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Vista performs as good as XP on same hardware

reviews.cnet.com — CNET ran a few performance tests in Vista Beta 2 and XP on the same hardware, and results showed that Vista, even in its beta stage, can perform as well or potentially even better than XP!

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 20, 2006

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  • charmedguy18, on 10/12/2007, -15/+130Vista performs as WELL as XP on same hardware*

    Fixed
    :-D
  • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -11/+31You cant benchmark "linux". Get it right. It depends on what distro you are running. If you are running a GUI or not. For example, Desktops on GNOME will run slower than xfce. Dont ask suh stupid questions
  • partialinfinity, on 10/12/2007, -10/+29There are no stupid questions... only stupid people. ;)
  • Jozer99, on 10/12/2007, -6/+24Really? Try running OS 7.1 on an old PowerMac. Boots from no power to desktop in about 15 seconds. Now run OS 7.5, boots in about 30 seconds. Now run OS 8.5, takes about 2 minutes. Now, get out your old G3. Put OS 9.0 on it. Its pretty snappy, no? Now run OS X, 10.4 if you like. Not so snappy anymore? Apple improves performance in each release of OS X because 10.0 was so miserably terrible at everything that its taken them 5 years to get the code optimized to the point it should have been originally.
  • bieber, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20No way. You mean that their latest OS might actually perform _better_ than their last one? Who could have seen an upgrade actually improving performance?
  • estvir, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19well, in vista when you launch a game (in full screen) all the 'pretty effects' and other things from aero glass are turned off automatically, so system resources aren't wasted when playing games or using other system-intensive apps.
  • jsg7, on 10/12/2007, -6/+22"Same hardware" is not the same as "average user's hardware". I have a ton of clients who don't have a computer with a 3.2GHz Pentium 4, with 1GB of DDR2 memory running at 664MHz and an ATI Radeon X850 XT graphics card.

    Hell, neither do I...

    How will it run on my computer compared to XP SP2 is what I'd like to know. 2GHz P4, 512MB RAM, GeForce FX 5200...
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -13/+29Oops...well, hopefully most people can still understand it (just like the "12 items or less" thing in grocery stores :) )
  • MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21The fact that it can do that while packing a whole crapload of new features is quite remarkable, actually....
  • theRIAA, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19well programs run as good, but what about startup time? visual efects?
  • furtwan1, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18I had a similar experience. I dont know where people have found it slow, but it runs great for me (when not run in a virtual machine of course)
  • CPUGUy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+18All the eye candy does not effect performance negatively, as it is all being rendered on the graphics card (which is basically unused in XP, Classic, and Aero Basic) instead of the CPU.
  • Ilyanep, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14First of all, I wonder if they were running all the eye candy in the background while doing it.

    Then, I found it interesting that Vista beat XP on F.E.A.R. for the higher resolution but lost on the lower one :
  • CPUGUy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17Vista has never crashed on me.

    The video drivers have crashed, the sound drivers have crashed, and a couple of apps have crashed, but nothing has brought down the system yet.

    I also get very good performance on Vista, compareable or better to XP.

    Maybe instead of blaming the OS you should check and see what is actually causing your crashes and slowness. Are the drivers XP drivers or are they Vista drivers? That makes a HUGE difference.
  • shakin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12That's a very good point. It's easy to say it runs as well on high-end hardware, but how about a mid-range Dell with 8MB integrated video? My work PC is a P4 2.8 Ghz and the BIOS setting for the integrated video only allows it to use up to 8 MB of system RAM (and it has no dedicated RAM). I happen to run Ubuntu with aiglx (Redhat's Xgl equiv) very well, but I can't play any decent OpenGL games, so is Vista closer to Aiglx or Quake 3 in terms of processing requirements?

    Visual effects aside, as many people won't have them anyway, there is no reason why Vista should be slower than XP since there aren't very many enhancements besides security. Look at Gnome... it gets faster every release. Why shouldn't we expect Vista to be faster than XP? People shouldn't have to assume that their computer will slow down if they upgrade the OS without upgrading the computer at the same time.
  • Malakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Anandtech came to a different conclusion.
    "With a Windows-to-Windows comparison, we need to take performance into account, and Vista is not quite ready to do that, so much of this will hinge on Microsoft getting the performance of Vista up to par..."
    http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2780&p=11
  • Smoov, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11@foolfromhell wrote

    "Vista wont let me play my cracked games. :("

