What is Digg?Sponsored by AVG
Windows 7 Needs An Extra Layer of Security view!
free.avg.com - AVG Anti-Virus Free 9.0 works with Windows 7, to provide the best protection against web threats.
147 Comments
- Nephersir7, on 05/28/2009, -6/+51Having switched from Windows Vista SP1 to Windows 7 RC1, I can say the improvements are not as great as from XP to Vista.
The difference from Vista to Seven is mainly polishing and trimming, but the changes are not as radical as from XP to Vista.
And there is nothing wrong with that. - oomfoofoo, on 05/28/2009, -6/+50Same old, same old. Did you even read the article first before copying & pasting your comment?
- alanocu, on 05/28/2009, -4/+40Astral, wait until the tourettes go away before trying to persuade us to switch to linux. No one is planning to show up where you work and knock the corndog out of your hand, so just relax.
- Lucas123, on 05/28/2009, -4/+36The Intel X25-M SSD averaged between 171 MB/s to 206 MB's using Vista. Using Windows 7, the transfer speed jumped to 223 MB/s to 234 MB/s. That's pretty impressive. I take it Windows 7 adjusted the page write size in order to more efficiently fit the fixed block sizes of an SSD.
- schrutefan, on 05/29/2009, -6/+28Bured for using the Windows Experience Rating as a benchmark.
- XxbladesfirexX, on 05/29/2009, -1/+16Haha you sound like my dad, "Why do I need anything other than Windows 95?"
- Sfenton, on 05/29/2009, -2/+17Report for spamming please.
- oxymoron69, on 05/29/2009, -1/+16So wouldn't it be a great change to go from XP to 7.... like most folks will be doing during this big transition?
- BugMeNot2, on 05/29/2009, -1/+15Digg really does not get enough tech articles, though.
- sovietninja, on 05/29/2009, -1/+13This is an off topic comment: But I'm really glad that we got rid of shouts. It appears to me, that more people are actually looking at upcoming, and pre mid-2006 diggers are actually digging up interesting tech articles just like Old Digg. Thanks guys.
- ravage86, on 05/29/2009, -1/+13Vista wasn't built from the ground up. It was built from XP up.
- yocouchdigga, on 05/28/2009, -2/+14***** lold.
- getoffmybridge, on 05/29/2009, -0/+11Bite the bullet and raid 0 a couple of the 120s :-D
Or just get a 1tb WD black for now, and go with an ssd later on when they're cheaper/larger. I assure you, you'll be happy with one of those. - eqisow, on 05/29/2009, -4/+14Windows Vista is what? Microsoft has _never_ made a complete OS from the ground up.
- inactive, on 05/29/2009, -2/+10My custom built PC smokes my Mac at work.
- Malteserr, on 05/29/2009, -3/+11Indeed it would. But most XP users will find the first few weeks very different.. mainly when it comes to finding info about their network, disabling network adaptors, finding things in the menus... I just hope they don't get scared and go back/stick to XP like many did with Vista. It's really time to move on.
- psypher, on 05/29/2009, -3/+10That's why you use an SSD for the OS and a pair of stripped 640G drives for the games.
- masterkenobi, on 05/29/2009, -3/+10Remember back in the day on Digg when people posted conspiracy theory links of what really happened on 9/11? I don't know why but his post reminded me of that.
- gordigor, on 05/29/2009, -0/+7My god you're aren't even original. You copied and pasted the same comment from the other Windows 7 articles.
http://digg.com/microsoft/Windows_Vista_SP2_It_s_t ... - uberduger, on 05/29/2009, -0/+7A couple of handy hints for ya, bud:
1. When you say M$, you lose all credibility. It was never funny or clever.
2. Don't eat yellow snow. - Arramol, on 05/29/2009, -0/+7If you're looking for top game performance, honestly, the storage device is the last place you need to spend your money. Just get a decently performing HDD and put the money you save into a better video card and CPU. Your loading times will be a bit longer, but actual gameplay will be MUCH better.
- slackermike, on 05/28/2009, -4/+10I guess I'm a bit confused because in the beginning the article states:
"One of the first things which most notice about Windows 7 is how "light" the operating system feels. It's quick to load up, it does not spend much time thrashing the hard disk once you're inside the interface, and your hard drive quickly settles down and lets you start working. It feels quicker, due to this fact, and as such, the entire computing experience on Windows 7 is much more enjoyable."
but then when you look at the benchmarks between Windows Vista and Windows 7 on a non SSD hard drive, the article states:
"Traditional hard drives don't see much of a performance boost with Windows 7, as our tests show. Both read and write speeds are about the same for our Raptor drive, although burst transfer rates see a slight performance boost on Windows 7. Fair enough, let's move on to something more exciting, SSDs."
