Slashdot Log In
Performance Tests Show Early Windows 7 Build Beats Vista
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Dec 11, 2008 06:16 PM
from the room-for-improvement dept.
from the room-for-improvement dept.
The Other A.N. Other writes "How does the latest build of Windows 7 stack up against Windows Vista? The answer seems to be very well if the benchmarks run by ZDNet are anything to go by. If Microsoft keeps up the good then Windows 7 should be head and shoulders better than Vista. 'What we have here is one set of data points for one particular system, but I think that the results are very promising. The fact that Windows 7 comes out on top in three out of four of these tests at this early stage is very promising indeed. The boot time and PCMark Vantage results are particularly good.'"
Related Stories
Submission: Windows 7 build 6956 performance test by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Don't worry, it's not done yet (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft still has plenty of time to slow it down.
This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Apologies to Tycho and Gabe)
Parent
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Interesting)
Performance tests show that an abacus and a box of crayons beat Vista.
(Apologies to Tycho and Gabe)
But does this Abacus OS support industry standards like Win32, NTFS and DirectX 10?
Parent
Parent is actually insightful. (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Parent is actually insightful. (Score:5, Informative)
This is honestly insightful, because the more they work on it, the more it will suffer from the heavy weight of feature creep. I hope their claim of 'modular' is still in the plans.
The entire mechanism for building the OS is based on it being modular. Also, 7 is already feature complete. Beta 1 is in escrow right now.
Parent
Re:Parent is actually insightful. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Parent is actually insightful. (Score:5, Insightful)
You just hit on one of the biggest points of why I keep saying that Microsoft is going down. Microsoft never counted on netbooks, just like they never counted on the Internet.
Parent
Re:Parent is actually insightful. (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>>it will suffer from the heavy weight of feature creep
Excellent point. I'm sure Vista started as a good OS (like XP), but it became so weighed down with extra features that it became slow as a dog. My brother has a PC identical to mine, but while my XP-PC runs nice and fast, his Vista PC runs like it has a floppy drive instead of a hard drive. Vista is crap.
What I'm curious to know: How does Windows 7 compare to XP? Anybody can design an OS faster than Vista; but will it be faster than XP? If the answer is "no" I'm sticking with XP.
Parent
Re:Don't worry, it's not done yet (Score:4, Funny)
You mean on 3 of the 4 tests they did?
I'm rather impressed they managed to perform even worse than Vista on the Cinebench test. If they keep this up, by the time Windows 7 comes out of beta, it won't run at all!
Parent
Congratulations! (Score:5, Funny)
Let's all give MS a pat on the back for clearing such a low bar.
-jcr
Dead Herring (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Dead Herring (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Dead Herring (Score:4, Informative)
While its good these tests are better, that can be a bit misleading.
Windows7 is Vista at its core - its not different in the way XP/Vista was. With that in mind, it'd be pretty absurd if the work they are doing managed to actually make Windows7 worse yet.
Just wanted to be clear - its not as though they created a considerably different new system that beats Vista, they have just made improvements upon the Vista codebase.
Parent
Re:Dead Herring (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows7 is Vista at its core
I'd say that Windows7 is "Vista Service Pack 3", or maybe "Vista R2". It's being released in tandem with Win2008 Server R2.
Microsoft heard from *many* customers that they would skip Vista and anything related to it, and wait for Windows 7. Microsoft, of course, is simply renaming the next significant Vista service relase "Windows 7". And I'm sure this will work! I can't even muster any ire at Microsoft for this: what else could they do?
Parent
Re:Dead Herring (Score:5, Funny)
We can start spreading the word to wait for Windows 8
Parent
Re:Dead Herring (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Vista Perf == XP Perf Retard (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Handbasket brake lever found (Score:5, Funny)
Things are improving. Or at least, the rate at which they're going to hell is decreasing.
Parent
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
On the subject of low bars. Has anyone got any idea why there even exists a 32bit version of windows 7. IMHO vistas biggest failure was putting out a 32 bit version of an operating system that barely gets by with the 3gig limit that 32bit OS's can support.
And they want to do it again? C'mon microsoft. Learn one lessone and one alone from Apple. A little pain for a big gain. Kill off 32bit and legacy APIs and make a truly kick ass clean 64 bit operating system.
It'll be a hell of a long time before 128bit starts the cycle again.
Parent
Re:At Least They Didn't Stoop To... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't ever dare compare the OS X operating system to windows or even Linux with WINE in terms of gaming ever again.
