Windows XP vs. Vista: The Benchmark Rundown

[russki]

I tend to interpret MS' statements re: control of the living room as a figure of speech, and not quite so literally (e.g. they want to be the provider of choice through superior tech, which I don't have that big of a problem with).

In terms of renting the content (or rather, licencing) - that never sat right with me, and I do agree with you that once I bought a movie, I should be able to put it on my PC and stream it to any of my rooms, put it on the iPod, or otherwise use it as I see fit as long as it is me using it.

Restrictions on this, to me, should be illegal. Practically, that is unlikely to be outlawed, pretty much ever, and I think that, unfortuately, they are going to try to restrict uses as much as possible.

 

[russki]

I thnik EU and the stripped down versions of Vista on sale in the EU are the perfect example of the futility of trying to fight MS. In the end, it ends up being compromise-like half-measures that produce a product that consumers are not interested in. In an attempt to protect consumers, the EU ended up castrating (pardon my crudeness) the product offering in a way to render it useless.

This is the type of situation where you either break their back, or not do anything at all.

 

[yyrkoon]

The comparison isn´t quite fair, if you ask to RUN Vista ona system, they demand a heavy 3D video card, XP don´t.
Also a heavy proc. (duo) and a lot of mem (2G). is not a waste on a Vista.

I am telling this, do you think that offices will buy systems with a heavy video card? Don´t think so. Ofcourse this articel was written with a gamer in mind. But when you write this articel pure about office app, then you get a different result.

They also left out HDD benchmarks (at least, I didn't see any), so yeah, you're right, it isn't fair, but not in Vistas favor. HDD performance has a lot to do with at least some of the benchmarks, and I've already proven to myself, that at least the Vista software aspect concerning HDDs, is A LOT slower.

Just like for the last article, I mentioned that a 4x RAID0 array that performed at 132MB/s substained in XP Pro, only did 85MB/s sustained in Vista. Thats a considerable performance hit. Now, not EVERYONE NEEDS this kind of disk performance, but depending on what I'm doing, I make good use of it.

 

[pmr]

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.

WTF?

 

[ralfthedog]

It makes sense to me that Vista would not be good for Open GL. Open GL makes it easer for people to develop cross platform applications. Write an ap or a game In Open GL and it is much easer to port it to Linux or OS X.

If developers are required to write a Direct X version for Windows and A GL version for everyone else, they will write much fewer Mac/Linux applications.

Just my little bit of paranoia.

 

[Rripperr]

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.

Actually, capitalism is based on the concept of dealers offering different products at competetive pricing. Capitalism is not a carte blanche that you will get exactly what you want or need. It justs suggests that different products should offer competeting features for different price-points. A Kia mini-van will never have the warranty of a Mercedes, because it would be stupid (from a financial standpoint).

Microsoft is NOT the only OS around. And you could (uselessly) argue that it's not even the best. But the cold, hard fact is that some 70-75% of all server and desktop systems use it. So, obviously, they've been doing something right over the last 25+ years. If it's not what you want, then somebody needs to really come with something better. Until then, MS will, defacto, control the market.

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.

People have been waiting for over 15+ years for Linux to be "perfected". It's simply never going to happen. Don't get me wrong, it is a decent system. But because it is open sourced, it will never be a "secure" system.

 

[russki]

Just like for the last article, I mentioned that a 4x RAID0 array that performed at 132MB/s substained in XP Pro, only did 85MB/s sustained in Vista. Thats a considerable performance hit. Now, not EVERYONE NEEDS this kind of disk performance, but depending on what I'm doing, I make good use of it.

I'm gonna bet that's a driver issue. NTFS is NTFS. The rest are the drivers.

Oh, by the way, to whomever this concerns - if you're gonna rate something anyone posts as low, please at least respond with why you did so. I have no problem if people disagree with me, but at least do so.

 

[turpit]

We already know that Windows Vista offers tremendous improvements in usability, but isn't that good a choice for gaming - at least not yet. How is its application performance compared to Windows XP?

Decreased performance, decreased license flexability, increased resource demands, increased hardware demands, increased price AND restrictive DRM. Oh and someday, there will be more 64bit compatable software that can make use of it.

