Windows XP vs. Vista: The Benchmark Rundown

[Hex]

Why do Vista articles keep being placed in the Cooler and Heatsinks forum?

lol, I wondered that too.

Maybe because it runs cooler...perhaps so cool that ya don't even need a heatsink! 😀 lmao...

 

[zenmaster]

And it is not all about writing a "GOOD" driver anymore.
It is now up to MS to allow the developers to write a good driver?

Why is this you say?
In all prior versions of Windows the driver had direct access to the Windows Kernel. Drivers are now no longer allowed to have direct access to the kernel but must operate through MS permitted interfaces.

For somethings such as MS prorietary DirectX they have written good ties to allow DirectX to work well. Other areas such as OpenGL which can be used on competing platforms MS has not done so.

AV vendors are now screaming because their drivers are being kicked out of the kernel and taking a performance hit, not to mention having potential ways of operating revoked.

If you really understand how an OS works, you will realize the HUGE performance hit that exists by moving something outside of the kernel.
MS Claims this is for security and stability reasons, but IMHO, it is simply a way for MS begin taking over more and more companies as they will only allow their stuff to work properly.

I'm just praying that the EU has the guts to stand firm on MS as they may be our only hope. While Vista has some good new technologies, much of it is not about building a better OS. Rather it is about building one more weapon in taking out competition.

MS had better be careful. If they make their product bad enough, there will be large switch to SUSE and some of the other very good platforms.

 

[Bosaka]

Guess they'll have to re-run their benchmarks all over considering that ATI released Cat 7.1s for Vista today. Pays to actually wait till the launch date to do a review like this, especially when it now has OpenGL support!

 

[p05esto]

Piss on Vista. I hesitated about moving to XP from W2K. XP will be my last MS OS. By the time I need to move from XP Linux will be perfected and very real alternative, or Mac. Later Microsoft - your bloated and clunky DRM lovin, activation happy spyin ass OS has tested my patience for long enough.

 

[zenmaster]

Yes, but even if the benchmarks are better than what you have under XP, it still does not remove the fact that they will not be as fast as they could be. MS could continue to tweak various DirectX DLL calls and other procedures to make them more efficient. This does not, however, remove some of the fundamental issues with locking out the core from 3rd party developers. This is something the EU trade commission is already investigating and hopefully will force MS to revert this model.

 

[zenmaster]

And this is not to say that I will not use Vista.
We will all be forced to use Vista in some fashion.

I just wish MS would make it as good as they could and not use back-handed tricks to fend off competition.

 

[minim3]

wonder how long will it take to rip the dx10 and port it in xp!
That would render upgrading to vista useless - unless- you need the 64bit version and huge amounts of ram or can't live without aero and transparencies. I know I can!

 

[mad_murdock]

Guess they'll have to re-run their benchmarks all over considering that ATI released Cat 7.1s for Vista today. Pays to actually wait till the launch date to do a review like this, especially when it now has OpenGL support!

Funny enough I just installed Vista 2 days ago and just put the Dec 13 drivers on today and 4 hours later, they release the Official 7.1 drivers.

Doom 3 patch 1.2 runs just fine at 119 fps, but much slower than 154.4 under XP
**updated to patch 1.3 of Doom3
XP - 132.7
Vista - 103.2

My 3dmark06 score is only 130 points less than my XP score.
XP with 7.1 - http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1017838
Vista with 7.1 - http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1097562

XP HL2:LC - 141.43
Vista HL2:LC - 127.1

Fear XP
XP - Average - 151
Vista - Average 73 fps (whoa nelly ! I need to check the settings or something)

Overall, since Beta 2 the drivers and OS has gotten cleaner and better performance. I don't plan to actually use Vista anytime soon, other than to dual boot and fiddle with it, when I have time. But it's no longer the scourge of the universe in terms of perfomance.

This does not, however, remove some of the fundamental issues with locking out the core from 3rd party developers. This is something the EU trade commission is already investigating and hopefully will force MS to revert this model

The EU isn't going to make Microsoft put the video driver back in direct contact with the kernel. They didn't have it that way in NT4 and it wasn't the end of the free world. Video performance is expected to be slower because they choose to make the system more stable in terms of video, namely the 3D gaming space. Stuff like locking out Symantec and Mcaffee's Antivirus and such, well that's a different story.


**updated doom3 to pact 1.3, Added FEAR XP scores

 

[flasher702]

wow... everyone and there dog has an excuse for Vista even though they don't know anything about how it works. Seriously people, if you don't know what you're talking about don't post statements, ask questions, or don't post at all.

To the best of my knowlege:

By default OpenGL in Vista runs as a virtual OpenGL v1.4 (not 2.0 or any future version) interface on top of Direct3d and takes a very large performance hit. Using an OpenGL ICD (the same way we use OpenGL now) *should* work as long as Aero is turned off. This means if the game is full-screen, or if you simply turn Aero off, you should be able to get full OpenGL performance out of your GFX card.

Here is the important question that wasn't answer:
THG benched Vista with Aero **OFF** and the OpenGL performance SUCKED. Why is this? It should of worked, it didn't, this is a huge problem. Did THG screw up? Has anyone been able to get OpenGL working properly in Vista? Has anyone pledged to make it work?

This is not some "oh well, something else will replace OpenGL". OpenGL is *the* standard for high-end GFX. If you start listing off games that use DirectX as a counter-argument to that statement you don't know what high-end GFX is, so stop assuming this isn't a problem. OpenGL is, as you may have guessed by the name, and OPEN standard. All of the information MS needed to impliment it properly was freely available to them and they chose not to. This should make you extremely sceptical. If it doesn't it's because you are either extremely niave or extremely ignorant, or possibly both. Don't get offended about it, open your mind. The benchmarks are right in front of you: UT2004 suffered more than 30% performance hit on a very high-end system and the only thing that was changed was the OS.

OpenGL should work on Vista the same way it works on XP: with IDC supplied by the GFX card maker. Either this benchmark is screwed, or Vista (at least currently) is broken. So stop making excuses for MS. If anyone has any info as to what the problem with OpenGL on Vista is please post. If you don't care, don't post, go buy and xbox, and plz never come back. Some people do care and like to be able to actually use their hardware and software to it's fullest potential.

@bourgeoisdude... I'm pretty sure you're completely off base. Vista Home Premium and Vista Enterprise are teh exact same OS, they just have a few different "features" that have no effect on performance. All of these benchmarks were run with Aero OFF. Windows 2000 advanced server has just as much OpenGL support as Win2k Pro and you could, in fact, Configure Win2k Adv. Server to be exactly the same as Win2k Pro and have idenentical performance but even at default settings the extra features of the server version would have verly litte affect on performance of these kinds of benchmarks as they wouldn't be doing anything. The "advanced server" part is just a bundle of server-related features sold as a multi-lisence package, it's the same OS. Name one reason that the Vista Enterprise Edition should have lower performance than Vista Home Premium, I don't care what you bet on it as it has no effect on the performance of the OS, and furthermore I bet you don't even own a farm 😛 THG said "This article deals with basic application execution under Windows Vista Enterprise, which is representative of the other editions. ", if you're going to debate that you kinda need some reasons to back it up with, not vague assumptions. I could be wrong... but you're gonna need some evidence if you want to convince any rational person. Also, several of the applications they ran WERE optimized for vista, a few were incompatible with superfectch (because they already had their own memory managers anyway) and that was noted: they were all slower.

I think the points you make about the ram are very good often glazed over. Even with and extra GIG of ram to use for SuperFetching Vista was STILL slower. If an extra gig of ram made my computer faster or somehow better I'd be ordering ram right now and buying vista, but it doesn't. This is a problem, a very big, expensive, slow problem. SuperFetch seems like a good feature, but it fails to make up for how bloatedly slow Vista is.

 

[elbert]

Vista is a dead stick currently due to XP kills it in games and even other programs are questionable performance. That isnt the worst part because who in right mind would buy a 32bit version of any OS knowing its going to be worthless after a year tops. The only options left is a 64bit vista $300 option which is over priced by any standard. I guess ill be sticking to XP for atleast a year so Microsoft has time to workout all the bugs and move the 64bit version into the mainstream.

 

[flasher702]

wonder how long will it take to rip the dx10 and port it in xp!
That would render upgrading to vista useless - unless- you need the 64bit version and huge amounts of ram or can't live without aero and transparencies. I know I can!

I heard a rumor that DX10 games will be required to check and make sure that you're running Vista or they won't run. I can't find anything to back it up with though :/ WINEHQ is planning on doing it, but as of Dec19th 2006 no one was actually working on it as they are trying to get WINE 1.0 feature frozen and finalized.

 

[mad_murdock]

Vista is a dead stick currently due to XP kills it in games and

You might be disappointed to know that the majority of the world doesn't game. I'm sure there is 20-30 million households in the US alone, that could care less about gaming. Most of the Vista users for the next 6-12 months will probably be people upgrading their 2-3 year old system, which even with vista will still offer a nice performance jump. In about 6 months more business will start moving towards Vista onc ethey know all their apps work with it, and I don't see many of them caring about gaming performance either.

Not that I'm in love with Vista, but there is a much bigger world out there then just games and running apps at warp speed. In my old office, for a large company, we had people who still ran P3-800s with 512MB of ram and Win2k. So if they get a new Core Duo 2 with 1GB of ram, they will be in hog heaven, even with Vista

 

[russki]

Though OpenGL can be run, it takes a MASSIVE performance hit. Apparently there may be a driver directly from OpenGL that will offer superior performance but it will not be installed with windows so most users will still not know to add this driver to obtain reasonable OpenGL performance.

You are ridiculous. There are valid points to be raised against Vista, but this is not one of them, and especially not in this negative tone. If you watch the news flashes here at Tom's, you'll see that ATI (AMD) just released their driver with OpenGL support today, and nVidia's driver release is tomorrow. The reviewer clearly identified this as a driver issue. I would give it at least a chance to see how much improvement the final drivers make before any ultimatum-like statements, if that's your only objection.

Again, I'm not a Vista lover / defender, but we have to stay objective and well informed.

 

[DrM]

The EXTENSIVE DRM inside Vista is the cause of much of the performance decrease. I am surprised that anything shows a performance improvement.

If you haven't read this:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/%7Epgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

you should.

Reading that article should be enough to cause most people to seriously question buying Vista...

M

 

[elbert]

Vista is a dead stick currently due to XP kills it in games and

You might be disappointed to know that the majority of the world doesn't game. I'm sure there is 20-30 million households in the US alone, that could care less about gaming. Most of the Vista users for the next 6-12 months will probably be people upgrading their 2-3 year old system, which even with vista will still offer a nice performance jump. In about 6 months more business will start moving towards Vista onc ethey know all their apps work with it, and I don't see many of them caring about gaming performance either.

Not that I'm in love with Vista, but there is a much bigger world out there then just games and running apps at warp speed. In my old office, for a large company, we had people who still ran P3-800s with 512MB of ram and Win2k. So if they get a new Core Duo 2 with 1GB of ram, they will be in hog heaven, even with Vista
That doesnt disappoiont me as vista doesnt give a nice performance jump. Other than games vista only hold about an even performance to XP as the benchmarks show.

 

[bourgeoisdude]

Yes, but even if the benchmarks are better than what you have under XP, it still does not remove the fact that they will not be as fast as they could be. MS could continue to tweak various DirectX DLL calls and other procedures to make them more efficient. This does not, however, remove some of the fundamental issues with locking out the core from 3rd party developers. This is something the EU trade commission is already investigating and hopefully will force MS to revert this model.

Do you even hear what you're saying? Not to get into a political debate, but--isn't the whole idea of capitalism based on the idea that the people should decide what to buy and what not to? When the government calls all the shots, guess what? We'll have socialism.

It's really simple and logical: if lots of people agree with p05esto's post and refuse to buy Vista, then the EU doesn't have any reason to get involved. I do not believe the people are so stupid that the EU has to fix everything for them--while it may take time, everything that attempts to strangle the market eventually gets ousted or bettered regardless of lawsuits. Do you think the IE suit filed against MS over Windows 98 made MS do anything different? Nope, not one least bit. However, Firefox made MS make a better web browser...

(sigh) I hate to sound like I'm some ranting politician in a hardware forum, but the attitude that government knows best is an attitude allowing our government to destroy our world...and I'm not necessarily refering just to the whole Iraq thing, look at almost every single attempt from government to regulate businesses. Have any of them worked? Perhaps one of the early ones that forced two phone companies to split years ago did help, but that is the only one that comes to mind.

 

[bourgeoisdude]

The DRM is BS, I agree. Nonetheless, it isn't something that isn't already in XP assuming you run windows updates...

 

[minim3]

wonder how long will it take to rip the dx10 and port it in xp!
That would render upgrading to vista useless - unless- you need the 64bit version and huge amounts of ram or can't live without aero and transparencies. I know I can!

I heard a rumor that DX10 games will be required to check and make sure that you're running Vista or they won't run. I can't find anything to back it up with though :/ WINEHQ is planning on doing it, but as of Dec19th 2006 no one was actually working on it as they are trying to get WINE 1.0 feature frozen and finalized.

as always theres hope that a workaround will be found. dx10 is just an api. I see no reason why it can't be ported to xp. At least I hope it's possible!

 

[ecosoft]

XP is indeed a higher performance OS than Vista, but 2000 SR4 is faster than XP! Guess what I'm running? :lol: There isn't a single prog that I run (all of Adobe, Lotus Suites, Office 2003, SoundForge 7, a ton of games, etc., etc.) that require more than W2K. Since I'm running an Opteron 154 (2.85Ghz)-A8N SLI Premium, 2x512 Ballistix 2-2-2-8 1T, Ultimate X1950PRO, and (4) Raptors I haven't found the need for multi-core CPU's, so "up" XP-Vista's ass :lol:

 

[flasher702]

Vista is a dead stick currently due to XP kills it in games and

You might be disappointed to know that the majority of the world doesn't game. I'm sure there is 20-30 million households in the US alone, that could care less about gaming. Most of the Vista users for the next 6-12 months will probably be people upgrading their 2-3 year old system, which even with vista will still offer a nice performance jump. In about 6 months more business will start moving towards Vista onc ethey know all their apps work with it, and I don't see many of them caring about gaming performance either.

Not that I'm in love with Vista, but there is a much bigger world out there then just games and running apps at warp speed. In my old office, for a large company, we had people who still ran P3-800s with 512MB of ram and Win2k. So if they get a new Core Duo 2 with 1GB of ram, they will be in hog heaven, even with Vista

But you're arguing that the preception of the uninformed user justifies Vista's bloat. From a market standpoint we very well could be trapped into it by the stupidity of the average user, but that doesn't make vista faster or less bloated. So many times I had to talk customers out of buying WinXP because they thought that it would make their computer faster when, in fact, their computer would have slowed to a crawl unless they quadrupled the amount of ram they had at a minimum. And try as I might, I couldn't manage to sell new computers to most of them (and I really, really wanted to sell them a new computer and would have happily loaded XP onto it for them if it helped me make the sale) as they didn't want to pay that much. A lot of corporations won't be making full or even parital switchovers to Vista anytime soon either for the same reason. Win2k and XP are securable and stable, there is very little reason for a corporate environment to switch to vista after they've already made 2k and XP work.

 

[russki]

The EXTENSIVE DRM inside Vista is the cause of much of the performance decrease. I am surprised that anything shows a performance improvement.

If you haven't read this:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/%7Epgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

you should.

Reading that article should be enough to cause most people to seriously question buying Vista...

M

I did indeed read the article, as well as MS's response to it that is generally dismissed within the article itself.

My opinion on the subject is rather unpopular on these forums. I can only sum it up by saying that I can see both sides of the argument.

Let me start out by saying that I think that DRM, as a concept, is wrong, and that I think that, in general, MS is pretty much as evil, lazy, and anti-competitive in their business practices as a company gets.

However, I do not blame MS for the DRM situation in Vista; and I do have a problem with the article in that link.

Let's start with the problem, because it's easy to summarize. The article is extremely biased and, although not making any misrepresentations, it twists the truth in a manner that it designed to present the situation in the worst possible way for Vista. An example of that would be making statements regarding certain protections in Vista that were also, for a long time now, included in the previous OS's, which serves the point of making it look like Vista adds an avalanche of new protections that severely impair the user's enjoyment of content. This kind of biased presentation is, in my mind, repugnant, and automatically destroys credibility of the author. That is why I asked for an unbiased review with real life impact and real life scenarios (vs. the worst possible case examined in the article) of the new (additional) DRM measures on user experience.

One other thing I need to mention here, is that I have absolutely no problem with impairing user experience of pirated material, be it software or multi-media content. I am in no way, nor have I ever been associated with any of this content creation. Still, I am sorry, but I have no sympathy for people who feel entitled for anything.

Now in terms of the unpopular view that all this is not MS's fault. Well, really, it is quite simple. I think MS is smart enough of a business to realize that an OS is just a platform for content, be it software (traditionally), or, recently, movies, music, etc. In fact, the reason why Windows survived and killed off the superior tech such as OS2 was specifically because of content. For this reason, it is imperative to the success of the OS that they conform to industry norms in terms of protected content, to insure that there is content released for the system (or, alternatively, that there are no accusations from the industry groups that MS encourages piracy). In this, I disagree with the contents of http://badvista.fsf.org site somebody linked to. I do not think that Vista is marketed to content providers and not consumers. But I do believe that MS knows that they have to conform to industry standards in order to ensure availability of content for the system because it is content availability that is ultimately required in order to attract consumers.

Which brings me to my next point, and that is who is to blame. And that is the various industry organizations that came up with these DRM schemes in the first place. I wish there was some kind of a law that would render them illegal, because I do think that they place certain impairments on the legitimate consumers' enjoyment of purchased stuff. And that is not right. For some reason, even scandals such as the Sony/BMG rootkit do not seem to reduce their zeal for these severely restrictive schemes. But until that changes, I can see how a major platform is almost forced to accommodate these industry norms if it wants to be successful.

Again, in no way do I think that a user's experience should be restricted if he or she acquired the content in a legitimate manner. I feel that the schemes implemented in Vista will result in this, but I have not experienced this first hand, nor have I seen any practical examples yet. I think this situation is wrong. But I think that the anger should be directed at the industry bodies that ratified these standards.

 

[bydesign]

I just wish that M$ would stop selling and cut of support for their OS to the EU until they realize their government should stop harassing M$. They do all this litigation and nobody wants their local developers crap anyway. It just makes the EU richer, needed because of the poor economic policies that they enacted in the first place.

 

[woodchuk]

Everything runs through this machine, from Photoshop, games, Adobe Audition, internet, lots of USB stuff, you name it. I want to thank Microsoft for releasing their plans on pulling the plug on XP in 2010 which makes this particular rig more than adequate until then. Most other products have been matured in testing before release to an unsuspecting BETA public. Want to fly on Boeing's new prototype? Tickets half price.

I'm sure I'll build a Vista machine sometime but not as a replacement just yet. Considering the hardware upgrades I would need, that's a lot of money for a pretty face.

 

[DrM]

russki,

I agree. I think that each of the parties is to blame. The content creators want total control over how people use their content. MS wants to control the distribution channel. MS has already indicated that they want to control the living room now that they control the business environment.

As a consumer, I believe that once I buy something, say a movie, I should be able to use it for my personal use as I see fit. I should be able to make a backup copy, save it to my network storage for later use, or play it on any of my playback devices like my ipod, tv, pc, etc.

The content companies DON'T believe that you own it (or at least they don't act like it). They believe that you RENTED the content from them and they still retain all rights. The copyright law prevents me from distributing the content to others, but it shouldn't prevent me from using it.

The content companies try to use DRM to force you to pay for each of the ways that you wish to use their content.

I believe that by MS adding MUCH higher levels of DRM to the OS, we are only going to see increased uses of DRM to restrict our rights as consumers. This is a very bad thing for consumers...

 

[bourgeoisdude]

...MS has already indicated that they want to control the living room now that they control the business environment...

Maybe, but I'd trust Microsoft to control the US market to over trusting the EU to control it :lol: :lol: :lol: