Firefox 8 for Windows x64: Has 64-bit browsing finally come of age?

Over the last couple of weeks, Mozilla has finally stepped up its 64-bit testing process. There are now five slaves dedicated to building Firefox for Windows x64, which means that from Firefox 8 and onwards, you’ll be able to pick up 64-bit builds that are functionally identical to its 32-bit cousins but operating in native 64-bit CPU and memory space.
When I first took 64-bit Firefox for a workout last year, it wasn’t the best of experiences: it crashed, JavaScript performance was abysmal, and it was generally sub-par compared to the stable, 32-bit branch. Today, however, Firefox 8 64-bit is stable and it’s fast; it’s really, really fast. Even more importantly, though, there are now stable 64-bit browser plug-ins for Flash and Java. In other words, there’s very little reason to not use Firefox 8 x64; you can download a copy from the Nightly site (it won’t interfere with your stable install), grab Flash 11 beta for Windows x64 and Java 6 for Windows x64, and start surfing. It’s that simple.
Just how fast is the 64-bit version of Firefox 8? About 10% faster than the 32-bit version — but instead of taking our word for it, take a look at the comparative results from the Peacekeeper suite, the most comprehensive browser benchmark. The following results are from the ExtremeTech test rig which houses an Intel i7 930 with 6GB of RAM and an Nvidia GTX 460.