Does Chrome Burn Through More Power Than Firefox?

The first test is looking at the power consumption and CPU usage of the three web-browsers when running the SunSpider benchmark and then idling.

The SunSpider benchmark, takes just less than 30 seconds to execute on modern browsers, and then the process was still monitored for another approximate 30 seconds. The power consumption between Firefox 4.0 and Chrome 13 was close (on this system and for this test, Chrome 13 was only going through about 0.3 more Watts), but the standout was Firefox 5.0. The power consumption better with Firefox 5.0, but it regressed in the wrong direction. Firefox 5.0 is going through about two Watts (or about 8%) more power than the Firefox 4.0 release.

The CPU usage between Firefox 4.0 and Firefox 5.0 wasn't terribly different. Chrome 13 was actually using the CPU much more than Mozilla Firefox, although that didn't equate to a huge change in power consumption. Chrome 14 should be more efficient as well.

In terms of the actual SunSpider benchmark results, Firefox 4.0 took 212ms to complete on this Sandy Bridge system, Firefox 5.0 was faster at 193ms, and Chrome 13 took the longest for this JavaScript-based benchmark with a time of 264ms.