chrome 11 years later 😂

[@krankenwagen7198]

update pls

[@YAHELOHIMGOD]

@@coshiro1 never stopped using it. I believed in it.

[@YAHELOHIMGOD]

@@krankenwagen7198 done

[@krankenwagen7198]

@@YAHELOHIMGOD daamn i didn't even have a computer in 2011

[@dr.javalava2941]

Google chrome, it's faster than a speeding potato, it's faster than sound, it's faster than lightning. but somehow, it's NOT faster than a Firefox.

[@arkonsangwonrajsap8919]

ok

[@timothyjholloway]

Maybe. Comparing Chrome to a potato gun is appropriate, since both are impractical examples if Chrome is loading pages from cache.

[@vitosteven9399]

Love it!

[@eljcasino]

that commercial is the bomb - they killed it

[@TheOnlineGam4r]

COOOOOL MINE IS SLOW AS FUCKKKKKK

[@mdmamunmamun5688]

mdmamun11294@gmailcom

[@maurycykaczmarek9998]

Page is not loading but it's already loaded and generated. They load page and than go to back. Then they click forward and page has loaded from cache memory not from Web...

[@The_Beast_666]

They load the page and "then" go back. Use proper spelling.

[@sonicrtailsdoll]

I love this commircal, it is very hilarous the thunder part, it awlays cracks me up XD.

[@Kek5kopF]

This is art!!

[@ColdComrade]

I love this video.

[@mohammadkermani2987]

So creative!

[@aamir5954]

Great Video.

[@GFisher111]

very creative and entertaining

[@8749236]

Never gets old..

[@jimmybones1415]

I love it !!

[@onurcemparlak3914]

This is still masterpiece

[@PranavRP2010]

This video is posted on my born year!

[@abyissal]

nice catch they also mention it in the description, but then again i wasn't here a month ago know if that was after the fact.

[@MissArpster]

standing ovation for the video :D

[@monitorulcivic9166]

Good job noticing!

[@bonmec101]

Good find! With out using a local address they cannot make the video convincing enough. But the whole point of video was to be funny, different and yet at the same time convey that chrome is fast.

[@777jordan]

very creative!

[@Mackaframmalamma]

Brilliant Spots.

[@jackmartinstestpagelol9334]

Awesome!

[@jeffjoraj]

@TheSaxon48 yes I have, on my first computer, and it was also the first program I've uninstalled. Ever.

[@gronedotromentado2620]

Excellent

[@DrSulfurious]

Aperture Science.... I'm making a note here.... Huge Success!

[@akatsukifangirl11]

That was awesome XD

[@thatsaweirdbug]

I actually watched this ad before a youtube ad, that's gotta be saying something. Enjoyable to watch. But your lack of a taskbar at the top of google chrome still kills me. :c

[@PeterLyons1028]

gives a whole new meaning to "lightning fast"

[@bonziaaron5059]

Oddly satisfying video that calms you down but it's in Google chrome.

[@carlestranero4878]

This was uploaded the day after my bday!

[@gholamrezadar]

So you were 4 years old when you posted this comment!!

[@CautionChildrens]

I laughed so hard. what a great video idea hahah

[@TheRealDragonflight]

I, for one, am satisfied with how fast google chrome is ;) Keep it up, google!

[@paradiddle16]

Impressive!

[@crossfire7474]

This video made me use google chrome 11 years ago. I remember how it was the talk of the town.

[@TheWorldsLongestName]

I actually watched this ad completely on youtube.

[@ozy1944]

Amazingly !

[@LarsBjerregaard]

Doesn't matter if it's true or not. It's just too good. Some folks on the Chrome team have a great sense of humour.

[@RiDankulous]

Nice video.

[@mitchdwx]

this is the first thing that came up when i searched "is this filmed with a potato"

[@GOAVOXI]

It's cool to see the raw power of a Google search.

[@habel7892]

i cant get enough of this :D im using chrome now

[@cherrytree_walk]

This is silly; I love it :)

[@Coccinellepapaveiro]

amazing.

