Internet Explorer 9 release candidate available for download

[suryad]

310 fps while a bunch of other tabs and applications are running in the background as well.

 

[Grall]

Check that when you open a new tab it opens about:Tabs page

Yeah, I realized that must be the case after I'd made the post, I always use the about:blank page since the new tab page was absolutely horrid in previous IE versions (IMO, of course...)

Since I can turn off the suggested sites now, the tab page is now acceptable to use.

Or you can make the about:Tabs your home page.

That's a very good tip. I'll certainly try it out, thanks.

 

[Grall]

IE 9 gets me 288 fps with the core clock at 915 MHz, gpu usage at 16% now though before it was a steady 27% (hmmm).

Got just under 310FPS most of the time on my CF 6970s (although I doubt IE actually gets any crossfire action...), downclocked to 500MHz core. Fan didn't even rev up by the way.

Clocks and volts are all over the place btw. Memory in particular jumps between 150MHz, 625 and 1375, volts skipping around between 0.9, 1 and 1.175 for no discernible reason. AMD needs to work on this aspect btw, looks very messy and unprofessional.

CPU useage in IE9 is commendably low btw. It sat at ~1% with a couple flash animations running, that's really good. Of course, with GPUs being so power hungry these days, who can say if we're actually saving any power by off-loading stuff to the GPU...

 

[I.S.T.]

I got 66 FPS with no other browsers open. I only have a GTS 250 though.

 

[Malo]

Definitely a lot faster rendering than their previous offerings and I like the cut down interface. Definitely Chrome-like.

However, still no granular control over cookies, saved passwords etc. It's stupid having to remove ALL cookies or saved passwords just to remove one, unless I'm missing something?

I'll stick with Firefox.

 

[suryad]

I think you are right about that Malo. Here is hoping some decent add-ons come along that solve those sorts of functionality.

 

[Arwin]

I really like the warning functionality about which plugins cause what type of delay by the way. It definitely prompted me to kick out one or two of them.

 

[Dave Glue]

IE9: 280 FPS
FF4 RC: 100fps

Rig: E5400 2.7ghz, 2GB RAM, Radeon 5450

Looks like we're all limited by our desktop 3D clocks.

Otherwise I like it, I don't think I'll move from FF4 just yet but it's definitely *fast* - on the majority of the sites it's scrolling speed and smoothness is unmatched amongst any browser, and it definitely has the highest degree of GPU acceleration.

One thing that bugs me about this and FF4 - DirectWrite. It's highly sensitive to the type of font and background, more so in ways than Cleartype and especially OSX rendering. OSX rendering is "blurrier" than Cleartype but somewhat makes up for it with very attractive and accurate text rendering IMO. With DirectWrite, it seems to combine the worst of both worlds - some slight kerning improvements but fonts still look "computerized", and aliasing can still be present depending upon the font - along with increased blurriness. Not a huge fan so far.

 

[Malo]

oh and one more thing, it STILL doesn't have a built-in spell checker.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Looks like Final version of IE9 has been released and according to mail I just received, they have changed the functionality of search to meet my needs. Downloading now to see if it does or not.

[edit] Nope, bloody idiots didn't do anything to address my issue even though they said it was resolved in the final release. /sigh.

Regards,
SB

 

[willardjuice]

oh and one more thing, it STILL doesn't have a built-in spell checker.

That's the only feature I really want. Some sort of greasemonkey support would be nice too, but I'm not holding my breath for that one.

 

[suryad]

I would also like some sort of cloud like browser bookmarks sharing capability and a proper flash block

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Well, I don't think a hardware accelerated browser would make much difference in modern desktops or mid-to-high end laptops.

Here are my remarks on a system where hardware acceleration should actually make a difference.

My system Acer Ferrari One:

Athlon Neo L310 (2*Brisbane @ 1.2Ghz)
2*2GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 240MHz (480MHz DDR)
Radeon HD3200 IGP (RV610 -> 40SPs, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs) @ 380MHz

You could say this is the approx. performance you would get from a system with a C-50 APU, or something between C-50 and E-350.



This particular Athlon Neo has the Cool'n'Quiet function disabled, but I programmed RMClock to underclock and undervolt it gradually down to 800MHz\0.7V if the CPU usage is below 65%.
I've been using Chrome for work (google docs + professional mail account) and the latest Firefox 3 for slacking off (trolling around B3D, usual feeds, personal gmail+gchat, etc).


