Overall Vista Performance: XP vs. Vista vs. Vista x64
Benchmarking in Vista is an extremely difficult task, thanks to features like SuperFetch designed to improve performance at the sacrifice of repeatability. We're in love with SuperFetch as a feature, but it does make our jobs a bit more difficult as we have to be very mindful of what has been cached into main memory and how that impacts the performance of our benchmarks. Testing difficulties under Vista are compounded by the fact that our major test suites don't work under the new OS. SYSMark and PC WorldBench simply won't run and thus we have to rely on individual application tests and home-brew scripts to measure performance.
Our goal for this article was to find out if Windows Vista, on modern day hardware, continues to be slower than Windows XP as it has been in previous beta and RC versions. The secondary goal is to look at x64 performance to see if it too has changed behavior, to the point where you no longer need to worry about losing 32-bit performance if you move to the 64-bit version of Vista. We ran a handful of application tests to compare the three OSes (XP, Vista and Vista x64), and later on we'll focus on gaming tests as well to showcase graphics performance.
PCMark '05 Performance
Despite looking quite synthetic, PCMark has grown into a nice lightweight alternative to the big application suite benchmarks like SYSMark. It was also one of the first benchmarks to get official Vista support, although it remains a 32-bit only test.
Performance under PCMark is fairly close between Vista and XP, with XP generally holding on to a 1% - 4% performance advantage in most of the categories. The only exception to the rule is the graphics score of PCMark which has XP at around 35% ahead of Vista, but we'll address graphics performance shortcomings of Vista later in the article.
The difference between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista are hardly pronounced, with the two being evenly matched across the board. Once again, remember that PCMark is a 32-bit benchmark so it is running in Windows on Windows (WOW64) mode. That it can remain competitive is good news, but whether that's because WOW64 works well in all cases or it is merely optimized for PCMark05 remains to be seen.
3DMark '06 Performance
We chose to include 3DMark '06 performance here instead of with our game tests to look at the gaming performance of Vista on a system level rather than a GPU level:
Overall XP is about 6% faster than Vista, although the 3DMark06 CPU score is nearly 13% higher on XP than it is on Vista. As a 32-bit benchmark, it's once again good to see no negative performance difference between the Vista x86 and x64 versions.
Benchmarking in Vista is an extremely difficult task, thanks to features like SuperFetch designed to improve performance at the sacrifice of repeatability. We're in love with SuperFetch as a feature, but it does make our jobs a bit more difficult as we have to be very mindful of what has been cached into main memory and how that impacts the performance of our benchmarks. Testing difficulties under Vista are compounded by the fact that our major test suites don't work under the new OS. SYSMark and PC WorldBench simply won't run and thus we have to rely on individual application tests and home-brew scripts to measure performance.
Our goal for this article was to find out if Windows Vista, on modern day hardware, continues to be slower than Windows XP as it has been in previous beta and RC versions. The secondary goal is to look at x64 performance to see if it too has changed behavior, to the point where you no longer need to worry about losing 32-bit performance if you move to the 64-bit version of Vista. We ran a handful of application tests to compare the three OSes (XP, Vista and Vista x64), and later on we'll focus on gaming tests as well to showcase graphics performance.
PCMark '05 Performance
Despite looking quite synthetic, PCMark has grown into a nice lightweight alternative to the big application suite benchmarks like SYSMark. It was also one of the first benchmarks to get official Vista support, although it remains a 32-bit only test.
Performance under PCMark is fairly close between Vista and XP, with XP generally holding on to a 1% - 4% performance advantage in most of the categories. The only exception to the rule is the graphics score of PCMark which has XP at around 35% ahead of Vista, but we'll address graphics performance shortcomings of Vista later in the article.
The difference between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista are hardly pronounced, with the two being evenly matched across the board. Once again, remember that PCMark is a 32-bit benchmark so it is running in Windows on Windows (WOW64) mode. That it can remain competitive is good news, but whether that's because WOW64 works well in all cases or it is merely optimized for PCMark05 remains to be seen.
3DMark '06 Performance
We chose to include 3DMark '06 performance here instead of with our game tests to look at the gaming performance of Vista on a system level rather than a GPU level:
Overall XP is about 6% faster than Vista, although the 3DMark06 CPU score is nearly 13% higher on XP than it is on Vista. As a 32-bit benchmark, it's once again good to see no negative performance difference between the Vista x86 and x64 versions.
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Zak - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
I've finally got around to installing RC2 last week: Dell Inspiron 2GHz CoreDuo, 2GB RAM, 7200RPM HD, 256 Nivdia video. Vista is slow, network transfers are 50% slower or so than in XP, GUI is sluggish and all the improvements are pretty annoying. Interface is too busy and overdone. A simple copy message contains a long unnecessary explanation of what's about to happen. Even after turning off the security features one can't escape the annoying popups and messages. And my hard drive was crunching non-stop all day, I can't even imagine what it does to battery life. I haven't had a virus or spyware in years and I don't see any compelling reasons to switch to Vista. I haven't even tried any multimedia features as none of my DVD and video playback software worked properly and I will not use WMP if my life depended on it, so I can't comment nt on DRM and stuff but I've had enough after few days and restored my XP image back to the laptop. If MS tries to force this on people as its, without major improvements, I see Apple and Linux getting lots of switchers. But them XP was bad at first too so maybe Vista will become usable with SP2:) I myself will desperately look for an alternative to Vista. I don't play games that much any more so this won't be "a must" for me.Z.
Zebo - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
I'm very afraid Zak. I will upgrade due to Microsoft forcing the issue on us gamers with dx10 vista only but with total dread. I may have to start listening to those console fans and linux fans after all. But the lack of TBS games kills consoles for me...SIGH..I totally agree with you about Virus and spy/malware issues. All are resolved or blocked with free third party apps many years now for anyone with the slightest clue. Same goes for Firewall/searching and other features MS lists on their "100 advantages" site. Vista is just late to the party with what we all know how to do and cripples your computer performance and makes everything so dumbed down visually and practically.
mlambert890 - Saturday, February 3, 2007 - link
You guys must be using a different OS. I havent heard of anyone with this dismal of an experience at all. If you hate the UI, just run it in legacy mode and it will look like XP. Disable all of the security add ins and they ARE gone. Ive take a Vista machine and set it up to the point that the person using it had no real clue it was Vista but did notice that their laptop seemed quicker.Have fun on Linux though. Linux is a LOT easier to use/live with than any MS OS! (I need an eyeroll smiley here)
jonp - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link
I would be interested to know if you have installed and worked with SUSE 10.2? as I assume your "...a LOT easier..." is sarcasm.kalrith - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
The second sentence of the third paragraph states, "The reason the low end AMD cards look better off here".I think you meant ATI instead of AMD.
kalrith - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Another typo is in the last sentence on the first page. It says, "What's a question we hope to answer..." What's should be That's.JarredWalton - Friday, February 2, 2007 - link
Technically, ATI is now AMD, which is why we are now referring to the cards as AMD cards. Same thing as ATI, but since they were bought out.... :)kalrith - Friday, February 2, 2007 - link
You're right...I completely forgot about that.stash - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
WMDC was RTM'ed yesterday: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa...">http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta...0-af33-3...stash - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Which common 3rd-party apps are you referring to here?