Hardware impact on Safari (browsers) performance

[yarcheek]

Hi. I'm considering upgrading my notebook (MacBook 2017 for Macbook Pro 13 or Macbook Air). I spend the majority of my time in a variety of web apps.

I was wondering what hardware choices will boost website page rendering performance (speed) the most. Is it RAM? Is it CPU? Is it faster SSD? Is it GPU? Where should I put my money?

Will hardware upgrade noticeably improve my browsing experience at all?

Thank you.

 

[steverp]

In my experience, going from regular hard disk to SSD gives the biggest mind-blowing speed increases! I've never ever ever noticed ANY speed increases to write home about when adding RAM. But SSD.... OMG!

 

[KALLT]

Hard to tell, as all of them contribute to webpage rendering. Networking also has to be accounted for, of course.

I guess that disk speed is not as important as the others though, unless you tend to open many tabs at once; more than your RAM can handle. Safari will start paging data as the memory pressure increases, so having a faster disk can keep your browser responsive.

Web technology is developing quickly, so having a modern CPU and GPU can position you better for the future. RAM is important too, because a fully-rendered web page can be expensive.