Why don't I see any difference in speed?

Frequently Asked Questions about the Pale Moon browser and their answers.
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Moonchild
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Why don't I see any difference in speed?

Unread post by Moonchild » 2011-09-26, 18:37

Why don't I see any difference in speed between Firefox and Pale Moon?

There are a number of possible answers to this question, but the most likely ones are:
  1. You are visiting pages that are quick to load and render, and you can't visibly see any difference. The difference is there, but the human brain can't process it that quickly.
  2. You are visiting pages that suffer from particularly slow loading or heavy load. The speed limiting factor there is the web server, not the browser. Pale Moon can't "magically" fix a server-side problem, after all ;)
  3. You are using add-ons that slow things down in such a way that Pale Moon's optimizations are negated. The speed limiting factor there is the add-on.
  4. Your local network slows things down. This can have any number of causes and solutions beyond the scope of this FAQ
  5. You are comparing synthetic test results. Tests like Sunspider (tests only the already optimized javascript core for later versions of Firefox code) and Peacekeeper (tests mostly hardware, and less the actual browser) may give you skewed or even incorrect results, depending on your specific browser and hardware setups. They are, at least, not giving you a complete picture. I have yet to find a good test that tests -actual- page rendering speed, network back-end speed, plugin-speed and interpreter speed, and not just either hardware or how fast a single library can spit out machine code.
  6. You are comparing a tweaked/optimized version of Firefox with a stock installation of Pale Moon. These tweaks will give better performance to Firefox for your specific situation. The same tweaks can be applied to Pale Moon to add to the increase in performance already present. If you want to compare, make sure to compare unaltered installations of either browser on either a new or equally loaded profile.
As said, these are the most likely answers, but it is by no means a complete list.
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