Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Discussion of third-party/unofficial Firefox/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey builds.
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Anakunda
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Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by Anakunda »

HI

Anybody tried out Waterfox 9 ? (http://waterfoxproj.sourceforge.net/downloads)

It's claimed to be faster build of Firefox as it is compiled with 64bit code. I'm quite on doubts, benchmark on Browsermark gives slightly better score to Waterfox but on Peacekeeper I always get better score with Firefox, don't know why. More people can compare these two browsers on Peacekeeper and post results?
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Mozilla also builds a 64-bit Firefox for Windows but they don't officially support it yet. I'm not sure if Waterfox is any different than Mozilla's build. Of course you'll have to have 64-bit plugins to run it.
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by patrickjdempsey »

From the horse's mouth:

http://www.overclock.net/t/975626/water ... t_12887050

Originally Posted by 78@pwnt4lif3 View Post wrote:WOW a 64bit? I still don't know if i should try it. Cuz it's a modified browser. Kinda sketchy but i await results from others til i try, i applaud you for adding 64bit!

Thanks. I hardly did much, just recompiled the program :P
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Anakunda
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by Anakunda »

YEAH I know. NP. got 64bit flash and its works. no problem.
I was rather interested in the speed. Peacekeeper doesnot clearly measure it's faster on my PC. To be concrete regarding Peacekeeper its yet slower than FF.
I want more experiences to know beter if tht's just me or is it really slower.
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by patrickjdempsey »

When doing benchmarking you need a stack of data... like 30-40 tests each and average the results. You also need to run in a clean profile with no extensions... without doing all of that running a benchmark is pointless.
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Anakunda
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by Anakunda »

I have measured in clean profile and it's ~30% faster than my user profile.
But even in clean profile Waterfox proved to be slightly slower than Firefox, I did two benchmarks for each browser.
minghegy
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by minghegy »

Its Javascript performance is so poor, in fact all 64bit builds have a poor js performance.
Rickkins
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by Rickkins »

I've been using it for a while now.... very snappy. Never bothered with any so-called measurements, but I can say without hesitation that it certainly seems much snappier than firefox 32.
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by patrickjdempsey »

I'm under the opinion that a vast majority of the mainstream custom "builds" of Firefox are nothing more than sugar pills. The placebo effect can be very powerful when you tell them they are using something that's faster, they tend to believe it... it's basically Microsoft's entire security model for IE. ;)
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by Rickkins »

Hahaha....good one. Much easier than actually trying it for yourself...
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by Rickkins »

patrickjdempsey wrote:From the horse's mouth:

http://www.overclock.net/t/975626/water ... t_12887050

Originally Posted by 78@pwnt4lif3 View Post wrote:WOW a 64bit? I still don't know if i should try it. Cuz it's a modified browser. Kinda sketchy but i await results from others til i try, i applaud you for adding 64bit!

Thanks. I hardly did much, just recompiled the program :P


Very slick, sport. Take a quote from the very first build and present it as representative of it's current state.
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Anakunda
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by Anakunda »

I did another two clean benchmarks and Waterfox was tightly better this time, but just a several point better, definitely not sharply better.
Because the overall score is compound from more partial tests, it looks that Waterfox clearly loses in some tasks against Firefox.
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Rickkins wrote:Very slick, sport. Take a quote from the very first build and present it as representative of it's current state.


I think your jabs at my laziness in research would probably come across more convincing if you provided some information based on your own research for others to read... otherwise it just sounds like arm chair heckling.

On the surface Waterfox appears to me to be a completely redundant rebranding of 64-bit Firefox. If you have some evidence that it's not, the OP would probably find it really helpful if you provided such evidence.
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Rickkins
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by Rickkins »

patrickjdempsey wrote:
... otherwise it just sounds like arm chair heckling.


Well of course it is, don't be ridiculous... :P


patrickjdempsey wrote:On the surface Waterfox appears to me to be a completely redundant rebranding of 64-bit Firefox. If you have some evidence that it's not, the OP would probably find it really helpful if you provided such evidence.


What surface....you've never even tried it, have you...??
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Re: Waterfox 9: Is it really faster than Firefox?

Post by patrickjdempsey »

I honestly can't tell the speed difference between Firefox 9.0 and the Nightly... they all seem fast to me. Good luck.
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