Chrome for M1 Macs Runs Up to 80% Faster Than Rosetta 2 Version (2024)

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Chrome for M1 Macs Runs Up to 80% Faster Than Rosetta 2 Version? ›

In the Motion Mark 1.1 test, ‌M1‌ Chrome scored 726.4, while standard Chrome scored 435.7. Across all tests, the native ‌M1‌ version of Chrome performed between 66 and 81 percent better than the version of Chrome running through Rosetta 2.

A post on the Chromium Blog breaks down the improvements made to Chrome's speed over the past year or so when compiling JavaScript and rendering graphics. According to Google, this all adds up to its browser being the fastest on M1 Macs, benchmarking around 7 percent faster than Safari.

Google Chrome is compatible with M1 Mac devices. A Chrome M1 update was released back in 2020 to optimize the browser for the first of Apple's new line of CPUs. Initially, Chrome M1 support was a bit weak with Chrome underperforming compared to Safari.

In most cases, you won't notice any difference in the performance of an app that uses Rosetta. But you should contact the app developer to inquire about a version that can natively use the full power and performance of Apple silicon.

There are a number of reasons for Chrome running slow on Mac: You have extensions installed that are consuming lots of system resources. You have extensions installed that are out of date. You're not running the most recent version of Chrome.

There are a few things you can do to try and fix Chrome's laggy performance. First, try closing all of your other open tabs and windows. Next, make sure that you're using the latest version of Chrome. If that doesn't work, you may need to enable hardware acceleration in Chrome's settings.

Verdict: While Safari is known for its optimized performance on Apple devices, Chrome is considered slightly faster. However, the difference in speed is minimal and may not be noticeable to most users.

I have a new Macbook M1, and I installed the M1-specific Google Chrome on my system to avoid using the Rosetta emulation. It works well!

Update November 18th, 3:23PM ET: Google has released the native version of Chrome for Apple silicon-equipped Macs, so we have made updates throughout this article.

Google's browser now supports the new lineup of computers with Apple's home-made silicon, a report says.

What are the downsides of Rosetta 2? ›

It did not support apps built for older operating systems, like Mac OS 9, Mac OS 8, and so on. It also did not support apps built for PowerPC's G5 processor, although developers could modify G5-specific app code so they could run on Intel-based Macs using Rosetta.

The main drawbacks to using Rosetta are performance and efficiency. ARM code runs faster, and uses less Energy. Are there no apps for which the ARM version behaves even slightly differently from the Intel one? (For example, the ARM version of HomeBrew defaults to a completely different installation directory.)

Rosetta 2 avoids computing flags when they are unused and don't escape. This means that even with the flag-manipulation instructions, the vast majority of flag-setting x86 instructions can be translated to non-flag-setting ARM instructions, with no fix-up required. This improves instruction count and size a lot.

Chrome's graphics performance was also 15% faster than Safari due to recent graphics optimizations. "Overall, since launching Chrome on M1-based Macs in late 2020, Chrome is now 43% faster than it was just 17 months ago," Google notes in a blogpost.

Apple uses memory, which is designed to serve both large chunks of data and do it very quickly. It is called 'low latency and high throughput'. This removes the need to have two different types of memory and all the copying of data between them, making the M1 faster.

The M1 chip brings up to 3.5x faster CPU performance, up to 6x faster GPU performance, and up to 15x faster machine learning capabilities compared to the Intel chips used in prior-generation machines.