I'm building a web application using PHP, I'm about to finish it, but I decided to test the load time using the Chrome developer tools (network-tab), and I realized that there are some stylesheets and images that take more time than my PHP script do.
It seems like the default for throttling option in the network tab is set to slow 3G, and the page loads completely in 5.74s while disabling cache.
If caching is enabled, it takes 2.5s on the same slow 3G option, but once I make it on the option no-throttling with disabled cache the load time becomes much faster like 480ms.
So, is performance testing relying on the worst-case or on the normal case (fast 3G caching enabled), and what is the ideal load time for the worst-case scenario (i.e. slow 3G with caching disabled).
I've searched about these options and what is the one that I should go with, I know that caching should be enabled, but I don't know if this applies when it comes to performance testing.
Note: The project is running on localhost with XAMPP