[@Nitrotechnology]

I have just switched from the Opera browser to Google Chrome, and I'm very happy with it. One thing I would like to mention is that Chrome isn't really that "Fast", it is just a tiny bit faster than Opera.

[@APDcar1]

awesome video. Cool Visuals. Also Chrome is the best

[@A13XMAR5]

@captivatation DUUUUUUDE!!! That comment is GOLD for this vid.

[@penguinx32]

Great for noticing! But if you had read the description and many other comments, the tests were to compare the speed of which Google Chrome RENDERS a page to other things (Lightning, Sound Waves/Paint, and flying potatoes). Using a file that is already in the hdd is the BEST WAY to analyze the speed of which Google Chrome RENDERS elements. Using the internet would add a ton of variables that will affect the speed and is not very effective for testing rendering speeds due to those variables.

[@BadSantaClaus1]

The first test with thé potato is so f*cking epic.

[@penguinderos]

This is a real speed test :)

[@marcelthemaoist]

Pretty kewl.

[@Aoredon]

This was to show how fast Chrome renders web pages. Any web browser will run fast or slow depending on your internet speed, that's not really of control of the browser. What is of control of the browser is the speed at which it loads that webpage's content.

[@Acceleration3]

"While we had a super fast 15Mbps internet connection in the studio, any live internet connection introduces quite a bit of variability. To run speed tests on page rendering times, saving locally and loading from the local disk can help reduce this variability.". They said so in the description.

[@johnhhaskell]

now I have 500 mpbs and Chrome sucks

[@expugnator3000]

You would propably be able to increase speed by using OpenGL (renders on hardware) instead of GDI, which runs completely in software. What is actually used by the mac version of chrome (since gdi is only available on windows)?

[@TheYouTubeChannelOfSteve]

I own that keytar. The sound the video gives it doesn't match any of the voices it comes with. Still love you, Chrome :)

[@S8DevTeam]

Genius!

[@ILIYYILI]

This is awesome. Still, I'll keep using my Explorer.

[@FRODYeh]

amazing Google X !

[@QAlexandar]

after 10 years here i am again

[@asiansocks98]

i like how the potatoes shot into the fryer

[@BOOMBABY2020]

nice one

[@OliverYossif]

Also, to the folks that are calling the video fake because the info is stored locally, I quote KZbin commenter TheGoose91: "Also, the test is the browser's parsing speed, not the speed of their Internet connections (which would be pointless). Therefore, whether it is cached or not is irrelevant. What matters is how fast the browser can parse the sites."

[@tomysshadow]

It's true that page loading can be affected by the server making it slower, but once the browser recieves the response, it's up to the browser to display the page. Google Chrome reduces the loading wait by loading single elements faster, once they have been recieved on the client side.

[@garybell6098]

This is why they rule, what an fantastic ad

[@guitarbodhi]

@NerdyLlamaFarmer i suggest you to read the info section. "- Computer: MacBook Pro laptop with Windows installed - Monitor - 24" Asus: We had to replace the standard fluorescent backlight with very large tungsten fixtures to funnel in more light to capture the screen. "

[@DavidBaileyDevilishDB]

good point!

[@ivanjedenasty3892]

Pěkně udelane

[@beyondthesky70]

So, only Google Chrome is "Chrome Fast" because the experimenter used Google Fiber and a local cache. Fascinating.

[@annoying5andy]

well that is one great invention

[@TheBlackEagle95]

its not only about the web browser its mostly about ur internet speed too!

[@MrJason005]

1:36 the best part!

[@glennzone12]

@Caio219 well, in the description it says "filmed at actual web page rendering times" rendering doesn't mean loading, so, yea

[@AubronPlays]

great!

[@daiokaio]

@TheEdibleGarden where do you live?! at least were i live a 25MB is totally feasible for a mere 50 bucks a month. very well worth it too. Irvine, CA.

[@ladygagawhore]

LOL, this looks so good with Marry the Night by Lady Gaga in the background :D

[@AmitSett]

this is cool