Whats not to like? :roll:

 

[clue69less]

We already know that Windows Vista offers tremendous improvements in usability, but isn't that good a choice for gaming - at least not yet. How is its application performance compared to Windows XP?

Decreased performance, decreased license flexability, increased resource demands, increased hardware demands, increased price AND restrictive DRM. Oh and someday, there will be more 64bit compatable software that can make use of it.

Whats not to like? :roll:

How skinny it makes your wallet?

 

[thomasxstewart]

😀 My Vista repoirt involves three machines, AMD 2600+ on game-union k7s7ag, it did not run aero glass & cut back Vista was not so great, especially when you consider driver problems. One less mainboard.

Two was ASUS P4BGL-MX/533., ITS 2001 MAINBOARD & IT RUNS AERO GLASS. However, GL in model number may hint at what aero glass does on it, wobbles. Like early Pentium, its staggers back & forth in little steps, it would be fine, except Windows XP drivers killed it. Two less mainboards.
Celeron 2.0 Ghz surived to fight another day.


Lastly, ASUS A8R32-MVP DELUXE.Last summers wizzard, it was claimed to be Vista Ready, Top Notch. NO. There are no Vista Drivers & using what you can find leaves you believing you have defective mainboard, as Audio has extreme issues in Vista, yet it plays everything except Media quite well. God, Why do they call it MVP?

In all three cases migrating back to Windows XP was extreme improvement of performance. Especially MVP mainboard, which in XP is souped up hot rod of delight. WARNING: Will robinson, its MIDNIGHT.

AFTER MIDNIGHT gonna jump up & shout, gonna stimulate some action, gonna find out what its all about. AFTER MIDNIGHT.

Signed😛HYSICIAn thomas stewart von drashek m.d. :roll:

 

[c4onastick]

-multithreaded apps (<--- big one )

I'm not holding my breath. They still haven't figured out how to handle parallel processes, let alone a multi-threaded process! Thank you Tom's for doing this analysis. This was a great article! It confirmed my suspicions about Vista.

 

[MrBelmontvedere]

I really would like to see a comparison like this done between more Windows operating systems, going back as far as Windows 95. Maybe with a few less benchmarks run, maybe just the video encoding test to see just how much bloat has been added over the years.

 

[croc]

AUD 750? Is Bill Gates insane?

 

[russki]

I really would like to see a comparison like this done between more Windows operating systems, going back as far as Windows 95. Maybe with a few less benchmarks run, maybe just the video encoding test to see just how much bloat has been added over the years.

I am going to disagree with your wording here, mostly because you make a blanket statement that everything that's been added is "bloat." It did end up enhancing usability, in most cases, so I think it's a pretty dangerous tact to take. I am not going to say that MS is not lazy in their coding practices, and I do think that they make stiffer system requirements make up for this lazyness, nonetheless, I think that some things such as indexed search, for example, are worth sacificing some memory / processing power for, provided there is a surplus to begin with. And that's really the premise of adding all these new features...

 

[HotFoot]

From what I've read, the main reason for Windows' bloat comes from MS sticking to their guns on compatibility issues. MS has to make a lot of compromises in order to have 10+ year-old software run on their OS. Compare this to Apple's switch (either OS9 or OSX I can't remember), where they took a gamble and came out with a truly modern OS. Backwards compatibility is sacrificed, but the end result is beautiful. MS realizes that the number one reason people buy their OS isn't because it's better in any way other than compatibility. Big firms don't want to have to buy new applications, so they stick with Windows.

Vista tries to do everything at once. It tries to catch up to other OS's in terms of being modern and intuitive (and pretty). It tries to run all your old applications dating back to the '90s. The fact it works at all is really quite amazing.

For all that, though, Vista also tries to take you more out of control of what you can do with your computer. DRM issues noted (and significant), according to the EULA, MS reserves the "right" to delete applications from your computer without notice. Isn't that crossing a line?

 

[i_hate_flying]

To me, this article sounded like: "Vista sucks on this, Vista sucks here, Vista sucks on that, but you should buy it."

Vista definitely sucks on _that_.

 

[Mach5Motorsport]

and you will never need more than 640k ram...

Ah a paraphrase of Bill Gates when asked about Lotus 123 :lol:

 

[zenmaster]

I guess you don't understand basic free trade laws as defined in the US or Europe. The US is simply failing to enforce them. Recall the Anti-Trust suit that MS lost and then the governement simply said, pls dont do it again and we will forget about it.

The law states that it is illegal to use a monopoly to force the sale of a 3rd party product. Example - If your power company designed a new television set, but remodulated the pwer coming into your home so that only their TV sets ran. That would be illegal.

Windows is in essence a monoply and have a history of coding Windows so other software packages from other Vendors do not work well. They will add code such as "If Software = WordPefect" then Blue Screen. Now the WP example was made up, there there have been actual examples of this in MS history. They are just becoming more and more overt now.

For "Free Market" to Win, MS needs to write a better Office Package for folks want to use it. Not to write code to prevent the Offce Packages from other vendors from working.

 

[russki]

I have not seen anybody prove or even allege anything in terms of the code you are referring to; that would be halted and is clearly and undisputably wrong.

Now, what Microsoft has done time and time again is not adhering to any knid of open formats, essentially taking a dump on anything they didn't like because of their, let's call it, penetration. That is bad, too, but they are getting better, just look at the new XML based office formats. More to come on this later.

 

[enewmen]

I am guessing all these tests are not fair.
Suppose Vista is ALL NEW. Then tighter specs can be written, Wishlists made to make software better, bugs worked out from a clean sheet of paper, etc.
Fair enough. However, I don't know of ANY software or hardware that is 100% made for Vista.
I expect in about a year, this will finally happen.
Then if there is still sucky benchmarks, bugs, etc, I give up on Microsoft.

 

[NightlySputnik]

For "Free Market" to Win, MS needs to write a better Office Package for folks want to use it. Not to write code to prevent the Offce Packages from other vendors from working.

Sorry to say, but both on my laptop and my desktop I use OpenOffice and never had a problem. I started with 2.0.1.0 and I'm now at 2.0.4.0 (or is it 5?) if my memroy is right. I never had a crash on it.
__________________________________________

About the question on XP vs Vista, I have my answer. I'm getting my new system during february and will get my 320GB HDD at 2*160GB and do dual-boot. I'll have both XP Home 32-bit and Vista Home Premium 64-bit. Adding a 2nd HDD plus my USB2.0 HDD will let me do all the home movie encoding that I want and I will be ready for when Vista will surpass XP. Adding a Dx10 VPU will follow in late 2007 when DX10 games will be available, and price not too high.

I remember seing game benchmark comparing W98 to XP when it came out and XP was always at least 1-2% behind when not a lot more. They then said than XP was too ressource hungry. Those who got new PC then, and went W98/ME only, sure regret it now. It'll be the same in 2 years from now with WXP.

I should say tough that I would not have upgrade to Vista if I would have kept my old PC (see below).

 

[HotFoot]

I've said enough of my own impressions about Vista already. I got these impressions reading others' posts online and visiting a few websites. However, only time will tell if Vista is golden or a turd, as actual Vista users begin to report their experiences. Today we start to find out, and round one does not go to Vista. In time, some of the issues may be ironed out, but certainly some of them are built into Vista.

Vista seems particularly poorly suited for any Enthusiast given it's restrictions on upgrading. Some people effectively get a computer a year. $400/year (or two years I suppose since you're allowed to do one transfer with the retail version) is pretty steep.

Right, I didn't mean to start ranting again. I'm stopping. I just thought this link should be posted, not that it's hard to find.

 

[russki]

I'm with you on the time will tell thing. I think the adoption is inevitable - every new system you buy will have Vista installed.

Corporate world will eventually follow, probably, but that cycle always takes a couple of years. They'll have to make sure their existing hardware and software will work under Vista.

I was not a big fan of the Tom's news article on the bloggers and Vista. I would join in with slamming Vista on pricing (M$ is evil, as I said, and must be stopped somehow), or certain usability issues. In terms of driver support - give me a break, this is the first day of the release. I remember having to get a new mobo for XP because the old one did not have working drivers. So it could be worse then getting a printer.