I'm curious.. Do you actually expect people to comply when you issue a demand like this?
-jcr
Parent
Re:At Least They Didn't Stoop To... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't ever dare compare the OS X operating system to windows or even Linux with WINE in terms of gaming ever again
What nonsense. Name one game that runs well with WINE or Crossover on Linux that doesn't run under WINE or Crossover on OS X. Name one commercial game available for Linux but not OS X. You might be able to find the odd open source Linux game (Frozen Bubble 2 comes to mind) that hasn't been ported to Mac, but they are pretty rare.
Parent
Re:Obsolete Microkernel Dooms Mac OS X to Lag Linu (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple has done nothing to bring OS X up to the same performance level as Linux and Windows since then.
Do you know the difference between supporting a claim and merely repeating it?
-jcr
Parent
Re:Obsolete Microkernel Dooms Mac OS X to Lag Linu (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop feeding the troll. There are people in this world who will spew bullshit till they are blue in the face if it will get them some attention.
Anyone who's opinion matters knows he's full of bullshit.
Parent
First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Been waiting... (Score:5, Funny)
Could this be the version of Windows that will finally get me to switch? Stay tuned!
Re:Been waiting... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh boy! I can't wait to find out!
Parent
Don't Worry (Score:5, Funny)
Not a very high bar to clear (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft has a history of promising the world (Score:5, Insightful)
and not shipping it. Vista was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and now it's only been 2 years since Vista. Typical to keep people to consider alternatives. With Vista, they set the bar so low, that almost any inevitable improvement in performance gets hailed. Who cares, wake me up when it's the final product and not just some build in the middle of product development cycle.
I think Microsoft will eventually be undone by their long development times unless Windows 7 starts becoming the trend rather than a frantic exception to counter the Vista stigma. Ubuntu and OS X is certainly improving much faster due to relatively short development cycles.
I don't care about benchmarks... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be funny if... (Score:4, Funny)
This were actually another Mojave experiment prank, played on ZDnet?
Older Hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
The tablet has a 1.3 PIII & 512 of ram.
http://geekpi.com/?p=38#more-38 [geekpi.com]
Poor methodology (Score:5, Insightful)
Boot time and synthetic benchmarks are poor indicators of an operating system's performance and usability. It'd be like me comparing the zero to sixty time as the sole metric to judge a vehicle's fitness for use by, say, a college student. Perhaps Miles per Gallon might be better? Or even the number of cup holders? I'll believe Windows 7 is an improvement when it passes the Mom Test... Which is to say, we sit our mothers down at a computer and ask them "Is this better than XP?" But not your mother of course, because she's crazy. ;)
Defrag the hard drive? (Score:5, Funny)
People still defragment hard drives? NTFS isn't resistant to fragmentation?
Re:Defrag the hard drive? (Score:4, Informative)
For light use, with certain types of workloads, it is really not a big deal. It's certainly not as bad as FAT16 under Windows 95 was. 7200 RPM drives are now common, so seek times are less of an issue than they were with the 5400/4200 RPM drives of yore. NTFS is inherently a better file system than FAT16/32 ever was. And, the specific NTFS implementation in Windows has been carefully tuned by tons of experts over the years such that Windows Vista's NTFS implementation is lightyears ahead of NT4's.
That said, it can still be extremely beneficial to defragment. If you consistently run your drive nearly full, with a high turnover rate for your files, things can become quite badly fragmented. And, depending on what you are doing, that came mean a horrible performance hit. Start a big application with tons of plugins that has to read over a thousand files to start, and the difference can be amazingly noticeable. Try to play a video with a reasonably large buffer, and you may never see the fragmentation issues be bad enough to make the video skip.
So, yes, NTFS is resistant to bad fragmentation. No, it isn't immune.
And, yes, referencing 4200 RPM hard drives is a bit extreme. I know a lot of people were still using FAT by the time that 7200 RPM drives were common. OTOH, they should have known better. In the 21st century, the only justification for FAT was either as a filesystem of last resort for data interchange because so many things could read it, or for running legacy systems where performance wasn't a significant issue.
Parent
MS is in a lose-lose situation on Slashdot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Early Windows 7 build shows performance ups and automatically they are viewed as stupid tests, anything can beat Vista, etc.
Oh well. Even if it beat Linux or OS X or every other OS on the planet at speed, the naysayers would still say that it doesn't matter because it's unstable, or too easily compromised, etc.
