Potatoes shooting out of tubes... A browser racing against boiled spuds... It's all good for a lighthearted laugh, but you're probably more interested in how a browser performs against non-tuber.

A while back, Opera 10.5 briefly snatched away the speed crown from Google Chrome on my system. Chrome's been comfortably in the lead for quite some time now when it comes to performance, but that may be about to change with the arrival of Opera 10.6.

I put the newly-released Opera 10.6 snapshot build up against both the Chrome 5 beta and Chrome 6 dev channel builds, and the results were pretty astounding: Opera 10.6 posted a Peacekeeper benchmark almost 25% higher than Google Chrome 6.0.408.1 (my results here). Sebastian's numbers were a bit closer, but Opera 10.6 still won (+14%).

That's pretty substantial, and the difference is noticeable while browsing web sites and tackling my usual daily tasks in apps like Gmail, Google Reader, and Seesmic Web. Opera 10.6 appears ready to reaffirm the fact that Opera has every intention of competing with the big boys.

Maybe Opera was poking fun at more than the original Google ad. Perhaps they were dropping a not-so-subtle hint about 10.6 turning up the heat on Chrome, so to speak...

 

 

Forget the potato, Opera 10.6 speeds past Google Chrome 6 originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 31 May 2010 16:40:00 EST.