Internet Explorer 10
Our Internet Explorer benchmarks provide an obvious twist; Windows 8 runs Internet Explorer 10 (the latest version) while Windows 7 is still relying on Internet Explorer 9 (though 10 will become available as an update in the near future).
The popular SunSpider benchmark examines each browser's JavaScript performance, and IE10's improved Chakra engine allows Windows 8 to pull out a comfortable lead. Out of interest, we also tried Google Chrome which returned a time of 130 milliseconds.
Peacekeeper, a free browser test from Futuremark, backs up the SunSpider results; IE10 is plain faster than IE9. Though, that doesn't necessarily mean you should stick with Microsoft's default browser, as Google Chrome scores 5,412 under Windows 8.
This simple benchmark, available at html5test.com, can be used to gauge how well a browser supports the still-in-development HTML5 standard. Browsers are marked out of a total of 500 points and IE10 is clearly a big step in the right direction. Microsoft still has work to do, however, as the latest version of Google's Chrome scores an even more impressive 434 points.