    Just hang in there for Vista Criminal Edition. It should be shipping in time for the 2008 cracking season.
  • giggsey, on 10/12/2007, -5/+14So Vista has been in development for 5 years, and it "can perform as well or potentially even better than XP". Now isn't the point of making new major versions like this to improve it?
  • Nerevar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I tried Beta 2 and it felt very sluggish compared to XP Pro. My system isn't really a slouch, a64 2800+, 6800gt 256mg, 1gb ram, sata hds.
  • threepio, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13ilyag - I beg to differ - going from 10.3 to 10.4 on my iBook increased performance while adding a bevy of features. I've come to expect this of an operating system now - if the new release isn't "snappier" it's bad coding.
  • technonerd, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12I don't know what kind of crack the CNET guys are smoking this time. I'm running Vista right now and have been for several weeks. It's very sluggish especially on startup.... Shutdown takes forever, and it always seems that the CPU usage is higher to do the exact same thing. All in all, Vista is slower than XP in real usage.
  • Starseed, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12I have to agree with you on that one. If they're coming out with a new OS then it should be substantially better.
  • ThinkFr33ly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Did you ever use Mac OS 10.0? A lot of people refused to because it was so painfully slow when compared with OS 9.

    If you introduce a lot of new features and eye candy and you manage to keep performance the same, you've done a great job. Improving performance is a huge bonus.
  • OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14LOL. This test is so pathetically deceptive, I guess some people didn't catch the sleight of hand that CNET was trying to pull off here.

    They didn't compare overall OS performance (and requirements), they tested processing capability for single, non-multitasking applications, then proclaimed performance is just as good. Ofcourse it's just as good, all of the overhead that Vista has compared to XP isn't taken into account. I'd expect Vista code to run singnificantly better at pure processing tasks, but it doesn't even do that. Where's the improvement Vista was supposed to have?

    In real world use, Vista does not perform as well as XP, it requires much more overhead. You do use a GUI, don't you? You do require a net connection and all those background services running, don't you? Compare that performance, and load times to XP.

    CNET, I fart in your general direction.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9What i like about vista, (FLip 3d (like osx tigers screen features (i forget what its called) , and the search feature is finally like spotlight (osx) so far thats what i like, and the widgets like osx. (i noticed alot of "like osx" ) What i cant stand is "user account protection" i turned it off asap, its annoying , i would only have it on if a child or grandparents were useing the pc
  • avtar, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Does anyone think that (maybe with the exception of the FEAR test) these tests are not relevant. The tests are CPU intensive applications which dont rely on functions or services provided by the operating system.
  • david76, on 10/12/2007, -14/+22@steelmaverick

    It should be "10 items or FEWER"

    Oh, and at our shopping market a long time ago the cashier told my mom to move to another lane because she had 11 items. I knew the chain owner and spoke to him. The next day a memo went out to not refuse customers who have more than allowed number of items.
  • pegisys, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Vista actually starts up and shuts down faster then XP does on my computer, even if I stop all the programs from launching

    I'm using 64bit Vista, and the 32bit XP, so that may make a difference though.
  • TheThirdWheel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Strangely enough, that's almost my system exactly, but they didn't address something I have been worrying about with the aero effects. Whenever 3D applications run on my PC the cooling fan on my GPU spins like crazy to keep it from overheating. I don't mind it now since I usually have the volume up when I play games to mask the noise.

    Is my GPU going to be hot as a toaster with the fan running like crazy just to run Word?
  • astrotrain, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Is CNet on drugs!?

    Why are the using iTunes as a benchmarking test for encoding on a Windows test!? Apple's iTunes had to be hacked to get it to semi work with Windows. They should have used a Windows native music encoder such
    as CDEx.

    They might have well used a C=64 Emulator running Kick-Man to perform their test....

    LOL!
  • mr.hostility, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11***** CNet. I ran it on a laptop that I usually run xp on. Vista was much slower than XP. Perhaps they ran on optimal hardware, but the general claim is ludicrous.
  • Jozer99, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9They aren't claiming that its more stable, they are claiming that its faster. I have had the same issues as you. I run a Pentium D 820 2x2.8GHz, 2GB RAM, Radeon X800 XL. Vista was probably as fast or faster than XP, but its obviously beta, there are plenty of explorer crashes, mysterious slowdowns, etc. Another thing I'm not sure of is its RAM usage. Using the 32 bit version, on first boot my RAM usage was around 750 MB. When I had a single firefox window and media center open it was up to 1350 MB. With XP, having 10 firefox tabs, thunderbird, gaim, photoshop, dreamweaver, and media center open usually puts me at about 1000 MB RAM usage. I'm sure stability will improve as Vista gets closer to release, but I'm wondering about RAM usage. Obviously, even 2GB of RAM is not enough for serious multitasking right now. Hopefully that bloat is all the debugging stuff that will eventually be removed and optimized.

    Oh, and that whole security popup thing has got to go.

