How Much Faster Is Konqueror With WebKit?

By Ricky on August 12th, 2010

Yesterday we wrote about how you can make WebKit default in Konqueror. We always knew that WebKit is going to make Konqueror faster; but how much faster? Today we test that by putting Konqueror with KHTML through the SunSpider JavaScript Test and the then do the same with WebKit. To get an idea of how fast they are compared to other browsers, we also decided to put Firefox 4.0 Beta 2 through the tests.

SunSpider JavaScript Test

Konqueror WebKit SunSpider Test

As you can very clearly see, Konqueror with KHTML is more than eight times slower than that with Webkit. Surprisingly Konqueror with WebKit is also faster than Firefox 4.0 Beta 2. The difference does not seem much in the graph above but it is around 400ms which is quite a significant difference if you consider that Konqueror (WebKit) has a total time of around 1000ms.

V8 Benchmark

Konqueror WebKit V8 Benchmark

The result here is quite interesting. As expected Konqueror with KHTML does not perform very well, with it failing to cross even 200 in any of the tests. It even failed to complete in the Splay test. The final score of the V8 Benchmark is calculated as a Geometric Mean of all the scores. If we neglect the Splay test, Konqueror with KHTML scores around 70.

The score that Konqueror got with WebKit is a huge surprise however. It scored over 1100 which is much higher that Firefox 4.0 Beta 2, which managed a score of just below 400. Konqueror with WebKit also managed to score way more than Firefox in every tests. A very impressive performance indeed.

Conclusion

So, there you have it you cannot even compare Konqueror (KHTML) with Konqueror (WebKit). The one with WebKit is way faster. Not only is it faster than KHTML, it is also much faster than Firefox 4.0 Beta 2.

Of course, there is much more to a browser that the speed of its JavaScript engine. We are not saying Konqueror is a better browser than Firefox; we are only saying it is faster. If you check out the results we got in our previous tests, Konqueror (WebKit) is however not nearly as fast as Opera, Google Chrome and Chromium.

However, if you are using KHTML in Konqueror, we recommend you switch to WebKit, the difference is just too much.

« Previous Post

Related Posts by Tags: Firefox, javascript, kde, khtml, konqueror, speed, test, webkit

Pingback: How Much Faster Is Konqueror With WebKit? | AboutBrowsers.info
Pingback: Tweets that mention How Much Faster Is Konqueror With WebKit? -- Topsy.com
Pingback: Links 13/8/2010: Linux 2.6.36 Sighted, Fedora 14 Delayed | Techrights
http://twitter.com/xenoterracide Caleb Cushing

How does it stack up against chromium? and other existing webkit browsers (rekonq, arora, etc)
- http://digitizor.com/ Ricky Laishram
  
  Chromium is much faster. You can see the performance of Chromium in one of our previous posts – http://digitizor.com/2010/07/01/browser-speed-test-operas-claim-put-to-the-test/
  We have not tested rekonq and arora, but its a good idea and we may do it later
Danas

Yeah so it went from terrible to quite fast. Doesn’t matter when your site is so slow, though, really.
- http://digitizor.com/ Ricky Laishram
  
  That happens when the site’s traffic spikes to 10 times the normal everyday traffic.
Guest

QtWebkit (Arora, Rekonq, Konqueror’s kwebkitpart) is still behind Chromium, but a lot of work has been put into the upcoming release for Qt 4.7 including hardware accelerated CSS, 3D transforms and compositing, and much faster text rendering. I think there are still plans to release the QtWebkit module separate from the framework and more frequently because of how fast it is developing.
- http://digitizor.com/ Ricky Laishram
  
  Yes they are still behind Chromium by a considerable margin.
Nospam

>So, there you have it you cannot even compare Konqueror (KHTML) with Konqueror (WebKit).

No? What was the article about again?

>The one with WebKit is way faster. Not only is it faster than KHTML, it is also much faster than Firefox 4.0 Beta 2.

I see.
- http://digitizor.com/ Ricky Laishram
  
  It is called figure of speech
http://twitter.com/geeknik geeknik

Benchmarks mean nothing compared to real world performance.
- http://digitizor.com/ Ricky Laishram
  
  Actually they do. It is just that it is not the only thing that matters in real world.
Pingback: Prostate Cancer : : [Slashdot] Stories for 2010-08-15 - Cancer Health Center
Illiterate fools

“As you can very clearly see, Konqueror with KHTML is more than eight times slower that that with Webkit.”"MORE…” “THAT…”You are so stuck on writing “more THAT” all the time, instead of “more THAN”, that you even wrote “more THAT THAT”.
- Anonymous
  
  Thanks for point out the typo to us
Pingback: WebKit为Konqueror提速 « 每日IT新闻，最新IT资讯，聚合多站点消息，保证你与世界同步
squirrel

Just to note… The Firefox 4 betas are still using the old javascript engine from Firefox 3.6. The new engine will be implemented in one of the next betas.
Guest

Using Firefox 4 Beta 2 when Firefox 4 Beta 3 was available already? Beta 3 was released on August 11, 2010 and this article was published on the 12th, so no excuses not to use the latest beta.
- http://digitizor.com/ Ricky Laishram
  
  Yes Firefox 4.0 Beta 3 was released on the day I did this. But as the title says, we are more interested in testing Konqueror’s performance here. Firefox is included just to get an idea of how Konqueror does compared to a popular browser.
Pingback: How To Switch To WebKit in Konqueror Browser [KDE SC 4.5 / Kubuntu]
Pingback: MicroDicas.com.br » Konqueror com WebKit é bem mais rápido do que com KHTML
Pingback: Firefox 4 Makes Great Improvement In JavaScript Speed
Pingback: Criando 3 botões super modernos e sedutores usando apenas CSS3 | Bernard De Luna