As an open source project, anyone can create builds for Firefox (formerly known as Firebird). And, indeed many have. As Neil Turner writes about in his blog, Jesse Ruderman has a section of his site — “The Burning Edge” — where he chronicles bugs fixed in each day’s Firefox builds.
And, next to each day’s listing are links to processor-specific builds. In order to save some space, he makes use of some acronyms, but there’s a section which goes over all those. The key is to match up your processor’s special features (such as SSE) with the build that offers those.
If you’re not sure which features your processor has, Neil mentions that AIDA 32 will check your processor and figure that out for you. AIDA probably works fine, though I prefer WCPUID for that kind of thing — it’s a processor-focused utility and all the information you need is right on the first screen.
In the FAQ, Jesse also includes a quick-reference to match up which build is fastest for your processor:
So which optimized build should I get if my processor is X?
- P2: G6 is fastest
- P3: G6 SSE is fastest
- P4: G7 SSE2 is fastest
- Celeron: Depends on whether your Celeron is P2-based, P3-based, or P4-based.
- Athlon XP: G7 may be faster than G7 SSE even though SSE is supported
Yeah, those acronyms may seem a bit obtuse for now, but it’s fairly straightforward once you’re looking at the list of builds for the day. And, apparently, the results can be quite dramatic:
Still with me? Good, because if you follow the above you may make yourself very, very happy. This optimized build is insanely fast — probably the fastest browser I’ve ever used. New tabs open instantly, menus appear as soon as you click on them, and page rendering is noticeably faster. If you’re willing to spend a few minutes trying to find a build that works best with your computer, then you’ll be thanking yourself in future.
If I had a halfway-decent processor, I’d try some of these optimized builds for sure ;). As it is, I have just an Athlon 700 in my box and about the only thing it supports are MMX and 3DNow, neither of which appear in specialized builds. To be fair, I may give a G6-optimized build a chance, as that one has rather lenient optimization that doesn’t completely require a modern processor.