Microsoft Insists (Again) That Chrome Has Worse Battery Life Than Edge

Megalith

Megalith

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If the company’s testing methodology is to be believed, the Anniversary Edition of Edge is even more efficient than the last major version (1511), which already saw lower power consumption compared to Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

The CPU, GPU, and Wifi antenna all used more power on the same workload when it was run using Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, when compared to Microsoft Edge, running on Windows 10 Anniversary Update (14393.105). Microsoft Edge used: 24% less power than Chrome, 32% less power than Opera, 43% less power than Firefox. Edge, Chrome, and Opera had a lower mean power consumption when comparing the Anniversary Update (1607) to the previous release (1511) whereas Firefox had virtually no change.
 
although i mostly use chrome, edge is a nice browser. It can play youtube 4k videos with very low cpu load, unlike chrome.

Sometimes what we use the most doesn't have the best performance.
Just like VLC player is pretty shitty as well, but it's popular.

Firefox is the worst when it comes to video-heavy websites
 
hardboner said:
although i mostly use chrome, edge is a nice browser. It can play youtube 4k videos with very low cpu load, unlike chrome.

Sometimes what we use the most doesn't have the best performance.
Just like VLC player is pretty shitty as well, but it's popular.
Click to expand...


Do you have hardware acceleration enabled in the advanced chrome settings?
 
It's easy to do :) Just keep CPU frequency low, other resources use to minimum and you get to minimize total power used. Doesn't matter if the page loades longer, scrolling is jerky and maybe some pages won't load at all. Oh yeah, and you can't use all those useful extensions....
The methodology should in that case include mesuring loading time for pages and fps while scrolling to measure smoothness. Otherwise you won't get comparable experience for power inwested in rendering.

It's a known problem in Chrome, videos use VP9 codec in chrome (that is not hardware accelerated by most GPUs) and h264 codec in IE/Edge (that is hardware accelerated). Find the way to disable VP9 in Chrome (extension called h264ify does that for example) to get that smooth 4k video in Chrome too.
 
Given how bad security has been in every MS browser, I'll trade some battery life for a safer session in Chrome.
 
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The default Edge compatibility mode causes problems on IE11, and there's no way to effectively change the default to something that works better (i.e. IE11 mode) for all sites. Congrats MS, you managed to make IE11 even crappier.
 
mat9v said:
It's easy to do :) Just keep CPU frequency low, other resources use to minimum and you get to minimize total power used. Doesn't matter if the page loades longer, scrolling is jerky and maybe some pages won't load at all. Oh yeah, and you can't use all those useful extensions....
The methodology should in that case include mesuring loading time for pages and fps while scrolling to measure smoothness. Otherwise you won't get comparable experience for power inwested in rendering.

It's a known problem in Chrome, videos use VP9 codec in chrome (that is not hardware accelerated by most GPUs) and h264 codec in IE/Edge (that is hardware accelerated). Find the way to disable VP9 in Chrome (extension called h264ify does that for example) to get that smooth 4k video in Chrome too.
Click to expand...

except that edge has better performance than chrome...
 
Battery life isn't on my radar when it comes to the web browser.
 
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This coming from the same company that produced a special build of IE to pass an ACID test and actual in the field testing was abysmal ?


Internet Explorer 9 (9.0.8112.16421) achieves 100/100 on acid 3, but the rendered page is not "pixel perfect" to the reference rendering (drop shadows missing, and some other sub-pixel junk):
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Do you have hardware acceleration enabled in the advanced chrome settings?
Click to expand...
Chrome uses VP9 codec for basically all YouTube content instead of H.264, with VP9 not having great hardware support for acceleration, so it is all done in software. Edge doesn't have VP9 built in so YouTube falls back to H.264 and is able to be hardware accelerated.
 
skiboysteve said:
except that edge has better performance than chrome...
Click to expand...

except that i can open a page on chrome on my desktop and instantly open the same exact page on my cell phone and vice versa. so the convenience for a little worse performance is well worth it.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
except that i can open a page on chrome on my desktop and instantly open the same exact page on my cell phone and vice versa. so the convenience for a little worse performance is well worth it.
Click to expand...

