What is Digg?146 Comments
- rbuszka, on 10/12/2007, -8/+61While I don't think that this is the most comprehensive set of benchmarks that have been run to compare XP performance with Vista's, this article provides an easy-to-understand presentation of the data. We see that there is indeed a bit of a performance loss with Vista, though it's fairly small, and no reason to riot in the streets. While we should expect that Microsoft would try their best to make each OS as efficient as it can be, at the same time we should expect that with Vista's added complexity, it will demand more from our hardware, simple as that. Microsoft has simply given us enthusiasts added reason to try to wring the most performance out of our machines that we can, to offset the difference.
- Reidtheweed01, on 10/12/2007, -4/+23Vista is supposed to be in use for the next few years, and all new computer that will come out with vista will be dual-core. Thats like saying XP sucks becuase you could run 98 just fine on a 200mhz cyrix cpu, but XP is super slow on it. If you had it your way we would all be using hardware from 1993, because you think that your hardware should always be supported no matter how old it is.
- solidsnake1298, on 10/12/2007, -10/+27Give me a *****' break. All the results are within 1% with the exception of the filesystem tests. Anything less then ~2% is well within the margin of error. If you run the same test twice on an XP machine you won't get the same results for each test.
- Kanna, on 10/12/2007, -3/+20Welcome to digg!
- grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -6/+22"i call that unacceptable bloat."
I'd call it first generation drivers for a new OS, but each to their own. - WildTang3nt, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21Pftt, big deal.. so encoding an MP3 will take you a few seconds long, so what? I'm no Microsoft fan, and I'm not dying to get my hands on Vista either, but come on, let's be realistic here, these benchmarks aren't all that shocking. There's really nothing to worry about here. They had the same issues going from 98 (or 2000) to XP.
- drjekelmrhyde, on 10/12/2007, -5/+20Most of the people commenting on Vista never even used it
- siodine, on 10/12/2007, -7/+22Also, these benchmarks weren't written with Vista in mind -- yet. There's a possibility of several inaccuracies since much of Vista's code base has had a large rewrite.
- MusicalGenius, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21New means more needs, if someone couldn't understand that they'd be a moron. 'Hi everyone! I'd like the state of the art anti gravity car but It needs to run on a AA battery'.......cough cough... Does the U.S. use more electricity than we did 100 years ago? WOW, gee....I guess that means we are as bad as Vista. Why people gripe about this doesn't make sense. It's new, OF COURSE it needs more.
But of course we all know that Apple is perfect, MS is evil and Linux is better........sarcasm - xjbri, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16@ Vistababy
Wow, you are an insane walking Microsoft commercial. I think you have been assimilated.
We are Windows Vista. Resistance is futile. - masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -5/+16@dasluvaluva:
Are ±% figures really that hard for you to understand? - pensivewombat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10I'd imagine driver support plays a major role here. Once companies have more time to put them out things should speed up significantly.
- saska, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12This is a subject on which I am pretty well-educated. I don't dispute the benchmarks, although I think the margin of difference is pretty minor, and the programs were not designed for Vista as many have pointed out.
What I'd say is that there is a significant difference between benchmarking and real world usage. I have gone entirely to Vista on my production machine at work with a tangible increase in the speed at which I can move between applications and use them. This points to part of the redesign of Vista under the hood, which is better memory management and the ability to prioritize processes based on their current state of use. Certain functions we really do use every day, like search, are light years faster than XP (though they still need tweaking in terms of functionality). Some functions are much slower than I want them to be, like copying files, but we've gained functionality there that was sorely lacking in XP (like better error handling).
In brief, anyone who uses this benchmarking study as their sole reason not to try Vista is probably not making an informed decision. - MacSuxWindozSux, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13Hell if we went by your mentality then no one ever need an upgrade despite the ever more complex operating systems being released.
I could have stopped at 486SX.
Because hey... if it takes more resources then it's obviously more bloated...
/sarcasm - StuffMaster, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Kinda like 2000->XP. It's slighty slower, unless you have an old cpu and too little RAM. By too little, I mean craploads in 2000 terms.