So, I guess I have to wonder how the first statement is true if there is not much performance difference on a normal hard drive? I'm not saying the article is incorrect, just wondering if I'm missing the point. To make the first statement, I don't believe people are going out and buying SSD drives just to try Windows 7 if they currently use a non SSD drive with Vista. - deadbaby, on 05/29/2009, -1/+7Magnetic HDs are, more or less, as limited by the physical performance of the disk at this point whereas SSDs in many cases are actually limited by software. There's more room for optimization in SSDs including different write sizes, supporting extended command sets available on some SSD drives, and making various other disk IO related code be more intelligent to actually see there's an SSD in use and use an algorithm/buffer size/timing/etc that is suited best for their characteristics.
As prices of SSDs get even lower we'll probably start seeing a lot of dual disk configurations. 2.5" SSD for OS/applications and an additional 3.5" 1TB+ magnetic drive for bulk storage. - Octanus, on 05/29/2009, -0/+5Don't care, burying your comment.
- rpgmakr, on 05/29/2009, -2/+7Remember the mojave project?
Windows 7 == Vista without the PR mess. - valis, on 05/29/2009, -1/+6You, sir, are an idiot.
- reposado, on 05/29/2009, -1/+6Get the 300gb WD Raptors and skip the SSDs for now.
SSD is improving fast but is still very expensive $ per mb. Plus as of 2 months ago I was still hearing about SSD's slowing down over usage and time(not sure if its still a problem).
Raptors will be fast all around and you'll be able to put both the OS and plenty of games on it. - nogami, on 05/29/2009, -0/+5www.dansdata.com did a review of exactly this scenario. The results were OK, but it wasn't anywhere near the speed of a current SSD. Think more like booting your system from a USB stick. If you had a large number of these raided together, you might get acceptable performance, but I doubt it would be worth the effort.
- bigwophh, on 05/29/2009, -2/+7There may not be a significant performance difference with regard to traditional hard drive performance in a Vista vs. Win7 comparison, but there are many other elements that come in to play when it comes to overall system performance. Win7 certainly feels faster than Vista even with a hard drive, but the tests show it's not the hard drive's performance that cause the increased performance. With an SSD, however, the OS's enhanced feel is still there, with the added benefit of SSD specific optimizations that enhance performance even further.
- consonance, on 05/29/2009, -1/+6Care to elaborate? I think it works just fine in this case. Assuming ceteris paribus, the article demonstrates how differently Windows itself assesses each hard drive based on medium and size. While the raw data like read and write speeds are important, it helps to get a snapshot of how the operating system will handle each component for the end user. Don't forget that your operating system still has to work on top of the hardware!
- skittlebomb101, on 05/29/2009, -1/+5@mrBitch - Lol damn your screen name is stupid! And I thought mine was whack... :/
- MyMainMan, on 05/29/2009, -1/+5Really not useful information that came from that article. Thought it was about comparing vista (and perhaps even xp) to Windows 7 when it comes to hard drive performance(including normal drives).
Now what we get is more or less a commercial for how good SSD-drives are. In the latter tests(except for the windows boot up in the beginning), which also includes more of real-world benchmarks(which are the only useful ones), the only thing they try to show is how much faster an SSD compared to a normal hard drive. We knew that already!
What many probably would have liked is an all around comparison with Windows XP(a majority still uses it), VISTA and Windows 7. That would have brought something new to the table! - mark076h, on 05/28/2009, -4/+8I am building a new Core i7 gaming rig in the next few weeks and have decided to use an SSD, probably the OCZ Vertex for my OS/program drive. The only problem I see is that not all my games will install to the 60GB version and the 120GB is kinda steep( $377 at the egg). Steam alone and the games I use with it would take of most of it nevermind the rest of the games and programs i would want to install. Any idea on how I could handle this? I plan to also have a 640GB WD Black for a storage drive but games and programs should be on the SSD.
- nogami, on 05/29/2009, -0/+4I'm curious what sort of calculating you're using to come up with the "half a year" stat. From what I've read on the Intel X-25M (at least according to stats provided by Intel), you'd need to write/erase over 100GB per day for 5 years straight on an 80GB MLC drive in order to wear-out the flash memory cells.
I think the reality is that if you buy a SSD today, chances are extremely high that you'll be upgrading your system and purchasing a new (far larger) drive before there's any chance of your current drive (from a reputable manufacturer) failing.
Disclaimer: This was written on a Macbook Pro with a Intel X-25M 160gb SSD installed. - DarkShroud, on 05/29/2009, -0/+3With the i7 system you can just add 12gigs of memory and max out ready boost with a 4gig flash drive. This way everything will cache in the memory and windows will use the ready boost stick for the page file. This should be able to extend the life of the SSD. Especially if you set documents and games to save to a 2nd HD that's platter based.
- kentifer, on 05/29/2009, -3/+6http://www.occultcorpus.com/forum/showthread.php?p ...
- norman619, on 05/29/2009, -0/+3You do knwo that Windows 7 is simply Vista v2.0 right? They simply optimized it and fixed a bunch of crap but it's still Vista. It is not a new OS it's a fixed OS.