Basically, if you want to find fault, you will, and can. Unless you find fault with Linux, then you are obviously flamebait and don't know what you are talking about. :)
The only relevant benchmark... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Under the fancy hood (Score:5, Funny)
Why did you read the entire post before replying? Crazy talk!
Parent
Shoot the messenger. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is all good for Mac OS X adoption I suppose, but frankly, even though I am a Linux user, my professional life would be much better if Microsoft would either extend the availability of XP or get something better than Vista out the door soon.
I'm running into the same problem. I've got so many customers that are running either specialty or legacy apps that simply will not run on Vista - or they run into stability issues with apps that are supported by Vista. Then, they basically shoot the messenger and make my life a living hell - since I really have no other alternative for them. When I could offer them XP, I could offer them a stable, working solution that they were happy with. Microsoft has stripped me of that option. I really don't see the light at the end of the tunnel with Windows 7, either. To me, it just looks like what the final release of Vista really should have been. Yes, it may be more stable and have better performance - but that doesn't help me when I need to go and install said specialty or legacy apps on it.
I am basically at a crossroads where I have to take a lot of clients into a completely new system, with completely new applications. And let me tell you - after what Microsoft's done, I'm not about to set them up with another Microsoft solution that railroads them into situations like this again. As long as I'm having to redo entire enterprises, I might as well roll out open source solutions or Macs.
Parent
Re:Shoot the messenger. (Score:5, Informative)
Buy volume licenses of Windows Vista. You will have downgrade rights to legally put WindowsXP on machines that need it. Another part of the problem you may encounter is the lack of device drivers for WindowsXP made available by the computer's maker/seller. I had a problem like this once but was able to get around the problem by downloading drivers for a very similar machine that did have WindowsXP support. But we cannot depend on this to always work. The doors on XP are being forcibly shut... and it is a very unpleasant situation for IT professionals everywhere.
Parent
Re:Shoot the messenger. (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as I'm having to redo entire enterprises, I might as well roll out open source solutions or Macs.
Right because Apple's so good about offering support for anything legacy? Give me a break.
OSS at least is a decent option, but honestly, Vista is FAR FAR FAR more compatible with legacy windows than anything else on the market. So unless you plan to rewrite and/or find substitutes for practically everything, Vista is probably the best solution.
If you are truly in a situation where a switch to OSS actually makes sense, then you don't actually have all these legacy compatibility requirements you mentioned.
OSS makes sense if you need generic email/web/office or you need a 'terminal' for citrix/web apps/hosted apps/whatever (which does describe a LOT of people) but it rarely really makes sense in a situation where there are a lot of custom Windows apps knocking around, or where you need to use 3rd party apps that are windows only.
Try and find some contact lens design/lab control software that runs on Macs or Linux and integrates into both your accounting system and controls your lens lathe.
Try to run a cellular service center, where you need to run all those 3rd party phone-flash/reflash/updater tools, the latest software from blackberry (blackberry desktop) and microsoft (activesync), where support for mac lags behind windows, and support for linux is a joke. While in the back you've got someone running battery diagnostic software from Maccor or Cadex.
Try to find mac/linux software designed to run an optometrists office. Nevermined the total lack of OSX / Linux patient management systems, you also have to contend with the fact that all the instruments (topographers, perimeters, etc) run windows systems, often with integration features into windows patient management system.
And lets be honest, the companies that need generic terminals or basic office apps - those really AREN'T the ones having trouble with Vista. Its the manufacturers, the service centers, the doctors, etc, and as much as their is migration pain with Vista -- switching to OSX or Linux would make a masochist cringe in fear.
Parent
Re:Shoot the messenger. (Score:5, Informative)
OK first thing first legacy is not 3 year old software. Legacy used to mean over 10 years.
Second I don't need the new and improved quickbooks which supports less that the old and "legacy" Quickbooks of 2007. The fact of the matter is that most software that we are discussing is not even 10 years old. Everyone is heading into this software as a service that they forgot that most people don't really care. They just want their business to run.
I don't care about apple or ms or any hair brained company that thinks it will make money off products that don't even work or lock in the users to a one size fits all solution. There are solutions out there that do not require this lock in even on windows and mac. It is a choice that we make to buy into this fad. People don't want the "new" ACCPAC at $15,000 they are willing to pay for the old reliable one that only cost them $1,500. They want a Quickbooks that doesn't loose features over time, ie multicurrency. They don't care about the newfangled DRM that slows down the network because they are viewing the company marketing material or a tutorial.