So if you have a 3Ghz+ P4 machine (or equivalent) and 1.5GB+ ram (maybe 2), it should run a little slower than XP. But that's not really a problem, since on such a machine, XP should be fast. Otherwise, lots of paging and I/O waiting for you! - blueigloo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9If you have an NVidia graphics chipset beware... (also no SLI or Crossfire support in Vista yet)
- Darcy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12Do you guys really believe vistababy is a paid-up shill? He's just winding people up because he knows some of you get really upset when it comes to fanboyism of MS products. Even if MS did hire shills (very doubtful), do you think they would hire someone so obvious? He's probably never even used vista.
NOTE TO SOME MAC USERS:
This is exactly what you sound like most of the time. - vintechsys, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Some of you people are crybabies. Shut your trap and quit bitching about Vista just because it was late. Who gives a rats ass. It is out now and use it before you bitch. I have a Dell laptop with 512 megs and 2.6ghz cpu and vista runs fine. XP got faster with time and so will Vista. Every other day a "new" linux distribution comes out and if you want the latest kernel or OS you have to pain stakenly update. OSX is crap because you can only run on hardware Apple likes (for the most part). I wish i had the power to stick people that bitch with Linux so they see what a pain a OS can really be. I think Linux is nice in its own respect, but for an opensource platform. M$ makes my life easier everyday while still allowing me to be in control of my system and i like that. There is no editing of a file that if you misspell one word all the sudden you can't boot into KDE (Linux).
- gamerzworld, on 10/12/2007, -7/+14I just got Vista today from Microsoft. I thought it would be pretty slow because the betas ran slow but it wasn't slow at all.
- betterth, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8@OBKenobi
The benchmarks may show that in most tests, Vista performs 1-2% slower. It may page slower or write to the harddrive a meg slower.
But it feels faster. I run Vista on a new comp (E6600, 8800GTS, 2GB memory) and it feels faster than WinXP. Games pop up noticeably faster than before, and alt-tab back and forth to the desktop much, much quicker than they did in XP. I can have two or three full screen games running with no lag, and seamlessly transition between all of them, something my computer didn't like before I got Vista.
I'm no MS sympathizer, but I do like Vista and to me, it does feel faster especially where it counts - loading times, gaming and multi-app usage =) - jtherrien, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9ATI's Vista drivers still have a long way to go. This is not a Vista issue, this is an ATI issue.
- psych0fish, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Counter Strike Source gives me 15fps less than xp.....with the latest drivers available from ati.
- emshon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8wait, you mean that an operating system actually changed its design to take advantage of new hardware designs? inconceivable!
- grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8"Are ±% figures really that hard for you to understand?"
The '- 0%' confused me a little :) - chillin411, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9@Vista
"Internet Explorer 7 which adds even greater security to your web browsing experience with tighter permissions, limited access to potentially malicious ActiveX controls, and the best web standards support of any browser on the market today!"
Best web standards support of any browser on the market today? Seriously? - grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9"512? I have read many places that this is a vast understatement by microsoft. It really requires more like 2 gigs of ram. "
XP has (or used to have) a minimum of 128MB RAM - don't even try it, 256 is bearable but pages to hell.
If your PC has less than a gig, don't bother upgrading. - Ratteler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You're an idiot. Pirated copies of Vista are still loaded with DRM.
Even pirating the OS helps M$ by enlarging their installed base.
You want your milk for free, use Linux. Then you control your own fridge. - saska, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@brundlefly, glad you've noticed the new Resource Monitor. For folks with Vista, be sure to run perfmon and see what's new. It's a major upgrade and it kicks all kinds of ass. (The Task Manager has been improved a bit too.)
