SpeedDial 2 is an extension for Google Chrome that lets you customize the New Tab page with your favorite website bookmarks and custom background.
But you are not limited to that, you can even set a custom thumbnail image for each website, view the number of times you a visited a particular site, change number of columns, and several other options are available on options page (right-click > Options) of the extension.
By moving mouse to the right-side edge (default) of the screen, you can access searchable bookmarks and browsing history.
SpeedDial2 runs on HTML5 local database engine, which ensures speedy process even with all those settings.
Download: SpeedDial 2 for Google Chrome