Fastest web browsing PC?

[Odaiba Alpine Club]

Just for funsies, not serious question. I'm just tired of web based at-home work, and want to think about something interesting.

 

As the title implies, I wonder what PC would be the fastest web browsing PC. Let's say, there's average Chrome browser with Ublock Origin attached to it, with 10 opened tabs, 1 of them is the tab I'm working on something, 1 of them is playing music on Spotify, and the rest of them are just random web pages(LTT forum if prefered) I just opened couple minutes ago. And Windows is running with some non-resource heavy background processes, such as Discord, WhatsApp, and Steam(with no game updates). Long words short, a "basic" web browsing setup.

 

I mean, most of secondhand "web browsing" PCs on Ebay are just a plie of junk. They are usually full of lag, can't do anything but opening only one browser tab and shutting down of unknown hardware error. I don't want web browsing experience like that. But if I were to do only fast web browsing, obviously I would not need RTX, or some thread-ripping core count.

 

Most of the time(assuming there's no problem on 100mbps networking) a quad-core CPU over 3GHz clock speed, 8 gigs of RAM(I think 4 gigs will be plenty), and some good amount of solid-state storage will do the job done, no problem at all. But that can't be the answer I'm searching for. I want them do the job done, as fast as possible. Given the same internet ping and bandwidth, exactly how much CPU clock speed will max out the web browser response speed, such as opening a new site, playing browser game, or web based word processing app? How about RAM? Will it depend on RAM capacity? Or RAM speed? What about storage? Where will be the point that starts to give diminishing returns?

[Staidey]

That why you install brunch chrome os on those ebay web brosing PC's

Chrome OS is pretty cool, now. It can run Android and Linux applications.

[Odaiba Alpine Club]

2 minutes ago, AdkatkaShow said:

That why you install brunch chrome os on those ebay web brosing PC's

Chrome OS is pretty cool, now. It can run Android and Linux applications.

but what would be the top-end? What GHz will be enough?

[flashiling]

Just now, Odaiba Alpine Club said:

but what would be the top-end? What GHz will be enough?

i mean i'm on an intel nuc with an i3-8109U and it works smoothly with many small background applications like softphones, excel, other stuff in the background.

they're pretty cheap too

[Staidey]

3 hours ago, Odaiba Alpine Club said:

but what would be the top-end? What GHz will be enough?

It all depends on software optimization. Most chromebook devices are 1.0GHz - 2.0GHz and run Chrome better that most PC's do. So yeah...

[Odaiba Alpine Club]

1 minute ago, flashiling said:

i mean i'm on an intel nuc with an i3-8109U and it works smoothly with many small background applications like softphones, excel, other stuff in the background.

they're pretty cheap too

yeah, this level of diminishing returns is very low I think.

[Odaiba Alpine Club]

2 minutes ago, AdkatkaShow said:

It all depends on software optimization. Most chromebook devices are 1.0GHz - 2.0GHz and run Chrome better that most PC's do. So yeah...

Oh rly? I'm interested to hear that. Purpose-built software will be the solution.

[flashiling]

4 minutes ago, Odaiba Alpine Club said:

yeah, this level of diminishing returns is very low I think.

apologies but i'm not sure what you mean

[Odaiba Alpine Club]

Just now, flashiling said:

apologies but i'm not sure what you mean

sorry for the lack of words. I meant, considering the level of the hardware that needed to experience good web browsing, upgrading i3 mobile CPU to, say, i5 mobile would already be no upgrade at all for simple web browsing.

[mariushm]

Maybe you should consider NOT using Chrome, which is not optimized for crap systems. 

Consider maybe Firefox with tweaks,  Pale Moon (firefox clone optimized for some architectures), and other versions I can't think of now...

[SupaKomputa]

Any pc with 2 cores, 8gb and a ssd would be good.

Those second hand "web" pc might be good if you took care of those parts.

Theres not a lot happening in the web world aside from higher memory demand per tab.

So any cpu from Core 2 era is enough for web browsing and playing 720p streaming videos.

[Levent]

2 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Any pc with 2 cores, 8gb and a ssd would be good.

Those second hand "web" pc might be good if you took care of those parts.

Theres not a lot happening in the web world aside from higher memory demand per tab.

So any cpu from Core 2 era is enough for web browsing and playing 720p streaming videos.

That sentence is too broad to be correct. I wouldnt get anything dual core nowadays (especially if its pre ryzen amd or pre core i series intel cpus), CPU is only the one third of the equation, rest consists of graphics card that supports hw acceleration in the browser of your choice and ram. Considering there are still dual core mobile celerons for sale today and they are absolute pieces of shit on everything (I am typing this post on one).

