Windows 7 performs poorly compared to XP

[ulillillia]

Until very recently, I've been using Windows XP. With Windows 7 on the verge of being unavailable and not wanting Windows 8, I had to get it immediately. I have a very fresh install of Windows 7 Professional (less than a week old).

When I was using Windows XP, I used the classic theme and turned off pretty much all of the effects. Windows XP was a very fast performing operating system. When I got Windows 7, I noticed about a 30 to 40% drop in performance. GIMP was pushing about 760,000 page faults per second with full CPU usage in XP but in Windows 7, I'm only getting 480,000 page faults per second under the exact same conditions. In addition, my own project, which uses Windows GDI to render with (via AlphaBlend) used to get about 80 fps in Windows XP but now, under the same conditions as before, only gets about 11.3 fps in Windows 7 and the only thing that has changed in both cases is the OS.

I've been told that Aero, due to using hardware acceleration, would speed things up. So, I switched to the default Aero Windows 7 theme and repeated the same tests. I was getting about a 1% drop in performance (476K page faults per second with the same test in GIMP) and 10.9 fps in my own project. I turned off all the effects (the animation and stuff) and I got the same performance with the classic theme. I've tried restarting my computer with the default Windows 7 theme in effect and it made no difference.

I've disabled all the power saving features (I manually turn off my monitor whenever I expect to not use it for extended time). I've fully updated Windows and updated my video card's drivers as well (video card drivers as version 331.93, if I recall but this was happening on a much older version too).

I've run msconfig to remove all unnecessary programs from startup though I haven't touched the services.

There are 2 things I've noticed that seem suspicious. Core Temp is showing my CPU as running at 3.4 GHz and that never changes (and it was changing in XP). I've set the multiplier to 40 for 4 GHz and I'm not seeing this ever showing up. Any time significant activity would occur, what started slow would suddenly speed up by more than double after 1 second of the high CPU load. In Windows 7, I'm noticing that, as I drag image contents in GIMP at a constant speed, there is a pulsing. It remains at the half speed for about 700 milliseconds then goes at the faster speed for about 200 ms with 100 ms for acceleration and deceleration on both sides. This behavior seems odd.

So, my question is, what's causing my 30 to 40% reduction in performance in Windows 7 compared to XP? I'm using Windows 7 Professional on an i7-2600K processor with a GeForce 460.

 

[mbreslin1954]

What does "Core Temp" have to do with CPU speed in GHz? Aren't temperatures measured in degrees instead of GHz?

You say that GIMP was getting 760,000 page faults per second in XP. Are you referring to trying to access a page of virtual memory that had been paged out to disk and was no longer available? That's usually what a "page fault" means with respect to operating systems, but perhaps here it means something different with respect to the application GIMP, I'm not sure. In any case, wouldn't the smaller number of page faults in Windows 7 be a good thing?

From what I've seen of test done back when Windows 7 first came out, it was 10-15% slower than Windows XP, but 15% faster than Vista. Given the improvements in Windows 7, such as better support for multi-processing, in addition to being more secure, I would never go back.

If you really are seeing that kind of performance drop moving to Windows 7, something else is going on. I would try some benchmarking utilities on both operating systems before I would come to the performance conclusions you've come to.

 

[mbreslin1954]

Try this performance test on each of your operating systems and then come to performance conclusions:

http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm

 

[ulillillia]

Core Temp does report the frequency of the processor.

In addition, GIMP also scrolls slower. There's a direct relationship between scrolling speed and page faults when the scrolling is relatively slow. I've reproduced the same conditions and I'm finding about a 30% slower scrolling speed than I was getting with XP. Even then, the fastest scrolling I can get is still about 30% slower than it was in XP. I don't have XP installed any more so I can't test on XP.

And that program isn't freeware so it's a no go.

 

[Ijack]

You don't say how much RAM you have; this could well be the factor leading to a performance drop. (Windows 8 would have been a better choice as it is better at managing RAM and, all round, lighter on resources than 7.)