Lets be honest, my optometrist does not need windows to run his office. I wonder why HP started to support linux on the desktop? Could it be that that people like me no longer buy equipment that is not supported by linux even if we intend to run windows on them. When you spend hundreds of thousands on equipment and you study what you buy and do not even consider suppliers that do not support linux it starts to hurt. Not you but them. The fact of the matter is if you are running an office and you need someone soooo bad that there are no other options it means you have done a poor job as an IT professional. Phone/flash/sync/update, why? why would I ever need such sh!t? I need standards and access and I have Linux support, Mac support, FreeBSD support and Windows support. Give me any Mac and almost any phone and I can sync more in just minutes out of the box than I would be able to with an off the shelf windows box.
STOP these stupid lies. If you don't know how just say it. Any Mac of the shelf has at least bluetooth and WiFi, iCal, Address book. Thats a lot more than any Windows box that's off the shelf. Use some standards and some common sense and you have your own cloud computing and you don't even need a fixed IP and you can make it as secure as you choose. Activesync????? Does it support Mac, Linux, FreeBSD? Can it sync the whole OS? The whole disk? I have clients where there whole systems are synced over the net and could go live on their backup by a change of a DNS entry, and this solution is over 10 years old, and we don't even care what OS it runs. It's called standards. /rant
I'm not here to teach or preach but if you open your mind you will see that the only obstacle is this proprietary lock in that most people get themselves into.
Parent
Re:Shoot the messenger. (Score:5, Informative)
Apple fanboys piss me off because they make shit up.
The typical 6-year old Mac:
500-700MHz PowerPC G3 or G4 processor
256MB SDR Memory
ATI Rage or Radeon 7500 graphics
Leopard WILL NOT INSTALL on a system with a G3 processor or a G4 clocked at less than 867MHz. That rules out Apple's ENTIRE 2002 lineup except for some Power Macintosh G4 models and the PowerBook G4 released in November.
So, no, Leopard won't even run install on most 6-year-old Macs (iMac, eMac, iBook, most PowerBook G4s) and many 5-year-old Macs. Let alone run 'well'.
Oh, and Snow Leopard? It won't even work with PowerPC Macs, which includes EVERY Mac made before 2006. Bought a Mac in November 2005? Leopard is the last version of Mac OS X you'll ever be able to run with your current hardware.
Oh, by the way. I typed this on an EEE PC 900HA. It has 1GB of DDR2 and a 1.6GHz Atom. And it runs Vista fine. Even Aero glass.
Parent
Re:Shoot the messenger. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know how often I see an OSX machine with a problem? Almost never and when it does have one it's always something like a head crash on the hard drive or a bad power supply or something like that.
Software problems with OSX? I have seen one and it was not even a problem with the OS, but rather it was a problem with third party software computability.
All things considered, doing support work is pretty descent to pay and it's relatively easy since much of the time is doing stuff like running reinstalls which means you can do something else to make money at the same time, just hitting the "OK" every time the thing asks for something. It's a great side gig for extra cash from some contract support customers.
You realize how much harder I'd have to work and how much less work I'd have without windows? I'd have to actually do hard programing to make as much.
Microsoft's crappy software is keeping the support booming in otherwise crappy economic times. Thank you Microsoft! I love your crappy products all the way to the bank!
Parent
Re:Windows ME-2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Windows ME-2 (Score:5, Insightful)
It is sounding more and more like Vista really is the newest generation of Windows ME.
Only to people who wish that were true. Its not.
People hated Windows ME. But Microsoft didn't shove it down anyone's throat so people danced around WinME without concern.
WinME was for home consumers not businesses. Businesses never had to deal with ME.
Honestly it really wouldn't have mattered what Vista was. Unless it was fully compatible with 2k/xp they were going to reject it. And if MS had kept it more compatible, they would not have been able to move forwards on things like security. Vista's not perfect, don't get me wrong, but even if vista was simply XP with the ability to run as administrator finally "turned off", businesses would have thrown the same fit they are throwing.
So Vista is slower on the same hardware? Big deal, every OS is. Win98 RAN well with 64MB of RAM, and took a couple hundred megabytes of disk. Try doing that with XP.
So Vista is isn't compatible with a lot of hardware, and buggy drivers abound. That's not new. Think back to XP, again, there was tons of low rent 'consumer oriented' hardware that only had win9x drivers.