I run Vista at work with 1GB of RAM and I don't page much, even with ~8 applications in use at any given time. I have 2GB of RAM in my laptop at home. One thing this has allowed me to see is that Vista uses a percentage of the available RAM for its own purposes and allocates the rest to applications. As a result, I'd expect that things would be slower at 512MB, because you're dealing with a percentage of the available resources. But to this point, I haven't been in a position where I saw a noticeable difference between 1GB and 2GB. - Kwipper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Keep in mind that this test was done using CURRENT hardware. Look at the test bench specs and see for yourself. If they used hardware specs that were based on the norm from 2 to 3 years ago, I am quite sure that it would yield different results. You will see a significant difference between the performance of Windows Vista, and Windows XP.
- jtherrien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've used Vista extensively for the past 4 months and it's worked great for me. Driver support has come a LONG way since RC1, as most hardware vendors have a good amount of drivers out now. Finally I've been able to get drivers for my webcam from Logitech... all of my peripherals work fine. Dual boot it with your current XP install and see how it works. I wouldn't switch everything over yet, but give it a shot. I've read the same scathing reviews... and I think everything is overblown, especially regarding the DRM. DRM doesn't touch any non-DRMed files... so... if I don't buy anything with DRM I'm not affected. It's the same as in XP or any other OS in that regard. I guess it's just cool to be anti-MS right now. It's a good OS with a lot of potential, and runs pretty well.
Developers will make some really neat stuff over the next few years, which I think is the biggest thing about Vista. Microsoft has given a blank canvas for developers and have given them amazing tools this time around, especially regarding graphics. Aero is only a small example of what the underlying graphics engine is capable of. I mean, every window is a 3D surface and there's full pixel shader support... what potential! I'm hoping someone like Stardock will take advantage of that as far as desktop management goes. - Asianwaste, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Anyone still on Windows ME?
- epileet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3although i hate vista in it's defense the tests carried out were unfair as the benchmarking programs were not designed with vista in mind
- geoken, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"If you read the "Microsoft answers" to all of this stuff you find the acknowledge almost every point Gutman makes as being true before saying "but that's OK because x y z"."
No, if you read the responce you see that Gutman's main complaints were dead wrong. He talked about increased driver/GPU cost, but was proven wrong. He also complained about non-drm'd content being degraded during the playback of drm'd content and was also proven totally wrong. - BassCadet, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4If you have a computer made in the last 2 years, Vista should be just as quick if not quicker.
Why do people love to bash products they have never touched? PS3, Vista, Zune...all get the big old shaft on Digg. - jtherrien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Uhhh.... did you read the article? There was about a 1% performance difference. It was completely negligible in almost all of the tests.
- adragons, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Yep. Anyone accusing these of being bad, has never compared versions of OS X. OS 10.1 was phenomenally faster than 10.0.4. By the time windows has fixed up a few (maybe a lot of) things, those numbers should be back up there right along side XP.
- PuffyC, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You know, it's one thing to say Vista sucks even though you've never even used it, but it's another to come right out and admit it and then try to defend your thought process. Don't be a lemming getting sucked in by the Microsoft haters. Those people just think being a rebel and Fighting The Man (tm), whoever that is, makes them cool. Try Vista, see if you like it, think for yourself. If you don't like it that's fine but at least make some kind of attempt to speak intelligently about a topic if you insist on spewing your opinion.
- MemoryDump, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2no need to upgrade as XP is running fine
- kernelhappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Osmanthus
This data is incomplete and should not be trusted as a proper representative comparison. The problem? There is no variance data, that is, the difference between trials of the same test....
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I agree the testing is and report is sub-standard. Many of the smaller tech blogs that either don't have the resources, discipline, knowledge or impetus to do proper testing and rush to get an article out there to get hits. The first thing that caught my eye was the lack of a proper explanation on the testing methods used. It's unclear if all the tests were done on a fresh install, specifically worrying is that it's not stated if the XP tests were re-run or carried over from previous testing and the comment about how desktop icons were "cleaned up" which sounds like he was using his daily box with Vista on it and just removed some stuff that they felt may influence the test results. He also doesn't state if he's using the full Aero interface, if the same devices were installed (different versions of say a printer monitor, especially a very young one for vista, may consume extra resources), etc.
