Windows 7 Performance Guide
by Ryan Smith and Gary Key on October 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Gaming: DX9
As we have moved most of our benchmark suite to DirectX10 these days, it's not possible to run XP under our normal gaming test suite given its DX9 limitation. Instead we have taken a limited selection of our test suite that does run under DX9, and compiled separate results for it so that we can compare Vista to XP and Win7 using our GeForce GTX 275. On the next page, you will see our regular test suite.
FarCry 2
Featuring fantastic visuals courtesy of the Dunia Engine, this game also features one of the most impressive benchmark tools we have seen in a PC game. We set the performance feature set to Very High, graphics to High, and enable DX9 with AA set to 2x. The in-game benchmark tool is utilized with the Ranch Small level.
Left 4 Dead
This game is a blast and addictive to boot - provided you like killing hundreds of zombies while trying to take care of your teammates and sustaining high blood pressure rates. We enable all options, set AA to 2x and AF to 8x, and play back a custom demo of a game session from the Runway Finale chapter within the Dead Air campaign.
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.
While not a true flight simulation or even serious air combat game, it is a lot of fun and looks visually stunning on a 30” monitor with all options turned up. In our case, we set all options to high, enable 2xAA and DX9, and then use FRAPS to time a custom demo sequence.
World in Conflict
We utilize the built-in benchmark for our game test. We set the resolution to 1920x1080 with 2xAA/16xAF, DX9, and High Quality options.
On a final note, although we didn't include a multi-GPU setup in here, there will be much greater differences in performance there. Vista and Win7 get much better multi-GPU performance, which is something we've seen before such as in our Release Candidate article.
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DominionSeraph - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
"I just don't understand why holdouts on XP like to argue how good it is in comparison to Vista"Because they tried to cram Vista on to a PIII with 256MB of ram, and they're too young to have known REAL speed: Windows 98SE.
chrnochime - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
Yes but with that REAL speed came frequent BSODs for me. I stuck with 98SE until end of 2002(!) and after moving over to xp, no more BSOD. Exact same hardwares too.ProDigit - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
What are you saying?Vista runs slacky on just about any laptop with specs lower than Core2Duo T5500, or Core2Duo's with lower than 1MB L cache, and a drive slower than 5200rpm.
Even on an AMD dualcore 2,4Ghz with 4GB of RAM, I noticed the OS being sluggish!
It performs worse than MacOs, XP, Linux, and Win7!
It is possibly the worst OS ever created!
Genx87 - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
I think just about any OS will slack when you stick it on a 4200 RPM drive. I am assuming you meant 4200 instead of 5200?I had Dell laptops back in 03-04 that performed like 386's because some bean counter figured we can save 20 bucks a laptop using 4200 rpm drives. Idiot didnt think about the wasted productivity when the user waits 10 minutes for the thing to boot and 2 mins to open outlook.
DominionSeraph - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
XP ain't no sprite. When my Vista box went down, I ripped out its X2 5200+ to replace my backup XP box's 3200+, and with that huge leap it now equals what my Vista box was like.There really ain't a difference once you go dual-core with decent specs.
Compare this to Win 98. Whereas XP dogs a 3200+ with 2GB, 98 has sub-10 second boot times on a PIII 700MHz, and you aren't gonna notice a difference in snappiness from a Celeron 400. (You don't get any faster than 'instant'.)
XP is bloatware and really doesn't have a hardware niche. Anything that can't run Vista would be better off with Win98.
poached - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - link
but you can't get drivers for windows 98. The installer will probably crash if you tried. plus, 98 was really unstable (compared to OSs of today) because programs could corrupt the memory easily. Not to mention no security of any kind. There is a penalty to make OS secure and stable.pullmyfoot - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I bought Vista when it came out and dual booted it with XP. I didnt really like it, and Vista almost never got used. It was like that for a year and a half, and then I installed the W7 RC. I have not missed XP one bit.As for the people who say W7 is less snappy than XP, well in my own experience W7 feels more snappy than XP to me any day.
ProDigit - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
I noticed the opposite when testing XP VS Win7 RC and Beta.I found XP to be more snappy than Win7, running it from a lower specced laptop.
I did have XP optimized though. Perhaps if I give the final version of Win7 a Win2000 theme, and optimize it a bit, it will be as snappy as XP.
ProDigit - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
I noticed the opposite when testing XP VS Win7 RC and Beta.I found XP to be more snappy than Win7, running it from a lower specced laptop.
I did have XP optimized though. Perhaps if I give the final version of Win7 a Win2000 theme, and optimize it a bit, it will be as snappy as XP.
andrewaggb - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
I'd be curious if you can get it to feel as fast as xp on a really slow laptop. I sold my netbook a year ago (1024x600 didn't cut it), but now that you can get ones with a better resolution screen I might consider getting another one with win7 if it doesn't run awful.