Just when it was looking like Google Chrome couldn't get any faster, a new beta shows up and shatters that impression. On Thursday, the search titan announced a new Chrome 10 beta that boosts JavaScript performance by a substantial 66 percent, as measured by Google's own V8 benchmark, and implements GPU-accelerated video playing. The beta also changes the way users set options, and lets them sync passwords.
In my own speed tests on a 2.6-GHz dual-core laptop, Chrome 10 beta showed significant improvements on Google's V8 benchmark and Mozilla's Kraken, but on Webkit's SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, it was nearly identical, and still trailed Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate's 231ms. Here are my results, showing how Chrome 10 improves on 9:
| Benchmark | Chrome 9 | Chrome 10 Beta | Percent Change |
| Google V8 v6 (higher is better) | 5164 | 8294 | +61 |
| Mozilla Kraken (ms—lower is better) | 15657 | 8541 | +45 |
| SunSpider 0.9.1 (ms—lower is better) | 286 | 284 | >1 |
Writing in a post entitled "Faster than a speeding rabbit: speed, sync, and settings" on the Google Chrome Blog, product manager Jeff Chang and product marketing manager Li Chan described the GPU video acceleration: "Users with capable graphics hardware should see a significant decrease in CPU usage. In full screen mode, CPU usage may decrease by as much as 80%! This means better battery life so you can keep going and going like that pink bunny in the commercials."
Beyond performance, the new beta adds a couple of other new user features. Users can now sync saved site passwords on multiple computers. The released version already allows syncing of bookmarks, preferences, themes, and extensions. The new feature also allows for encryption of the synced password if the user chooses that measure of extra security.
The Settings interface has been redesigned, displaying on the Web page area, rather than a separate dialog. This follows a longstanding trend in Chrome towards making every function look like a Web page—just as it does with History, Downloads, and Extension settings. Also new for settings is a search box, where you can just type in the function you're looking for and set it on the resulting page.
The new version will likely make it to the stable release channel some time in the next few weeks: Chrome versions have been coming out at a pace of once every three months—more frequently than any other major browser. To try out the beta for yourself, head to the Google Chrome Beta download page, or change your current Chrome release channel to the beta on the channel changer page. For an in-depth look at the browser, read PCMag.com's review of Chrome 9.