But most of all, I have a problem with these "bloggers" because some of them, really, should not have a voice. I prefer the experts, such as Paul Thourott (sp? www.winsupersite.com). He seemed to be genuinely excited about Vista, and that's saying something. If you think he's in MS's pocket, just see his review of Zune, or how he slammed the media center features of Vista in one of his previews. He's not afraid not to pull punches.

Edit: The point is, if you don't like the new interface - well, that's your preference. If you are not happy with tiered requirements, that's fine, but they don't render a system (at least its Ultimate version) bad. Let's talk about real issues. Is enterprise-level networking broken? Or has it been fixed? Is DRM so intrusive that it disturbs typical consumer experience as we came to know it with XP? Those are the things we should be talking about.

And of course, application incompatibilities. But that list should be updated as new drivers become available, such as the OpenGL benchmarks since the release of updated AMD/Ati and Nvidia drivers.

 

[yyrkoon]

I just got back from the Las Vegas 'office 2007, Vista, launch across America'
Seminar, and most of the features they are pushing, are ones, you can have in XP, or similar, but at an added cost, or at least usage through th rid party software. The main thing they were pushing was the new search engine within VIsta its self, and yes, its kind of cool, but really, the service really knocks the piss out of the CPU when its indexing (first thing I noticed during RC2), and while once everything is indexed, things are definitely faster search wise, indexing takes a good long time, when you have 1.5 + TB storage (such as myself).

For myself, I dont plan on getting Vista any time soon, but I was pretty much impressed from what I've seen with Office 2007(will run under XP also), and their other business oriented products are looking good as well. I do know that when I do upgrade to vista, it will be the ultimate version, but then again, thats more than a year away for me, maybe even two . . .

 

[jumblue]

Adoption is not inevitable: look at Windows ME.

For any platform to succeed it must have a killer-app. Vista has none. This is Windows ME all over again. I hope Vista dies the same death as ME and Microsoft is forced to come out with a real OS like they did with XP. Of course it took ME and 2000 to flop before they came out with XP… (2000 runs OK but it takes forever and one day to load and shut down)

There is a big problem with Vista taking up too much harddrive space: backup and restores will be painful. So will virtual machine. You need a light OS so that backups and VM are as painless as possible. Btw: Vista does not support VM and you are violating your perchase agreement if you try to VM Vista. VM is a very cool thing that XP does well and Vista wont.

Some people like these new things:
-New Aero interface – you will turn that off the moment notice how much faster you pc runs w/o it.
-Superfetch – there are ram-disk programs you can buy for XP that do the same thing. Also, there are ram disks you can buy.
-Sleep mode – XP does this.
-DX10 – there are no games for X10 yet!!! And they could make DX10 run on XP if they wanted to and it would probably run faster. We can prey that someone will crack DX10 so that games will run on XP – this would help make the game industry money so someone might get paid to make this crack…
-64 bit and multi proc – XP _PRO_ does this MS still hasn’t worked out the bugs – I bet they wont now that Vista is out…
-IE7 and Office07 – XP does this
-Search your PC – Google has a free download for this and it uses very little ram
-Encrypted HD – XP does this

Again, where is the killer app?

OK people! Win98SE was the same speed as XP but XP was way more stable and ran every app that 98 would plus it could see more then one cpu. XP’s was a smaller and tighter code set then 2000 and loaded way faster. XP kicked 2000’s and XP’s ass. Nuff said on that!

Lots of people are staying stuff like this: “My guess is that once we start adapting programs more and more for Vista, it will become more evident of Vista's newer capabilities and functions, particularly with a high-end PC.”

NO! Vista is way to much of a resource hog to ever compete with XP! Kernel lockout is making this even worse.

I don’t think too many people will switch to some other os, I think most will just keep XP until the next os just like we did with ME and 2000.

They world cares about more then games? Well, the world didn’t take to ME too well.

I will be running XP stripped-to-the-bone for a while it seems – 79 MB of ram at boot on install. With all my apps running I might hit 300 MB until I load a game. BTW: games are supposed to take lots of resources because of their graphic – that’s the price of graphics. Vista should be just as small and tight or better then XP when you turn Aero off.

Oh, I think the code bloat is to make it harder to fileshare 😉