Windows XP vs. Vista
- Basic Windows Vista Performance
How does Windows Vista perform compared to Windows XP? Will applications execute equally quickly, or will they even run slower due to the new features and the AeroGlass interface? - Windows Vista Performance Enhancements
With SuperFetch and ReadyBoost, Windows Vista introduces two features to make use of today's technology in order to improve the user experience. This means that more application data should be actively cached into all available memory (SuperFetch), whether that is physical RAM or a USB Flash memory device (ReadyBoost). Microsoft's goal was to create balanced performance by removing delays in everyday work.
Although the main Windows Vista core has undergone lot of modifications, many of your applications will work with Vista. There is, however, no guarantee. You should definitely try any essential software on Windows before you upgrade.
Process scheduling and thread pooling have been improved in Vista; a deadlock protection mechanism and hardware partitioning for virtualization support were added, together with many more features.
We found Vista updates for the Futuremark benchmark programs 3DMark and PCMark, as well as the popular data compression tool WinRAR. Lots of video-related software such as DivX could no longer be installed; new versions are required. The popular audio player WinAMP 5.32 throws up an error at startup, yet it works properly. Quake IV can still be executed, but the installation program did not work. Applications that run their own memory management won't benefit from Vista's SuperFetch function. For example, Adobe Photoshop takes care of creating a temporary work file every time it launches - Vista has no access to this process and cannot speed it up.
There are some types of software that you should only use if they have been specifically designed for Windows Vista: firewalls, anti-spyware and anti-virus software needs to be Vista-Ready.
Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer when it comes to executing single applications at maximum speed. Although we only looked at the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Enterprise, we do not expect the 64-bit edition to be faster (at least not with 32-bit applications).
Overall, applications performed as expected, or executed slightly slower than under Windows XP. The synthetic benchmarks such as Everest, PCMark05 or Sandra 2007 show that differences are non-existent on a component level. We also found some programs that refused to work, and others that seem to cause problems at first but eventually ran properly. In any case, we recommend watching for Vista-related software upgrades from your software vendors.
There are some programs that showed deeply disappointing performance. Unreal Tournament 2004 and the professional graphics benchmarking suite SPECviewperf 9.03 suffered heavily from the lack of support for the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista. This is something we expected, and we clearly advise against replacing Windows XP with Windows Vista if you need to run professional graphics applications. Both ATI and Nvidia will offer OpenGL support in upcoming driver releases, but it remains to be seen if and how other graphics vendors or Microsoft may offer it.
We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP. There aren't newer versions available, and we don't see immediate solutions to this issue.
There is good news as well: we did not find evidence that Windows Vista's new and fancy AeroGlass interface consumes more energy than Windows XP's 2D desktop. Although our measurements indicate a 1 W increase in power draw at the plug, this is too little of a difference to draw any conclusions. Obviously, the requirements for displaying all elements in 3D, rotating and moving them aren't enough to heat up graphics processors. This might also be a result of Windows Vista's more advanced implementation of ACPI 2.0 (and parts of 3.0), which allows the control of power of system components separately.
Our hopes that Vista might be able to speed up applications are gone. First tests with 64-bit editions result in numbers similar to our 32-bit results, and we believe it's safe to say that users looking for more raw performance will be disappointed with Vista. Vista is the better Windows, because it behaves better, because it looks better and because it feels better. But it cannot perform better than Windows XP. Is this a K.O. for Windows Vista in the enthusiast space?
If you really need your PC to finish huge encoding, transcoding or rendering workloads within a defined time frame, yes, it is. Don't do it; stay with XP. But as long as you don't need to finish workloads in record time, we believe it makes sense to consider these three bullet points:
- Vista runs considerably more services and thus has to spend somewhat more resources on itself. Indexing, connectivity and usability don't come for free.
- There is a lot of CPU performance available today! We've got really fast dual core processors, and even faster quad cores will hit the market by the middle of the year. Even though you will lose application performance by upgrading to Vista, today's hardware is much faster than yesterday's, and tomorrow's processors will clearly leap even further ahead.
- No new Windows release has been able to offer more application performance than its predecessor.
10 comments:
i have installed windows vista and personally i think that it's better than windows XP.
hello good blog welcome to my website www.dj-jocker.c.la
Hi Very Independent Woman,
Thank you for your message at "News For Users" (http://newsforusers.blogspot.com/) regarding link exchange.
Yes, of course, lets do it ... the more information is out there about Vista the better users can decide if they want to join Microsoft's crazyness or possibly better stay with XP or even better change to another OS. Feel free also to contact me directly: blogs@tiiws.com.
Looking forward to talk to you, Georg
Hi Very Independent Woman,
Thank you for your message at "News For Users" (http://newsforusers.blogspot.com/).
Yes, I am happy to create link exchange with you. The more people will know about Vista the better they will be able to decide if they want to join Microsoft's Vista crazyness or remain with XP or, even better, convert over to a different OS.
Feel free also to directly contact me. You can find my email address or messenger contact in my website http://gteamsolutions.com/contact.html.
I look forward to talk to you.
Georg
Hi,
I have added a link to your site in my link section at "News For Users".
Enjoy your day.
Georg
Hi Again,
I have added a link to your site in my links section of "News For Users" in the meantime.
Enjoy your day.
Georg
good article
Win Addict
hmmm thank you for the info you provided. im gettin an Windows Vista :)
i prefer XP it was cool and easy operative
and i added ur blog into technorati as my favorites and please add my blog into your favorites
my url is
http://technorati.com/blogs/http%3A%2F%2Fsanta-reviews.blogspot.com
My username in technorati is
Santaram
useful artical........
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