Just like edge, go figure. ;)
 
jedimasterben said:
Chrome uses VP9 codec for basically all YouTube content instead of H.264, with VP9 not having great hardware support for acceleration, so it is all done in software. Edge doesn't have VP9 built in so YouTube falls back to H.264 and is able to be hardware accelerated.
Click to expand...

Ah, did not know that. I've never had any problems with smoothness of video playback in youtube of any resolution, including 4k, in chrome, but my CPU is at 4.8ghz and it is in linux, so who knows how things work differently there.

I wonder why they use VP9 instead of h264 for chrome.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I wonder why they use VP9 instead of h264 for chrome.
Click to expand...

Patents. MPEG LA attempted to push a royalty fee on decoders when browsers included the plugin. There was a push to switched to unencumbered formats or create new ones. VP9 was one of them.
 
Note to Microsoft: I'll give a shit about the advantages of Edge when I can go to the Google Play store and download it for Android. Until then, I'll stick with the browsers that I can actually use on both my Windows machine and my Android machines (Chrome and Firefox).
 
Babbster said:
Note to Microsoft: I'll give a shit about the advantages of Edge when I can go to the Google Play store and download it for Android. Until then, I'll stick with the browsers that I can actually use on both my Windows machine and my Android machines (Chrome and Firefox).
Click to expand...

So, you admit that Googles practices are anti competitive then?

Edit: Actually, now that I remember that the other Microsoft apps are there, maybe this one would be there as well. I was just considering that Google would allow that browser on the store with a snowballs chance in hell, however.

They allowed Cortana so perhaps Edge will make it too, you never know. (Knee jerk reaction before.)
 
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Edge offers nothing to me personally. I don't know what it is, but the text seems slightly blurry or aliased compared to chrome and my adblock plus extension keeps bitching about something overflowing or something. No thanks, I'll stick to chrome.
 
Not being techy enough to figure out why something looks like it sucks, I come here to read about why other people (hopefully smarter than me about this stuff) think it sucks. I never believe anything that microsoft tells me anymore. Way, way too much false information given out over the years.
 
Edge will always be less then as it's stuck on windows.

Not many people using one device anymore. If you want the same browser on IOS/OSX/Android/Linux/Windows there is only really one choice. The only chance Edge ever had was for MS mobile platform to explode. Seeing as that is looking less and less likely to ever be a reality, Edge is dead. MS should stop embarrassing themselves already. That I can buy a new phone/computer/tablet/reinstall any OS... and install Chrome or Chromium and sync everything, and even have it remember to auto complete hardocp when I type H. Means no one cares about 5-10% more battery.

The fact that MS can rig a test that shows I would get a couple min more battery if I ran their quarter solution instead is a sad joke. I'll trade a bit of battery to have a sand boxed fully featured browser that will run on ANY Device I purchase any day.

IMO if MS wanted to really push Edge... they would just open source it. Get a Open source version out their on every platform (that way they don't have to be the ones making ios/android/osx/linux versions) Turn it into MS version of Chromium. Then add a proper MS sync that would work regardless of OS and MS might have a browser worth considering.
 
Microsoft said:
Microsoft Insists (Again) That Chrome Has Worse Battery Life Than Edge
Click to expand...

75110-spongebob-square-pants-nobody-cares.jpg
 
ManofGod said:
So, you admit that Googles practices are anti competitive then?

Edit: Actually, now that I remember that the other Microsoft apps are there, maybe this one would be there as well. I was just considering that Google would allow that browser on the store with a snowballs chance in hell, however.

They allowed Cortana so perhaps Edge will make it too, you never know. (Knee jerk reaction before.)
Click to expand...
Yes. To be clear, I have no doubt that Google would list Edge for Android in their store about 5 minutes after Microsoft submitted it...or 5 minutes after whatever vetting/verification process (scanning for viruses, verifying compatibility, etc.) they run new apps through before listing. Not only does Google have no problem with third-party browsers but Android makes it very easy to set such browsers up as default.
 
mat9v said:
It's a known problem in Chrome, videos use VP9 codec in chrome (that is not hardware accelerated by most GPUs) and h264 codec in IE/Edge (that is hardware accelerated). Find the way to disable VP9 in Chrome (extension called h264ify does that for example) to get that smooth 4k video in Chrome too.
Click to expand...

nice fix if it works. I'll check it out.
 
