Windows 7 "Not Much Faster" Than Vista 821
PLSQL Guy writes "Tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in a PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users. The PCs tested were slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, considered to be a threshold for when an actual performance change is noticeable to the average user. One of the major complaints about Windows Vista was the fact that it was consistently slower than Windows XP. If Windows 7 can't significantly improve that situation, what chance does it have to convince people to move away from Windows XP?"
Re:A pretty good one, actually (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah because
1) insert ubuntu live cd,
2) enter your name,
3) choose guided install,
4) wait,
Really is a bridge to far for average Joe... :-/
Only thing Joe has to make sure if he wants his old PC to work right out of the box is to have someone check his wireless chipset if he even has one. That's about the only piece of commodity hardware that's sometimes a problem with modern linux distro's.
Re:Windows 7 vs. XP (Score:3, Informative)
The first beta release though is SIGNIFICANTLY faster than the RC1. Most of us here are very disappointed with the RC released this week...
Typical for MSFT to screw things up. I wonder what they "added" to make it slower than the beta.
Re:A pretty good one, actually (Score:5, Informative)
Stability is everything and Vista ain't stable (Score:3, Informative)
I've been using Vista for over a year (had to, didn't want to). I never had a Blue Screen Of Death from Windows XP. But I see plenty of these from Vista:
http://img216.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mwvistabluescreen.jpg [imageshack.us]
Although I consider some features of Vista an improvement over XP, if I can't rely on Vista every day, it isn't worth a plug nickel.
Very Sneaky Summary - Lies Worthy of a Politician (Score:5, Informative)
The summary says that 7 isn't much faster than Vista, and then says that Vista is much slower than XP. The implication is that 7 is slower than XP, which a lot of people seem to be commenting on here. However, the summary is very deceptive. Notice the lack of a link to a direct XP to 7 comparison (there are plenty). Now notice that the "Vista is slow" article is from 2006, back when Vista was slow.
If you want to look at a comparison that isn't sadly out of date or intentionally obfuscating the relative performance of these operating systems, look here:
http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3557&p=15 [anandtech.com]
Click through all the performance pages. As usual, Anandtech does it right and is ignored by Slashdot, while some silly article by technically challenged people is featured. To summarize the direct comparison between 7, XP, and Vista:
Vista is usually slower than XP - by about 2%. 7 is usually faster than XP - by 2-10%. Everyone who is posting the "I hate MS as much as every other weirdo Slashdot fanatic but it makes sense than XP is the fastest" should cut it out and note instead that 7 is the fastest OS that Microsoft has produced since at least Win2k.
I'm very critical of Windows in general but... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What else did we expect? (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing full of crap is the people who spout 'vista is bad' without actually using it.
Nonsense. Vista is synonymous to crap of the best quality. At a hospital where I consult, none of the software developed by companies like GE and Siemens work under Vista. Hardware like foot-pedals and audio controllers no longer work. The situation is the same with Windows 7 as well.
Re:Beta or Gold? (Score:2, Informative)
I have a 2 year old "vista capable" laptop. I scored a 3.1 system rating in vista/win 7 RC.
I am currently at ~400/895MBMB ram usage usage with firefox, office 2007, pidgin and utorrent open.
Oh, and I'm running aero, and it's STILL as fast as the *fresh* xp sp3 install on my other partition.
Re:A pretty good one, actually (Score:3, Informative)
This isn't insightful. I did an ubuntu install this week in under and hour and it does ALL these things. Writer of the parent is totally lazy or a troll.
Re:What else did we expect? (Score:3, Informative)
Wait...you're arguing that Vista is "synonymous to crap" because it is not backwards compatible to software that was released in 2001? While Vista may have its problems (and, for the record, I actually like Vista), not being totally backwards compatible does not mean its "synonymous to crap." It means that those hardware controllers need to be updated to match with current technology, OR you need to continue to use the older technology (which is not necessarily a bad thing).
Re:A pretty good one, actually (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:5, Informative)
The DRM code is dormant and has no effect except when playing back DRM'd content.
Re:What else did we expect? (Score:4, Informative)
Speaking as someone who used Vista from the RC days right until months after the release because it was part of my job to do so. Vista is crap. It would just fall apart over time - eg. not letting you see whether the network cable was plugged in because you didn't have permission (WTF?). Directory copies/moves were downright dangeruous as it could and did lose data.. it had a habit of abandoning the operation silently halfway through and ditching the file it was currently working on. Network access was 100mb speeds on a gigabit LAN... several parts of the Win32 API were just plain broke and required special workarounds...
And I haven't even started on the usability issues. Some of it was fixed in SP1 but I didn't try it for long enough to find out what... I haven't even considered running Vista since and never will.
My Windows 7 experience (Score:1, Informative)
I've never run Vista. I have played with Windows Server 2008, and while it's performance was acceptable, the lack of anything terribly new from XP had me putting XP back. However... this is a copy-paste from my blog about Win 7 RC:
I had a quiet day, so I decided to install it on my empty 500GB SATA drive. Other than some minor problems with my blank media, the installation process was smooth, easy, and came with a VERY delightful surprise.
After installation completed, my new Windows desktop just came right up. I didn't even have to reboot, it was ready to go. That was pretty cool.
In fact, the restart demon of Windows seems to have been pummeled quite a bit. Very few restarts were needed through the process of installing things. There was only one driver I had to install manually, which was my video driver, and this installed through the upgrade driver choice in the device manager.
Later I found it was also a recommended update from Windows Update. This means the drivers for my motherboard, UPS, printer, various USB devices, CDROM drive, network adapter, etcetc were all automatic and never required my manual attention. Very cool.
As far as compatibility goes, I added 2 games and 2 major applications and a handful of minor ones. One game required I go find my DirectX 9 Redist package and install it. It now runs flawlessly, the other game ran fine out of the box.
Office 2007 installed with no noticeable problems. Though Outlook did crash once for reasons I don't know. Quickbooks 2007 also installed with no problems, it updated fine with the manual updater I have for it. I even did some transactions with it today, and added some appointments in Outlook. Everything peachy. Additionally, after getting Thunderbird installed, my GF sent me a large PowerPoint document, which I viewed. Worked no problems.
AntiVirus also works with no complaints, no problems. Using Avast Personal Edition. I expected this not to work with Windows 7, but it does. Daemon Tools virtual DVD drive also works, despite a warning from Windows 7 (several in fact) that it may not work. I only proceeded because there was a release note on the site that they corrected a known issue with Windows 7 RC.
StarDock's Fences does seem to have issues. It installs and works fine... until I changed the background of my desktop. This broke it. Rebooting seems the only cure. So the automatic slideshow of different desktop wallpapers is out. Nice feature that, I'll add.
The way folders are organized with these 'libraries' is still a bit puzzling to me. I haven't entirely gotten my head wrapped around how it's designed to work. But I'll figure it out eventually. Migrating settings from XP proved fairly simple (to me at least.) One annoying thing, was how 7 is forcing me into modifying all the permissions and occasionally even ownership on folders and files on the XP drive. I highly doubt XP will even work properly now.
So, all in all, Windows 7 seems like a winner. There are some popups about programs changing stuff that grow old after a while. But I imagine once I get my system all ship shape and just go about my daily use, they'll no longer be noticed much. The new Media Player 12 is so minimalistic (at least when I double clicked a movie on my XP drive) that I've not bothered to install VLC just yet. I like a minimalistic player. A slider to fast forward and rewind. A play, stop and pause button and a volume control. It has this and not a lot more. At least by default.
I really don't like the start menu. In XP I always tweaked my start menu to be basically the same as the Windows 2000 start menu. Doesn't seem to be a way to do that with Windows 7. But I can live with this start menu. It's not horrid, it's just not what I'm used to.
Many of the UI's effects and "bells and whistles" are neat. Not necessary, but they're neat. Performance is fantastic despite all these fancy "bells and whistles" so I'm not going to complain.
Oh yes, last part, networking. This required the most effort. My ma
Re:Those that don't understand (Score:3, Informative)
You obviously haven't spent a lot of time in the business community. Do you understand that there are thousands upon thousands of doctor/dentist offices, garages, small fabricating plants, law firms and the like that still use P3's or even P2's? They aren't going to lay out ANY money for new computers, much less $500 multiplied by however many machines there are in the firm when what they have now is still working just fine.
You know what those computers are mostly used for? Bottom-end, super-basic office functions. Are you honestly so naive you think a lawyer gives a fuck whether his secretary prepares a brief with Office 2007 or Office 4.3? I know one law firm that bills at least $75 million a year and still uses P3's. About 60 of them.
Unless you happen to be in one of the relatively rare places that needs the horsepower, the only way that your quad core burner is going to make its way from your mom's basement into a real work environment is if you take it there yourself.
Jeez...fuckin' amateurs!
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:4, Informative)
You really have no idea what you're talking about.
The reason you can only see 3.2GB or so of RAM in 32 bit versions of Windows is because of hardware I/O reservations. Roughly 768MB of memory is reserved for hardware I/O devices, but this changes depending on BIOS and hardware installed.
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:5, Informative)
I was thinking the same sort of thing, but in a different direction -- these benchmarks don't deal with Vista's problems.
The complaints about Vista's speed were almost never about throughput. They were about high memory consumption, poorly optimized visual elements, and huge amounts of disk rattling. All of these issues have been improved in Windows 7.
Windows 7 may not increase throughput in this test environment, but it runs the full aero theme on a netbook almost as quickly as Windows XP runs its default theme. I've got it on my Aspire One, and it works great -- I bet it'll become the new XP over time (that is, reliable enough, fast enough, useful enough to become a major standard).
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:3, Informative)
Printscreen not working with DVD playback most likely has nothing to do with DRM, it's probably related to how the image is composited and rendered on screen. XP has similar issues.
Re:Stability is everything and Vista ain't stable (Score:4, Informative)
The error your seeing is typically caused by a third party kernel module, such as anti-virus or in some cases a driver. Are you using an older version of ESET NOD32?
Blue screens are seldom the fault of the OS. usually less than 20% of the time. All OS's are vulnerable to bad 3rd party kernel modules.
Re:What else did we expect? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, Vista really is garbage.
I agree with you that it is a fairly good operating system in that it is pretty stable, has better security... but the interface is worse (GPU GUI does not improve Vista's performance), the I/O is horrible and the performance overall for what it is.... IS TERRIBLE. That is where it fails.
Its not that its "bad" entirely... Its more so that its bad at what it does, and at what cost. Its too heavy of an OS and it doesnt really do anything different than XP.
You could say that they integrated search, so its slower. But thats not true. You can install Windows search on XP and XP will still be faster than Vista and Windows 7. I know because i did just that. I went back to XP and installed windows desktop search, comodo firewall, nod32 anti virus... and its all faster than Vista.
So what does Vista do for me that XP cant? Directx 10? Is that the reason why its so slow? I cant imagine how that could be.
Vista doesnt even doesnt support firewire! (maybe sp1 does but launch version did not)
So what does Vista give me that XP64-bit cant do? DRM? Slower performance??
Now you see the problem.
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:5, Informative)
Vista is not at all a "bad OS." The upgrade path from XP to Vista may involve a hardware refresh but the OS itself is solid, attractive, and pretty user friendly. I've been running it for about a year and it has yet to full-on crash on me. In fact its ability to isolate faulting apps is excellent.
My Fedora10 system, by contrast, has way more quirks. Yes, it's apples to oranges when comparing the two for all the reasons we know about.
While I don't usually stand up for Msft, this "it's a bad OS" conclusion is not fair. Which isn't to say Msft didn't fumble in so far as not doing enough to get drivers rewritten or having awful, awful marketing (The Seinfeld ad was enough to turn anyone off the OS).
What really sucks is that XP is a just-fine OS as well.. but if you try to config a system on Dell now with XP it is an EXTRA $150 (!!).
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:1, Informative)
That had nothing to do with DRM. It was the result of prioritization work intended to prevent skipping audio. It wasn't well done, so some other processes got sidelined, but it wasn't a sinister DRM conspiracy either.
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:5, Informative)
Insightful, lol.
Ok, what you remember is correct, but what your memory forgot is that you just described what happens on the video card itself in hardware. What you've described is a very crude description of HDCP. That doesn't affect the performance of the OS. Also, it was 30x per MINUTE, not per second. This is the same reason why some of your bluray players get out of "sync" with your TV on early implementations of HDCP for *gasp* 2 seconds and then resync (30 times per minute = 2 seconds). The DRM portion of vista is not much more than moving the requesting playback of DRM'ed media into ring 0 so that userland code can't muck with it. A side effect of that is that it's also more efficient -- not slowed down since requests to IO ports and memory blocks for DMA transfer don't get intercepted.
The rest of the post (Blocking IO, etc etc) is just conjecture on your part, and is completely false.
Re:A pretty good one, actually (Score:3, Informative)
> Done. Now he can double-click on an EXE, and it will work.
Uh. Have you ever actually TRIED that? More often than not you get an epic fail. Sometimes you get an application that almost but not quite works. Very rarely you get 'just works.' Use the commercial Crossover Office and the odds get slightly better. Go look at winehq or codeweaver's compatibility lists sometime. Most apps don't work. Microsoft gave the Wine team several years where everyone was stuck on the WinXP APIs and it wasn't enough for them to catch up. My guess is they will finally achieve 99% success running WinXP apps about the same time DOSEMU finally worked.... about three years after anyone cared anymore.
Yes I'm in a cynical mood today.
Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster? (Score:3, Informative)
To quote the post that you just non-answered:
Right, and how about something to back up the claim that it *does* slow Windows down? That was the first assertion, so the burden of proof is on the first poster.
So how about it? Are you going to quote that "researcher" Peter Gutmann?
You've been had. The Vista DRM debacle was nothing but a smear campaign. Try reading someone who actually researched the topic as opposed to someone who just went with what he could find of anecdotes on random blogs. Ed Bott has made a series of well-investigated rebuffs of Peter Gutmanns diatribe: Read "Everything you've read about Vista DRM is wrong (3 parts"):
Or this: "Busting the FUD about Vista's DRM": http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=284 [zdnet.com]
The short version: