Vista SP1 vs. XP SP2 - Benchmarked
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 18.2.2008
Tip: Click here to update all your PC's outdated driversSome people are concerned that in order to get an accurate measurement of boot time the system needs to be booted many times. Let me assure you that the systems here under testing were rebooted more times than most normal PCs are over the course of several months.]
Over the past few days I posted two sets of benchmarks comparing Windows Vista RTM with Vista SP1 (first post here, second here). These posts generated a lot of feedback, and from reading this feedback it’s clear that what many people are really interested in is not the performance differences between Vista RTM and Vista SP1, but between Vista SP1 and XP SP2.
A few days ago I posted in reply to several TalkBack comments that I wouldn’t carry out these tests until XP SP3 is released. There didn’t seem any point. That didn’t satisfy the crowds who wanted to see Vista SP1 and XP SP2 go head to head. So, to cut a long story short, the pestering continued and I eventually gave in. So what follows are the fruits of nearly two whole days of work at the PC Doc HQ (the test was hampered by the death of a motherboard, something which rendered hours of work obsolete).
How does Windows Vista SP1 compare to Windows XP SP2?
Conclusions and Caveats
Note: I didn’t benchmark against XP SP3 because the EULA prevents the disclosure of benchmark results. Also, since it’s a beta, things can change between now and the final release.
So, onto conclusions. Looking at the data there’s only one conclusion that can be drawn - Windows XP SP2 is faster than Windows Vista SP1. End of story. Out of the fifteen tests carried out, XP SP2 beat Vista SP1 in eleven, Vista SP1 beat XP SP2 in two of the tests, and two of the tests resulted in a draw.
The best result for Vista SP1 was in the single file drive-to-drive copy, while the best result for XP SP2 was extracting multiple files from a compressed folder. Given these results and taking into account the improvments that SP1 bought to Vista, if I was to go back and compare XP SP2 with Vista RTM, XP would have hammered Vista even harder.
Reminder: These results apply to a single system and no optimizations were carried out to any of the systems. Your mileage can, and probably will, vary.
I’ll carry out some gaming benchmarks over the next few days. Watch this space!
source:
blogs.zdnet.com
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Comments (47) showed (40) -
Show all comments vista is a flop, that's been proved but if you use and like it great, personally i'm
happy for you. i'll stick with xp until i decide to use linux full time.
microsoft are loosing the plot with their operating systems trying to out do the
competition by including junk that uses more and more processing power and memory but adds
little to what the majority of users want out of their pc’s.
make windows
7 the gamer’s choice microsoft, the wow factor should reside inside directx 11. give
us token security but don’t kid us that it will stop a determined hacker from taking
over our machine and leave antivirus to a third party. if the user downloads a
“dodgy” torrent or a codec to play “that pron clip” then serves
them right.
what is with this site and all the damn vista bashing? zdnet is also another site known
for bashing vista and spreading lies. i would take vista any day over xp.
i know of at least a dozen friends that had vista preinstalled when they bought a new pc.
everyone is miserable with the interface. it is not intuitive at all. plus it is godawful
slow even on top of the line machines. i have helped at least 7 people reload xp pro i kid
you not. vista is like an unwanted pregnancy and should be aborted off of everyone's pc.
itn't it about time the old timers were put to rest...euthanise xp !
vista is
definatly the way forward, never had an issue and is way faster to boot than xp sp2 on my
rig. stop bitching about vista and go buy a decent computer that can run it the way it's
supposed to be run instead of installing on old out of date hardware.
i have personally benchmarked xp sp3 against vista sp1 on identical hardware and xp sp3
smokes pooor vista. its truly laughable! vista just freezes with the little circle of
doom spinning out of control waiting for the program to function. xp is smoooth, no
freezes.
this zdnet test just confirms what i already knew, vista blowws bigtime.
btw, my test pc was a quad core intel 3.0 ghz, 4 gb ddr2 ram 800mhz, nvidia gforce 7950, a
new platform. i have also found that direct x 9 on xp works smoother and faster than
direct x 10 on poor vista. the facts are in, again people, vista is windows millnium 2 ,
don't use it.
