How to Activate the Frames Per Second Counter in Google Chrome

You always have known that Chrome is fast, but have you ever considered that you might be able to always know your frame rate per second within the browser? Sure, you might not be interested in a high level of frame speed in your browser, but it looks like Google might be looking towards a future where that might be useful.

If you’re using Chrome 13, you can turn the FPS gauge on by typing in “about:flags” in the Omnibox, and turning on the FPS counter.

You’ll also need to turn on hardware acceleration. You can do this by enabling GPU compositing on all pages. Mind you, this may be a bit glitchy so this is best left off in normal browsing situations.

I decided to fire up Microsoft’s FishIE browser test to see what the FPS counter would do, and it certainly did jack up the frame rate. It’s quite noticeable; however, that there is a difference between what the browser is counting versus FishIE.

By disabling GPU VSync in “about:flags” I was able to get even higher frames per second because the 60 hertz threshold was removed, but my laptop’s lack of a graphics card still displayed a poor showing when compared to other tests I have seen conducted out there.

So, in the end, the FPS counter is a nice way to represent the fact that the web is becoming more of an active place in terms of graphical capabilities. Normally one would associate FPS with video games, but we may see a future where the web is also measured that way.

So, try out the FPS counter and do your own experimentation. What do you find?