[SupaKomputa]

4 minutes ago, Levent said:

I wouldnt get anything dual core nowadays

No really, web browsers are single threaded, i still have loads of core 2 office pc operating comfortably for that purpose.

As long as it doesn't hit the memory limit, it will do the job.

7 minutes ago, Levent said:

Considering there are still dual core mobile celerons for sale today and they are absolute pieces of shit on everything (I am typing this post on one).

Have you ever tried them? My sister bought that recently, a cheap $250 celeron laptop, with enough ram (8) and decent ssd, it will fly in browsing.

And that's more than enough for most people.

 

We're talking about browsing machine and i'm a web developer.

[Levent]

39 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

No really, web browsers are single threaded, i still have loads of core 2 office pc operating comfortably for that purpose.

As long as it doesn't hit the memory limit, it will do the job.

Have you ever tried them? My sister bought that recently, a cheap $250 celeron laptop, with enough ram (8) and decent ssd, it will fly in browsing.

And that's more than enough for most people.

 

We're talking about browsing machine and i'm a web developer.

 

51 minutes ago, Levent said:

That sentence is too broad to be correct. I wouldnt get anything dual core nowadays (especially if its pre ryzen amd or pre core i series intel cpus), CPU is only the one third of the equation, rest consists of graphics card that supports hw acceleration in the browser of your choice and ram. Considering there are still dual core mobile celerons for sale today and they are absolute pieces of shit on everything (I am typing this post on one).

 

[SupaKomputa]

3 minutes ago, Levent said:

 

(I am typing this post on one)

 

haha, relax dude.

I see, your happily browsing this one, no problems there...

[WereCatf]

1 hour ago, Odaiba Alpine Club said:

Given the same internet ping and bandwidth, exactly how much CPU clock speed will max out the web browser response speed, such as opening a new site, playing browser game, or web based word processing app? How about RAM? Will it depend on RAM capacity? Or RAM speed? What about storage? Where will be the point that starts to give diminishing returns?

This whole premise doesn't make any sense.

 

For one, diminishing returns starts...immediately. You may not notice it, but it's there. Even a bump from 1MHz to 2MHz is bigger than from 2MHz to 3MHz. Secondly, it all depends on the connection and the content. Downloading a static 1KB - sized HTML - file over plain HTTP is a wholly different matter than accessing a website consisting of 5GB of high-resolution images over HTTPS, which is again an entirely different thing than a website purely made out of slow and extremely complex Javascript. For some content, high single-core clockspeed trumps everything. For other content, extremely low RAM-latency is king. The OS itself also matters, the browser matters, the storage-media and its caching-system matters and so on and so forth.

 

There is no upper limit. Someone will always come up with content that will be bottlenecked by something in your setup.

[Odaiba Alpine Club]

1 hour ago, WereCatf said:

This whole premise doesn't make any sense.

 

For one, diminishing returns starts...immediately. You may not notice it, but it's there. Even a bump from 1MHz to 2MHz is bigger than from 2MHz to 3MHz. Secondly, it all depends on the connection and the content. Downloading a static 1KB - sized HTML - file over plain HTTP is a wholly different matter than accessing a website consisting of 5GB of high-resolution images over HTTPS, which is again an entirely different thing than a website purely made out of slow and extremely complex Javascript. For some content, high single-core clockspeed trumps everything. For other content, extremely low RAM-latency is king. The OS itself also matters, the browser matters, the storage-media and its caching-system matters and so on and so forth.

 

There is no upper limit. Someone will always come up with content that will be bottlenecked by something in your setup.

I didn't think about these basic variables. Sorry for that. I was thinking about "average", which is too vague to be defined. So maybe there is no fastest web browsing PC setup. But you know... I just wanted to know how fast my Gmail website loading can go. Or heavy HTML5-based browser games for example...

[WereCatf]

8 minutes ago, Odaiba Alpine Club said:

Sorry for that. I was thinking about "average", which is too vague to be defined

There's zero reason to apologize, I just explained why your thinking doesn't work.

9 minutes ago, Odaiba Alpine Club said:

I just wanted to know how fast my Gmail website loading can go

With Gmail, you don't just download the website and be done. Gmail sends a ton of requests to Google's servers and each requests introduces some latency, so it doesn't matter even if you threw the world's fastest PC at it -- the latency isn't caused by your PC. I just opened Gmail and...whoo, it made over 250 requests and it wasn't even done loading at that point!

 

For each request, the PC has to ask Google's servers for content, the servers have to process the request, then send the data back, plus any sort of hickups and congestion along all the switches and routers and whatnot along the way from Google's datacenters to your ISP and from there to your PC, all of that affects your experience.

 

Anyways, I suppose you get the point now.