The problem I have with Edge is that it feels erratic. The performance is all over the place for me. Chrome is a constant. I can expect it to run the same and eat all my RAM.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Ah, did not know that. I've never had any problems with smoothness of video playback in youtube of any resolution, including 4k, in chrome, but my CPU is at 4.8ghz and it is in linux, so who knows how things work differently there.

I wonder why they use VP9 instead of h264 for chrome.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I never wondered about it at all until I bought a little mini-PC that has a Pentium 3805U (which is a Broadwell core), which, while great for streaming Steam games to, was utterly useless to watch YouTube videos on when using Chrome, CPU usage was 100% and even 720p30 video would stutter like crazy, and it's because it doesn't have hardware acceleration of VP9. Switched to using Edge on that system and 1080p60 video plays flawlessly :D

It actually made me start using Edge on my other systems, too. I actually did notice a pretty significant increase in battery life on my Dell 3470 laptop versus using Chrome.
 
It's like your cable company insisting that they have better phone service. I would use Edge, if everything I did worked as well as it does in Chrome.

But it doesn't. So I don't.
 
mat9v said:
It's a known problem in Chrome, videos use VP9 codec in chrome (that is not hardware accelerated by most GPUs) and h264 codec in IE/Edge (that is hardware accelerated). Find the way to disable VP9 in Chrome (extension called h264ify does that for example) to get that smooth 4k video in Chrome too.
Click to expand...

Just tried that out, courtesy of your suggestion. Thanks for the tip!
 
jedimasterben said:
Chrome uses VP9 codec for basically all YouTube content instead of H.264, with VP9 not having great hardware support for acceleration, so it is all done in software. Edge doesn't have VP9 built in so YouTube falls back to H.264 and is able to be hardware accelerated.
Click to expand...


The odd thing is that according to this table on Wikipedia pretty much all recent GPU's can handle VP9 hardware decode.

Maybe that's why I haven't noticed a difference.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
The odd thing is that according to this table on Wikipedia pretty much all recent GPU's can handle VP9 hardware decode.

Maybe that's why I haven't noticed a difference.
Click to expand...
No, not really - only GM206 and all Pascal from Nvidia, only Skylake and up from Intel (with a few Atom and Pentium chips thrown in), and only Polaris GPUs from AMD, no CPU support. You have a very strong CPU, so you would never notice.
 
ManofGod said:
So, you admit that Googles practices are anti competitive then?

Edit: Actually, now that I remember that the other Microsoft apps are there, maybe this one would be there as well. I was just considering that Google would allow that browser on the store with a snowballs chance in hell, however.

They allowed Cortana so perhaps Edge will make it too, you never know. (Knee jerk reaction before.)
Click to expand...

This entire post I am replying to: :rolleyes:

Just because Microsoft hasn't written and published Edge for Android doesn't make Google anti competitive.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Ah, did not know that. I've never had any problems with smoothness of video playback in youtube of any resolution, including 4k, in chrome, but my CPU is at 4.8ghz and it is in linux, so who knows how things work differently there.

I wonder why they use VP9 instead of h264 for chrome.
Click to expand...

Much better compression.
 
I have to agree with others, I go between Windows, Android and Apple being a dev, and Chrome has all my bookmarks/history etc across all of them. If Edge had that, I would be willing to give it a try, but I don't see it on Android nor Apple stores.
 
rat said:
This entire post I am replying to: :rolleyes:

Just because Microsoft hasn't written and published Edge for Android doesn't make Google anti competitive.
Click to expand...

The entire post I am replying to: :rolleyes:

Clearly, you claim you are replying to the entire post but did not read beyond the first line, good job. ;) So, you are saying the Google themselves are not anti competitive?
 
westrock2000 said:
Thank you Steve for this info, I have been on the fence about using Edge, but this definitely adds a point to my reasons for using it.

9HUjjPM.jpg
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Well the sad thing is you can't really trust their test. Maybe if they redid the test with adblockers installed and used normal ad-heavy sites, it'd be more representative.
 
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