    Vist does have some nice features. It is A LOT easier to use for beginners, the control pannel is more logically organized, and auto configuration is a lot smarter. The way vista handles sound might actually be the best of any operating system I have ever seen. Even on my cheap integrated Realtek audio, the built in audio controls rivaled those for expensive pro audio cards (I do some recording studio stuff). You have individual control over not only the various sound inputs and outputs, but also the levels for each individual running application. That way, if you are playing a game that does not have adjustable sound, you can easy lower the volume and listen to your own soundtrack without muting the whole computer like you have to in XP.

    Anyway, I switched back to XP just because Vista is still too unstable to use as a work machine, and the driver support is very small right now. I look forward to future releases though.
  • mr.hostility, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Lab my ass. It's a bank of machines they installed Vista and XP on. Wow, very lab like.
    I guess my desk at work is a "lab" then too.
  • 1DNA, on 10/12/2007, -10/+16Dont believe it, that article is what a marketer would call an advitorial, its like a info-mercial hidden inside news. Expect to see a lot of crap like this from the MS marketing crew.
  • HMTKSteve, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6So, will it run "as good" on my old 1 GHz Athlon machine with 16MB of video ram and 256MB of system RAM?

    I don't have a "high-end" machine...

    This is like saying, "Even a crappy driver can go over 100MPH in a NASCAR car..."
  • khdx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Vista was about the same as XP for me. The only problem I have is that I have to wait for vista to fully load up before I can do anything. If I try to open an app while vista is loading all its crap, it crashes.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13threepio:

    What runs faster: Mac OSX or Mac OS 7? Stop sniffing your own farts, man.

    There's a difference between optimizing existing code and rewriting it. You obviously don't know this difference, or realize that it's platform/fanboyism independent.
  • bjsiders, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9If only the public education system ran as good in 2006 as it did in 1906. Apparantly the grammar check feature is more brokener in Vista.
  • vdubski, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I'm dual booting between XP x86 and Vista x64, and I must say overall performance in games is much better in XP for now. Any game using the Source engine displays severe texture corruption, that cause the game to slow to almost unplayable levels, unless I turn all the graphics settings down to low. But on the plus side, I can see through walls sometimes. :)

    But once they release updates to drivers and/or the game engines. Not sure which is the culprit, I will be atleast trying to use Vista full time. Till then I'll keep using XP for playing CS:S non wall hack enabled.
  • spooq, on 10/12/2007, -3/+81 second startup??? I dont think so!
  • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13Before you install, it says. "Stability of this Beta does not reflect stability of Microsoft Release Products"
    Stop ragging on the stability of Vista. Its a BETA. meaning they asking your help on fixing problems. How dow e know t hat during the benchmarks, the Vista didnt crash?
  • Doomhammer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I got the same thing in various games I tried to play on Vista x86, strange graphics errors and such.

    Also, I'm thinking CNET is full of crap, because on almost every game I played Vista either performed the same or worse... I tried several games: Age of Empires 3, Counter-Strike: Source, UT2004, and Oblivion - and every time they either performed worse (or not at all, in the case of a couple which had severe rendering problems) or the same as they did in XP...
  • MatttK, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Vista starts fast on my PC and the visual effects are mostly smooth (the problems I do see are obvious glitches that should be fixed by launch).
  • Jozer99, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6XP came out in the fall of 2000. That makes it 5-6 years old, not the 3-4 years old it would be if it came out in 2002. Windows Server 2003 came out in 2002.
  • bennis, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8

    BS
  • aurrea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I updated an existing XP MC to Vista beta over the weekend and received "blue screens" nearly everytime I logged in. I figured it had to do with not running a clean install so I tried a clean install as a last resort. After the clean install everything worked good until I tried to install any of my drivers from CD. I kept getting errors saying that the software didn't support that version of Windows. After two days of "Beta Testing" I'm back to running XP MC. I think I'll wait for the release of this OS ....
  • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Guys, haven't we learned that CNET is *NOT* an unbiased, reputable source for reviews?

    Anyone can tell you Vista just plain runs like dog *****. Whether that has to do with it being full of debug code or not is anyone's guess. But it is slow and bloated as *****, and anyone who says it runs 'comparable' let alone 'faster' than XP is smoking some good *****.

    Here's a little comparison I did. XP SP2 first boot: 79.2MB commit charge. Vista 5384 first boot: 856MB commit charge. Now you do the math.

    I'll now await the Vista fanboys trying to tell me how those extra 775MB are really not extra RAM being used but some super-special 'caching' feature ...
  • superset, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I got rid of Vista beta last night and put XP back in. My broadband connection would just randomly die on me. Plus I hated how it could never remember all my settings. Kept going back to default no matter how much I tried. Not touching Vista until it gets "smarter".
  • jgreene777, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7i would have to agree, for the most part. there was a step-down somewhere between 8 and 9, but other than that, the rest were true UP-grades.
  • bigtomrodney, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'm getting the exact same. A clean Vista install is unusable on my 2.4GHz with 512MB RAM. XP Flies on this machine.
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