These 2 tests also show Chrome 18 to be twice as slow as IE9:
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/PsychedelicBro...
http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/WrigglyWords/D...
So what's going on here? Is Chrome really that far behind in graphics performance, or is it because Google chooses to focus on other type of 2D graphics than Microsoft? I'm willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt, because these sort of benchmarks tend to be biased when a competitor makes them (and that goes for Google's own V8 tests, too, where IE9 performs poorly), but IE9 came out a year ago, and even though graphics performance might not be the most useful thing to have in a browser right now, I still can't help but feel a bit disappointed.