Anyway, The big thing about Windows 7 is that it works great on older machines. The hardware reqs aren't as steep as Vista's. I have been running Windows 7 on an old laptop I was about to give away because the thing was slow using XP. Windows 7 changed that. The laptop is nice and fast now. XP bogged the thing down. It'd say that's a major improvement over XP and the Vista v1.0. - mrBitch, on 05/29/2009, -1/+4RE: "... I take it Windows 7 adjusted the page write size in order to more efficiently fit the fixed block sizes of an SSD."
This brings up an interesting argument over just what type of low level control an OS should have over a hard drive.
When it comes to SSD's the only time the OS should be fiddling with the details of exactly HOW to store something on the SSD is when the SSD is a cheap "dumb" SSD.
If you installed a "smart" SSD, then the LAST thing you want is for Windows 7 to "tell" the SSD what to do, instead of letting the "smart" SSD do it's own "hardware/firmware" wear-levelling, etc. for itself.
As long as you are only using a "dumb" SSD, then it's perfectly safe to allow Windows 7 to "tell" the SSD what to do.
If you are using a "smart" SSD, then you DO NOT want to have Windows 7 trying to control the data write-back to the SSD.
http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/02/22/should-file ...
"... If “dumb” SSD’s are still available at 50% of the cost of “smart” SSD’s, it would probably be worth it to make a copy-on-write style filesystem that attempts to do the wear leveling and write amplification reduction in software.
Sure, it’s probably more efficient to do it in hardware, but a 2x price differential might cause people will settle for a cheaper solution even if isn’t the absolutely best technical choice." - Bobby1978, on 05/29/2009, -0/+3There was a bench some time ago showing speed discrepancies between a fresh SSD and one that had already been written to. Did this article take that into account when conducting these tests?
- gordigor, on 05/29/2009, -0/+3hmmm... Vista took over 5 years to be released.
- exscape, on 05/29/2009, -0/+3... did I miss the page where they test random writes? If there's *ONE* benchmark you should run on SSDs, it's random writes, for crying out loud.
- Lucas123, on 05/29/2009, -0/+3That's an enterprise-class SSD. Consumers can't afford it so the test results would not be applicable to Window 7 unless you were running it on a server.
- COINTELPROAgent, on 05/29/2009, -3/+6"Ricochetbiscuit", with over 900 friends who just happen to blind-digg articles like he does, who himself has dugg over 31,000 articles.
STFU. - HeavyWave, on 05/29/2009, -0/+3If you jump from Windows Server 2008 to Windows 7 there is no difference in performance at all :)
- decyx, on 05/29/2009, -1/+4@nogami
Here's my sources: http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.ht ... & http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-slc-mlc-notes.htm ...
The following quote is found in the second article.
"Instead of a write endurance rating of 2 million cycles (for the best SLC) - I can only use a figure of 10,000 for MLC. MLC has a much lower rating due to the complex interaction of discriminating multiple logic levels reliably coupled with the intrinsic failure mechanism of wear-out.
Plugging these numbers in the same calculation gives an estimated MLC flash SSD operating life (at max write throughput) which is 6 months! (instead of 51 years for a 64GB SLC SSD)."
I also want to point out that the Intel X-25M does not represent the performance level of most conventional MLC drives. If you'll notice, the X-25M SSD is fairly unique, because it has a highly efficient wear leveling algorithm and low write amplification; something not every manufacturer has incorporated into their drives yet (quite a few still use crappy J-Micron controllers). It's also over $300 for one X-25M 80 GB drive so the quality you get is balanced by the premium you pay.
You do bring up a good example of an MLC drive that actually manages to live longer than a mediocre SLC drive. The problem is that not all MLC SSDs are created equal. That figure of 100 GB per day for 5 years straight does not apply to the Patriot Warp, for instance. - Dougman82, on 05/29/2009, -0/+2Exactly what I was thinking. On the first page or two, it was showing how Win7 has better SSD performance than Vista with equivalent hardware. Then, the rest of the article simply put Vista aside and started showing how much faster SSDs are then HDDs. Thanks, hothardware.com...
- ethana2, on 05/29/2009, -0/+2Koala, Snow Leopard, and Seven are going to be an interesting round of competitors in that regard.
- oomfoofoo, on 05/29/2009, -0/+2Corndog. HA!
Digg isn't the only place he posts his spam (just like schestowitz). - getoffmybridge, on 05/29/2009, -0/+2Raid 5 is only solid with write-thru cache which is slow as balls, unless you have a really nice card(not onboard) with a BBU. Then you can enable write-back cache and get some decent performance out of it. Otherwise if you lose power with write-back cache enabled and no bbu, you risk data loss and/or corruption.
But obviously, if you're going to run a raid 0 you acknowledge you're doing it for performance...and of course, you're backing up your data... - JayD16, on 05/29/2009, -0/+2As awesome as raid 0 is, I've been burned by it. I would suggest 3 drives and raid 5 if you want to go the array route. You get similar gains in performance and its a lot more solid.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 151 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is