I won't digg the article down because there is some value to the information provided, but people need to keep in mind that this "comparison" is flawed and should not be construed as absolute. - gamerzworld, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6The power together thing (Google it). Well it looks like Apple/Linux fan boys are all ready Digging me down.
- niteskunk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2digg down, sorry
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3This guy who wrote the article must be insane. No da, that Vista might be a little slower in performance, thats why its the next generation OS that requires better hardware power. We are not going back in time overhere. Vista never been about being faster, it has been about better experience. If you want great performance you need to switch to windows 95
- vawksel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5So, because the OS was "late", you will continue to use XP... There is no logic in that statement. Sorry.
- Kwipper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So let me summarize this article, into something that is clear and concise so that the person who just skimmed through the article above will get the right idea.
Windows Vista using CURRENT & UP TO DATE hardware will run as good as Windows XP running on the same CURRENT & UP TO DATE hardware.
However.....
Windows Vista using OUT OF DATE hardware will NOT run as good as Windows XP running on the same OUT OF DATE hardware.
This means that if you're running a laptop or desktop that you bought 2 to 3 years ago, you probably will have less of a chance of running Windows Vista with all of the bells and whistles.
Somewhat off topic, personal note & opinion:
In my honest opinion, there is no reason to upgrade to Windows Vista right now. Sure it sports a fancy graphical user interface, but there isn't really anything in Windows Vista that cannot be added to Windows XP through some add-on programs. Lets not forget that the Windows Vista will degrade your hi-def video playback if you're not running the latest in Digital Rights Management hardware and software technology. This means that the entertainment industry are in partial control of content playback running on this operating system. Microsoft is really trying hard to crack down on people pirating illegal copies of music, movies and video games, (not to mention it's own Operating System) and to an extent it will be successful. It will make it harder for the casual users (which is a larger percentile IMHO) from being able to use them and frustrate them into buying the legal stuff, meanwhile the pro users and hackers will always find ways to circumvent the DRM protections.
Just my two cents... - soogy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1All of the SANDRA 2007, Cinebench, Sciencemark, and hard drive benchmarks tests are within a margin of error.
I was surprised that 3DMark06 dropped 300 points, but I'm assuming this is due either to driver differences or Windows Vista using part of the GPU to offload rendering from the CPU.
The 19s difference in SuperPi is also strange, since I'm pretty sure it is not multi-threaded, so if Vista was using one of the cores, SuperPi should have been unaffected. Regardless, I don't know whether or not this is within the margin of error, since I never do 32M because I'm impatient.
Anyhow, I have faith the community will come up with methods to make Vista faster. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I have vista and XP, VISTA IS QUICKER
- grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1We shall never speak that name. Such evil shall should never see the light of day.
- grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Before the next major version of Windows post Vista (not including SPs), I am expecting to see 10s of cores on the average PC. The GHz race is being stiffled by laws of physics, certainly it has not doubled every 18 months for many years now. With a smaller nm process, you can fit more cores on the same wafer, so while quad-core is only popular in server hardware, it is just a matter of time before we have more CPU cores than running processes.
PCs built in 2000 don't run XP well, even if they meet the 128MB RAM requirements. But if you look at dell today, would you be able to configure a PC so terrible it could not run XP? (putting aside the question about whether you would want to run it or now). My point is this. Your pre-2007 computer may have enough guts to run Vista (remember how long it fell behind schedule) but don't whinge if it doesn't. Your post 2007 cheap dell box will be fast enough to run Vista well.
You are never going to please everyone in benchmarks. There are some tests that could have been run which would have shown Vista to be much slower, particularly when you start relying on new drivers. XP drivers have had a lot more time to mature. On the other hand, if you focused on networking, you would find the TCP stack of Vista to be up to 10% faster.
So does Vista have enough improvements for Joe Average running XP to run out and buy it? No, but they probably would the next time they upgrade their computer. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3OBKenobi, be banned, doofus.
- Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I'm a linux nut, I think that Vista and microsoft are the devil. But these performance drops look negligible at best. I mean, cmon, < 1% drop for most of these things.
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