The only reason there wasn't the same massive backlash to XP that there was to Vista is that BUSINESSES weren't *really* affected by XP. XP used the same drivers as 2k, so most of the hardware support businesses needed was already in place and mature. XP was little more than a minor update to 2k.
And even then, tons of companies vowed they'd never upgrade, and blasted everything from the color scheme, the deeper integration of windows media player, and the licensing issues (including "windows product activation").
Vista is stable, performs well on hardware its compatible with, is genuinely more secure than previous versions, features a number of real UI improvements. (The new start menu for example), and its desktop compisiting engine is far more modern, catching it up with OSX and Linux (Compiz).
It has its flaws too.. of course, but overall it is actually a decent step forward. It just has the misfortune of being a painful one for users with a lot of legacy dependencies, while simultaneously breaking new ground on the driver front so its has to suffer while it waits for hardware vendors getting drivers to maturity or for users to toss the old hardware.
The next version of Windows is just going to be a more refined version of Vista... but its acceptance will be much higher because the hardware driver issues will have matured, and a lot of the 'legacy dependencies' will have aged into obsolescent non-issues.
Microsoft's strategy is really little more than wait until Vista forces the market to accept the changes, and then launch it all over again with a new name and few tweaks... but because the market will have already mostly accommodated Vista, 7 will be a 'smooth transition'. Its that simple. And its a good strategy, because people are =that= stupid.
Parent
Re:Windows ME-2 (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:The good old days (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what passes for insightful on Slashdot these days? Seriously mods, this guy thinks Microsoft made Vista that way on purpose as some sort of genius grand plan!
Heh, not quite. Vista isn't the success Microsoft hoped for. From microsofts point of view, Vista has been a dismal marketing failure, possibly even a commercial failure - they pushed too much change all at once, and the market dug in its heels.
However, when all is said and done Vista isn't really a technical failure, and so Windows 7 isn't going in a new technical direction. So windows 7 is just going to address the market failure, which it will be able to do, since the failure of Vista was too much change too fast. Windows 7 isn't going to have much change, and is just going to build on Vista which will have already 'broken the new ground', so the strategy for 7 will likely succeed.
He says Vista isn't ME-2, but provides no reason -- except opinion -- for it. This would never have been modded-up in my day!
Vista isn't ME-2 because:
1) ME was the last of its code base and it died off; its successor was a completely different code base.
2) Vista is the first of its code base, and its successor will be little more than a refinement of it.
That pretty much makes Vista the opposite of ME.
Parent
Re:The good old days (Score:5, Funny)
True. ME sucked. Vista blows.
Parent
Re:Windows ME-2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. The consulting business that I work for has an IT services side that I fill in on from time to time if they are short staffed. Most of my clients on the consulting side of the business and most of the small businesses that we provide completely or partially outsourced IT services for that believed they'd need new PC's in the next couple of years (who didn't have volume licenses for XP) have already purchased them so they could downgrade to XP. These are mostly non-tech savvy people here who have either heard bad things about Vista from others or who have some first hand experience with it on a home PC that they purchased and they wanted to be sure to buy new systems while they could still get XP. We have a neutral policy when it comes to Vista so they haven't been doing this at our behest.
In fact, I can count on two hands the number of times I've encountered a client who has one or more machines on-site running Vista. It's amazing to me how few clients we have that have even a single Vista machine and it's amazing to me what a bad rap Vista has with the non-tech savvy crowd.
I don't particularly like Vista and on my box at work I've stuck with XP but I don't absolutely hate the thing either. Perhaps that's because I have limited experience with it but if they replaced my box at work with new PC (and I wasn't given the choice to go with a Mac ... I switched at home in 2006) and the box came with Vista pre-installed I probably wouldn't wipe it and re-install XP unless the box was a total POS and I needed to downgrade for performance reasons. I think the Vista to Windows Millenium comparison takes things a bit too far. Millenium was a complete and total POS that was clearly less stable than Windows 98 even on new hardware that came with the OS pre-installed. I've found that Vista, from the admittedly limited experience that I have with it, isn't that bad when it comes pre-installed on new hardware but Microsoft clearly screwed the pouch with it and I think that Apple is benefiting a little bit. We've had higher ups at a few of our clients opt for Macs in the last six or seven months who have asked us to setup Boot Camp or a VM product to run their Windows apps and if you would have told me we'd be seeing that a year ago I would have laughed in your face.
Parent