I have done my own tests a while ago (with Firefox and Chromium) and have concluded that for the sites that I frequent Firefox performs much better and uses less RAM.
Every now and then I repeat that experiment... So far always with the same outcome.
The notion that Chrome is faster is mostly measured by benchmarks; for my browsing behavior that does not translate to real real life performance.
I had the same experience. For a while when I was using a slow internet connection, I noticed speed differences a lot. For a few sessions I would try loading each page on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, and Firefox was clearly the fastest.
This is another reason why we should be wary of everything moving to WebKit. If one day it's just too slow, we're not left with easy options to move away from it.