Canvas performance:
Firefox 3: 9fps
Chrome: 13 fps
IE9 Software: 13fps
IE9 Hardware: ~65FPS
Overclocking the IGP to 508MHz won't give me any more performance. both GPU-Z and CPU-Z claim it's using a 32bit connection (3.2GB/s) to memory, so I'm probably bottlenecked by memory bandwidth anyway.
(BTW, I'm not sure how this is possible?! Wasn't it supposed to use the full 2*64bit system bus?! Even if it was using only the sideport memory, that would be a 16bit bus, not 32bit.. Even weirder is that GPU-Z claims the memory is working @ 400MHz, where I know for a fact it's working @ 480MHz.. I may start a thread somewhere to figure this out)



Positive remarks:
- Canvas test much faster
- Web pages load a lot faster than Firefox 3
- Integrated pdf viewer is faster than Firefox 3


Negative remarks:
- Scrolling is sluggish in text-heavy pages (i.e. Wikipedia articles). Seems to be some kind of a bug, since sometimes it works properly (as in, comparable to Firefox 3). There's a "scroll smoothing" option enabled in the advanced options, but I feel no smoothness at all.
- It unexpectedly drains CPU power a LOT more than Firefox 3. If I have a couple of "heavy" pages opened (engadget + news sties with flash ads + igoogle), it'll stick the CPU at 100% usage all the time. The "feeling" is that it's rendering all the tabs at the same time, as if they were all visible in separate windows.
- Youtube 720p videos have choppy playback (in Firefox 3 they're flawless), even though they load faster.
- Keyboard input gets weird sometimes (some keys intermitently lack response and yes, I'm using a wired keyboard).


I have the subnotebook connected to an external 1080p monitor through D-SUB, so I'm using both a 1080p screen and the integrated 1366*768 LCD. Some bugs might be related to the dual-monitor setup, I don't know.


In my case, you could say it's the browser to use when opening heavy pages (lots of pics and animations), but it's currently the worse option for power saving in the CPU domain, and that's where I thought it would shine.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

OK, got more information from them, and there is a way to replicate the search functionality from IE 7/8 search box. Not ideal, but it works. Perhaps I'll get used to it. Still hate using the address bar to search but at least now I can once again use it for easy cross referencing of search terms.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

I'm noticing that clicking on a tab in the tab bar doesn't always switch to that tab. It lights up as the active tab, but the previous tab is still the visible one on top.

Anyone able to replicate this?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm noticing that clicking on a tab in the tab bar doesn't always switch to that tab. It lights up as the active tab, but the previous tab is still the visible one on top.

Anyone able to replicate this?

That can happen sometimes when the page you are trying to switch too is stalled and/or running at 100% CPU useage on a core. IE - If a website has really bad or malicious javascript it can cause this behavior. That isn't the only case where it could happen, but seem to cause the majority of odd tab behavior. You actually have switched tabs but there's nothing to render so it just displays what was in memory for the last tab you left. There's some other situations where I've run into this. For example, after running IE for 1-2 weeks with hundreds of tabs being opened in that span (not currently open) without restarting. Rare case, but it happens occasionally. You'll start getting some other odd IE behavior before that happens though. I suspect it has something to do with things going tits up with Graphics Video Memory. In the case I just described, not the one you mentioned with the tab switching.

There have been a few sites I've run into where it was easy to replicate this. And turning off Javascript often resolved the problem (or putting the site into restricted zone). And when I say bad use of javascript I mean REALLY pathetically bad use of javascript.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

Thanks, SB. I hope MS will stomp this one quick, it's tripping me up not all the time perhaps, but several times per day and it's pretty annoying I have to say. Makes me wonder why they didn't fix it before going live.

Btw, care to define "some other odd IE behavior"? You're making me curious, heh.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Thanks, SB. I hope MS will stomp this one quick, it's tripping me up not all the time perhaps, but several times per day and it's pretty annoying I have to say. Makes me wonder why they didn't fix it before going live.

Btw, care to define "some other odd IE behavior"? You're making me curious, heh.

Hmmm, hard to describe. But basically Windows will no longer be able to correctly render the IE9 window (happened in IE7/8 to an extent also, but in a different way). It's hard to describe. And in the extreme case Windows won't render any parts of the IE9 window, it's effectively invisible but still there. For example it will prevent you from clicking on any desktop icons that might be under it.

Normal browsing should never get you to that point, but if, like me, you sometimes leave the browser running for 1-3 weeks without closing it AND during that time open and close a LOT (multiple hundreds perhaps over a thousand) of graphically intensive tabs/windows and leave a fair bit of tabs/windows open (20 - 50) during that time, you might run into it. I believe I could trigger the glitching faster with a graphics card with less memory, but I'm not interested in testing that.

At this point I don't know its an IE problem, a Windows problem, or an AMD driver problem (don't have an Nvidia card in any current system to test). Since it requires such extreme browsing circumstances, I haven't really bothered to report it.

Regards,
SB

 

[infinity4]

This is the only browser that still doesn't allow me to drag and drop web addresses into the address bar. It is a real shame.

 

[Kaotik]

This is the only browser that still doesn't allow me to drag and drop web addresses into the address bar. It is a real shame.

Huh? Sure IE9 allows that, it just shows the "nonono" symbol until it's on top of the address bar.

edit:
You can of course also drag the link straight to any open tab or the new tab button to open it in new tab