vista's interface is more intuitive than xp's. not by a wide margin, but enough to make
it easier to use for people who do lots of different tasks on daily basis. your friends
who hate it must be under the mistaken impression that xp has as good of an interface as
any windows should have because they're used to it. well guess what... xp is not gonna
last forever. even if they switched to linux or mac, they'd have to learn a new interface
either way.
microsoft's biggest mistake with vista was not drm, but shifting
all the burden of running it onto the hardware; xp's gui is software-driven. then again,
it was a business decision by microsoft to help stuff the hardware vendors' wallets.
lets compare xp and win98... you fools you make me laugh!!!! there's too much noise in
these vista vs xp wars, and it's quite simple, if you want to stay with an older os and
run your pc faster stay with xp (the same thing happened when xp whas out and every one
was using 98). if you have an old computer stay with xp. if you have a new multicore
computer with 2gb ram or more and want to move on, vista is your way and it will work
great... i never had problems with it and love working in vista. the people with new
computers staying with xp are having a faster and older os but not better, and sooner or
later you will be pushed to move into vista, like it or not. it looks that everyone forgot
when xp was out.
i did a study as well. i installed vista on my q6600 computer and benchmarked it. next i
uninstalled vista and installed dos. holy sh_t dos was fast!!! the conclusion is that
vista is total crap and dos is the way to go. oh yea, almost forgot, be sure to get a
floppy drive for dos...
"...and sooner or later you will be pushed to move into vista, like it or not"
what a load of fud. people with newest and latest machines, including myself are
going back to xp because vista is crap. your only fooling yourself with your fud.
quote: sooner or later you will be pushed to move into vista, like it or not. unquote
no, i won't be pushed to vista, ever! i'll wait for windows 7. vista is a
turd. as soon as its flushed like me was i'll look at windows 7. i bought a new quad core
amd phenom, 2.3 ghz. after trying vista for a month i wiped it and installed xp pro. the
wow definately started again. i was tired of freezes and programs that won't run with
vista.
we love it. a milestone achievement. mac, linux, apple,...., is just a jealous, lousy
versions of windows
hey nick, it's ok if you don't like vista, but if it freezes on your quad core, perhaps
you have a shitty configuration, a crappy motherboard, old drivers or just talking crap, i
installed vista in a couple of core2duo and recently in amd x2 4200+ and it ran great, no
freezes, no programs crashing, no blue screens... great performance and compatibility
using latest video and motherboard drivers (msi - asus) and microsoft updates. sure xp
coul be a little faster, but like bagel said, we can all move to dos, and it will be fast
as hell... oh... please tell me how are you so sure windows 7 will be so great? you could
wait for windows 8 just in case. i guess it's been many years and many people stucked
with xp, and it's been a good os, but people usually get scared of changes... and what
do we humans do when we get scared? atack that scary new thing.
if u say that xp is faster then vista you have problem especially if u hav a q6600 like
myself, the fact that xp cant recognise physical cpus and cores and vista can.. eg q6600 2
cores 2 cpus 1 die, i have been using vista rtm since it has been released and tweaked the
os, by disabling windows search, defender, uac etc and i have no problems whatsoever, if u
dont like vista dont fukin complain about it
and if your one of those "linux
is better, mac is better" ppl wat the fuk are u reading this news 4 anyway go play with
ur terminal sumwhere else
with sp3 xp pro now has the ability to better handle duo and quad core cpus.
secondly everyone with any brains knows that vista is tainted with an infection called
drm. this is why it has a footprint of 10x the memory and cpu as compared to xp. microsoft
sold everyone out to hollywood to protect their so called 'premium content' blu-ray and
hd dvd (which is now a dead format like vista will be hopefully soon!) vista isn't going
to get any better unless people become aware of the truth and do something about it. if
enough people dump the software through awareness maybe we can make a difference.
vista is slow thats why you need to tweak it and use vlite to make it faster ..and shit
loads of ram..
i bought a computer with vista installed & hated it but after two months would never go
back to xp
i know of at least a dozen friends that had vista preinstalled when they bought a new pc.
everyone is miserable with the interface. it is not intuitive at all. plus it is godawful
slow even on top of the line machines. i have helped at least 7 people reload xp pro i kid
you not. vista is like an unwanted pregnancy and should be aborted off of everyone's pc.
must no no how to use a pc i love vista and fined it as fast or faster than xp
i've yet to have any problems with windows vista, im useing a 5 year old system with
1.8ghz and 512mb and runs great with aero going only using 154mb of ram. i'm with vista
all the way and xp had alot of problems and updates dates too
well, this is really funny. since 2001 we were waiting for longhorn. unfortunately
microsoft never delivered its commitments. then vista hits the market with a bunch of
restrictions and limitations now named "security". i have been running windows vista
since the early betas in which uap was popping up even to delete a shortcut on your
desktop. as far as i'm concerned (still running windows vista) i'll recommend anyone out
there to run xp with a good antivirus and third party firewall.
thanks god we
already made them millionaires because spending 6 years to develop the useless aero gui,
add a search feature and some new icons is simply unbelievable. i would really love to
hear from users what new applications are included in windows vista and how productive
they can be by using them.
click start/ help & support and click on "what's
new in windows vista":
1- security (most secure os ever. we are tired of the
same with every ms os new release)
2- internet explorer 7 (it took microsoft several
years to be able to render a png in ie browser... lame huh?
3- windows aero (the
premium visual experience of windows) usability? what makes it better than xp luna theme?
and so on... by the way some options may vary depending on your vista edition.
really nothing new. same libraries with new icons and old ones as well. more
patches and a lot of hardware resources dedicated to control what you do and what you use
your pc for. this is not what average users are looking for and i'm sure they will learn
from this. if windows 7 delivers the same "features" we have seen in vista, oh well, i
should have learned how to use a terminal in linux by heart or maybe i could be running
the next os from apple or even better i could still be running my old xp with the good
antivirus and firewall :)
ok 1stly vista is only good if u run the 64bit version, as it flys, secondly dont whinge
about vista features which can be easily disabled to suit ur needs.
go on sum1
have a cry about the ram usage ffs 2gb ram is like 60buks these days (australian) when i
bought 2gb for my xp machine 3 years ago it was 300... get over it
sorry to say but vista is slower by design than xp. it was designed with 3 things in
minds - future hardware, better looking and easy to update. future hardware - to boost
sales from hardware producers, better looking - to put dust in the eyes of buyers and easy
to update - to make it compatible with the lazy guys working at it.
you may check
yourself how long it takes to copy form one partition to an other 100 files each of 1 mb
in one folder ( xp ) and 300 files - 100 of 10 mb, 100 of 1 mb, and 100 of 1 kb, in 4
folders - one inside an other ( vista ). see wich will be copied faster.
to
make me clear - this is an example - if you check the vista folder there are about 3 times
more files and 4 times more folders. why more and bigger files ? due to new resources -
icons, png in high resolution. because an dll containing them becames unstable if bigger
than 20mb some dll were splitted in others - like shell32.dll. also the new mui files
containing text from menus and others are very small in size, but they were practically
extracted from older dll's and were put in separate folders, for easy of translations -
it's now easy to change language - same dll but with different mui file. wich ar more
difficult to copy. more, due to the net architecture it use now xml files for settings,
also very small.
and yes, vista sp1 is faster than vista without sp, but only due to
some internal tweaks.
faster boot is done by starting explorer faster in time, before
to start all the services ( like xp ). but it's just an eye trick.
bury xp...just let it rest in peace...
embrase vista!!!
so vista frankensteins, how's your experiments... any explosions on the lab lately?!....
:b
i just spent another day booting my vista machine. it's so much fun, im going to switch
back to xp to make my day go faster. if not there is still pong!
the benchmarks are incorrect because most of us test windows xp beyond the recommended
specifications (mostly triple than the recommannded) and for vista we use only the basic
or some more .
ive had vista home running on a p3 and ok its slow but it works! and stable!
ive got my main machine on vista running quad core and i never had a probelm! i will never
go back to xp... xp is a old os and it will run farster then vista! vista will run faster
the windows 7 when it comes out because things change! hardware changes and things moves
on! as people have said before its like the move from 3.1 to 95 that was a big change...
you had a start bar!!! that took time to get used to! i didnt like 95 at start! move on
people! xp wont be here for ever
what a bunch of morons i see commenting here. vista is slower because it contains
microsoft spyware to report home to mama about your every move, microsoft calls it
'trusted computing'. this os tags the user as a criminal out of the box. its like
wearing an ankle bracelet and being in jail running this os. stupid people! wake up! drm
is evil. traditionally pcs are meaunt to be open source because then everyone can
contribute . microsoft has taken this away with vista due to the propietary nature of drm.
anything vista can do xp can do, vista has no reason to exist.
rant as much as you want about vista i bet you, you will buy a vista system later on and
even though you might find some bugs and stuff you will stay happy with it, its not what i
say its what the past says!!!.
i remember when xp was released, everyone said xp was too slow and slaged it off all the
time. its like anything in the future you need to upgrade to keep it running faster just
like everyone did with the switch between win 98 and xp. who would upgrade there 2008 car
with a 1960s engine?
at vijay:
guess again. i alpha and beta tested more builds of longhorn/vista than i
care to remember. trust me, xp is a better os due to all the crap microsoft injected into
it.
it comes down to a personal choice and what you use your computer for. most ppl here are
in the computer geek category - so obviously vista's performance is challenged and flaws
are found aplenty.
one has to remember microsoft attempts to make an os with
the lowest common detominator - basic moronic logic to satisfy all.
i think it is
called the amputation of modern technology.
in my opinion windows xp sp2/sp3 ( i tried both ) is much faster than vista rtm/sp1 (
tried both ) but on the contrary loses a bit out on stability.
major factor is
that why most of us hate vista is that it lacks hardware compatibility, where xp rules!
another issue is that vista requires enormous hardware resources just for
itself and if you need to run more programs in it you need more resources but hey
motherboard if fully loaded already.
vista is not an evolution of xp, its a
completely new breed. it survives or not we'll see in future.
me! oh i am
sticking to xp
for those who boast about vista try doing the same stuff on xp
based rig and you'll be shocked to see the result.
programs i like to run are everest and riva tuner so i can monitor overclock, system
temps, fans speeds/voltages etc . i had a hell of a time trying to get either programs to
run in xp while in vista i didn't have any problems. games? don't understand what the
problem is, haven't had a problem with any games running in vista, ever! not saying this
is any reason to abandon xp for vista, it's just the way it worked out for me. dual
booted for more than a year and finally said c-ya to xp, i alway let it boot to vista, xp
just sat on the drive unused.
xp is slow and buggy but it has the best gui, the fancy blue screen which i miss so much.
its one gui thats pwns vistas aero. o boy, i miss the pretty blue screen.
has anyone noticed that on xp u cant do jack until everything is loaded, and over time
everything gets slow (like opening my computer for example), i have had the same install
of vista 64 for over a year now, done all the updates as they have came, and no problems,
still faster then xp ever was, oh yer and i can start running applications as the
antivirus is still loading (aka i throw msn, media player and ie at it as soon as its
logged in before anything starts and boom its there)
all you people with shit
computers, stay on your xp, for those of us who are on vista you understand what i mean
oh yer btw
defender - disabled
uac - disabled
security center -
disabled
windows search - disabled
windows sidebar - disabled
prefecth - 2
superfecth - 0
once u have that setting u will hav no hdd activity, and ur
pc will probably run as fast as mine, but if your on 32bit... well chances are your
hardware supports 64, but u might have old devices that only support 32..
oh
yer all u complainin about drivers, besides video and basic system devices, xp drivers
work with vista
eg sound, webcams, printers, modems etc
prefetch*
superfetch*
y waste ur time with xp, all the new progs will soon require vista, simple as that.
cry now, xp users, but soon ull be luvin vista!
guess what...i benchmarked 4 pc's at work and 3 of the 4 machines run faster with vista
not xp.....so...depends on your setup not only your hardware! leave xp it's tired and
old and deserves scrapping now after many fixes.
look at all the comments from people who just can't accept the benchmark results. the
fact is vista is slower than xp. live with it. i am sorry but thats a fact jack. and the
sad thing is that it cant do s.hit compared to xp. vista is a memory whore.
computer tutor? i'm glad you were never my "tutor" memory whore ay! why don't you
explain what you mean by "memory whore" so we can all have a laugh.
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Anyone suprised?
By trip on 19.02.2008 - 01:02