In general terms, we often hear things about X browser being faster than Y browser, or that Firefox is 300% faster since its last update. Usually, it’s that Chrome is leagues ahead of everything else, with Safari, Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer lagging behind. Now, Futuremark has moved that testing to the browser itself, making it a lot easier to check how things run on your own system.

Futuremark has thrown up a web-based application called Peacekeeper that will put your browser through its paces in six different areas. The test itself takes around five minutes and some of the results have been particularly interesting. One of our own was the extent to which Safari and Firefox (both updated to their latest releases) differed in their results. Firefox scored 1729, while Safari managed 2940. As arbitrary numbers go, there’s some difference there.

Perhaps more important than our dithering curiosity about our own browser setups, Peacekeeper also serves as an excellent place to find averages for browser performances across a massive number of different hardware variations. The results for multiple different browsers and popular processors are shown after the test, which should help you feel good or inadequate about your setup depending on your results.

Some of the things it throws around during the test are mad for a browser.

If you’d like to check out your browser’s performance, then you can do so at the Peacekeeper page here. Our high score came from the most recent build of Shiira (which is, sadly, Mac only). Tell us when you shame us by beating it roundly