Presumably you installed 64-bit Windows 7 (why would anyone choose 32-bit nowadays). Make sure you have 8 or, better 16, GB of RAM. Also, you seem to equate more Page Faults with better performance - strange!

 

[ulillillia]

I have 4 GB RAM installed which was the maximum I could use with Windows XP with the least amount of waste possible. However, even if the "peak working set" memory was used for all programs running when I did my tests, I'd still have at least 500 MB to spare. It's not RAM, it's something else.

The biggest performance loss seems to be with GDI-heavy programs - it's about 15% as fast on Windows 7 as it was on XP.

 

[Ijack]

That's the answer; you don't have enough RAM. 4 was fine with XP, but heavy graphics work with 7 requires more (still assuming you installed 64-bit Windows 7). If you're on 32-bit then you're stuck.

Buy more RAM, install 64-bit Windows 7 or, better still, Windows 8 and you should see a significant performance improvement. RAM is cheap; don't bottleneck an expensive computer for the sake of a few dollars.

Don't worry about the Aero interface - Gimp probably switches that off anyway; certainly most games do to improve graphics performance. Anyway, that isn't going to affect image processing much, if at all.

The number one answer to almost all performance problems is give it more RAM; second is stick in a faster hard disk or a SSD; processor is usually the last thing you need to worry about.

 

[ulillillia]

As I stated before, it cannot be the RAM. Load a 1 GB image in GIMP and I still get the same overall performance as without GIMP even being open at all. I have, at this moment, more than 1 GB of RAM free. At the moment, I have 2 2 GB modules installed. GIMP does use the Aero interface as I've tested it with GIMP open and the default Windows 7 theme (unmodified).

And I am using Windows 7 64-bit. Both GIMP and my project are 32-bit programs - could that have anything to do with the performance loss?

 

[Ijack]

"As I stated before, it cannot be the RAM."

OK, have it your way. There's no point in arguing with the intransigent.

 

[ulillillia]

Need a screenshot showing how much RAM I have to spare (currently about 1 1/4 GB free and 1 GB is standby)? Could adding another 4 GB really cause a 30% performance boost? It may only cause about a 2 or 3% boost, mainly if it has faster timings or a higher bus speed. If content was going into swap file, then yes, a huge performance boost could happen but 4 GB is more than enough to not need to use swap file at least for what I do (and it's not gaming). If you don't believe I have as much free memory as I'm claiming, here's a screenshot:

http://www.ulillillia.us/temporary/0007ResourceManagerMemoryUsage.png

 

[Ijack]

You've done proper performance measurements particularly regarding the number of soft and hard page faults? Soft page faults don't matter too much, but hard page faults are performance killers. More hard page faults are bad, bad, bad. More page faults do not mean better performance.

Many, many years of performance tuning on servers has taught me not to rely on simple static measures. You need to use the performance monitors built in to Windows to check what is happening dynamically - with a variety of loads - to measure performance and determine what is bottlenecking a system. Your apparent belief that more page faults means better performance would seem to indicate a fundamental lack of understanding of how memory management works in an operating system.

It's not my place to try and teach you how to measure performance properly, hence my simplistic diagnosis - increasing RAM will almost always improve the performance of a system. And you definitely need more than 4GB of RAM if you are editing files of 1GB or larger. I'd suggest that you research performance tuning using Google, keep an open mind, and do proper performance monitoring before ruling out anything as the cause of poor performance.

I don't expect you to believe me and, frankly, I don't really care any more.

 

[mbreslin1954]

Windows 7 uses extra RAM to cache the file system, so even if it is showing 1 GB or more free doesn't mean that it's not being used as cache. 64-bit Windows will almost always extra RAM for caching, thereby speeding up the performance of the system.

And yes, the software I pointed you to is free to use for the first 30 days, plenty enough time to evaluate performance. But since you can no longer run Windows XP it's a moot point.

And yes, page faults are bad for performance, so more page faults equals worse performance. Do you have the latest drivers for your video card installed?

 

[JDFan]

As I stated before, it cannot be the RAM. Load a 1 GB image in GIMP and I still get the same overall performance as without GIMP even being open at all. I have, at this moment, more than 1 GB of RAM free. At the moment, I have 2 2 GB modules installed. GIMP does use the Aero interface as I've tested it with GIMP open and the default Windows 7 theme (unmodified).

And I am using Windows 7 64-bit. Both GIMP and my project are 32-bit programs - could that have anything to do with the performance loss?

What you are failing to comprehend is that a 64 bit system is going to require more ram than a 32 bit system since all those little pieces of ram are now 64 bit chunks so your 4GB of RAM is no longer able to be spread out for all those background processes as effeciently - add to that the fact that win 7 has a lot more going on in the background than XP ever had and also has higher minimum requirements so the OS itself needs around 2 of that 4GB. of ram just to boot and run -- then figure oince a program requires a single bit of memory space that doesn't fit into the 4GB you have available the OS has to begin shuffling RAM to HDD cache to free up resources for that program which then is a downhill battle as it needs to spend more resources to swap pieces from RAM to HDD and back as needed causing severe slowdowns as it tries to keep up with the system demands and the performance comes to a near halt -- so to sum things up -- YES it could be the RAM !!!

And the reason the CPU is running at 3.4GHz. all the time is probably that it is never having any idle cores as they are being kept busy maintaining the memory space swapping and that also would explain the the "pulsing behaviour" you describe as the system waits for info to be retreived from the HDD cache (much slower Memory) and then once that becomes available performs the actions in ram and then again waits fro the HDD cache to be shuffled again to RAM and on and on !! ( What does the HDD activity light look like as you are running - ie. is it pretty much a constant flicker ?)

 

[Lee-m]

Its much more likely to be the gfx card. Windows 7's composite gui, and reliance on 3d acceleration coming from an xp machine is the most likely cause. Even if Aero is off.

I didnt see any system specs in the main post.

 

[mbreslin1954]

Regarding virtual memory swapping, going to hard disk for swapped memory pages is 100 times slower than accessing that page if it is already in main RAM.

I also suspected the video card, based on the original poster's description of the problem. Anyone know what might be wrong with the card if it performed OK in XP? Old drivers in Windows 7? I haven't a ton of experience with video cards.

 

[JDFan]

@Lee-m -- he actually does list the CPU as an i7 2600K and GPU as a GeForce 460 - so don't think it would be the GPU (other than it not having enough system RAM to assign a good amount as shared between the 460 and the System RAM and having to constantly free that shared space for the system usage when the 4GB ceiling is nearing - thus limiting the GPU performance which again is only fixed by adding more RAM !)

 

[Lee-m]

@Lee-m -- he actually does list the CPU as an i7 2600K and GPU as a GeForce 460 - so don't think it would be the GPU (other than it not having enough system RAM to assign a good amount as shared between the 460 and the System RAM and having to constantly free that shared space for the system usage when the 4GB ceiling is nearing - thus limiting the GPU performance which again is only fixed by adding more RAM !)

guess I missed that mate, its a lot of text.
so its integrated gfx with shared ram of 4gb ? if so I I agree, I think the mystery is solved.

 

[ulillillia]

The GeForce 460 is a separate video card with its own RAM. The system RAM is separate from it. And when GIMP produces page faults, they're the soft type - the HDD light is not constantly on or flickering. While the light does come on, that's from Winamp reading WAV files but there's no change in the frequency between the flashes while moving layers in GIMP (which causes the huge number of page faults - XP was getting 770K page faults per second at the peak high average under the same conditions as I'm repeating in Windows 7) - the only effect is 100% usage on one of the 8 cores. If there was constant CPU activity, I should see the frequency change to 4 GHz like it was in XP but it's not changing at all in Windows 7.

I don't play games on my computer (I'm purely console-only) so a lower end GPU is sufficient enough for me (it's either the 460 or the 7600 GT from Nvidia). My needs call for the CPU far more than the GPU though, obviously, the GPU still plays a role.