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Performance results for the Windows 7 RTM build are mixed, but it has a leaner footprint than Vista and a slicker UI than either Vista or XP.  (Source: CNET)
Windows 7's feel is much improved, but actually performance varies

While Windows 7's requirements (a 1 GHz x86 processor, 1GB of RAM for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit, and support for Direct X 9) are similar to Windows Vista, its install footprint is leaner (16 GB for 32-bit versus 20 GB in Vista, 20 GB for 64-bit versus 40 GB in Vista) and its memory usage is tighter (some users have run the release candidates on systems with less than 1 GB of RAM).  All of this adds up to significant improvements over Vista and a modern OS capable of running on most netbooks.

Great graphical looks, touch functionality, and new UI options make the package even sweeter.  However, no matter how nice the ride looks, it's always good to look inside -- for example, the snazzy OS X Snow Leopard may look slick, but is incapable of playing most games and will only run (officially) on Mac hardware.  With that in mind let's look at a recent benchmark by CNET of the Windows 7 RTM build.

Interestingly, the results were mixed.  Boot times, despite dedicated tweaking from Microsoft were slightly worse than in Vista SP2 or XP SP3 (by over a second).  Shutdown times, though, showed much improvement over the slow XP, and even some improvement over Vista.

Since the 7100 build, Windows 7's performance in Microsoft Office and iTunes has improved significantly.  In the Office benchmark, though it still gets beat by both Vista and XP (the overall leader) and it manages to now tie with XP in iTunes (ahead of Vista).  In a final Cinebench benchmark, Windows 7 performance improved between the 7100 and 7600 builds, moving it ahead of Vista and just behind XP.

Gaming results should be coming soon, which should provide more interesting analysis of the new OS's true performance.  In the meantime, though, the verdict seems that despite mixed performance against XP and Vista, Windows 7 holds its own. 

As the experience and feel are much smoother than the previous two OS's, the standstill in performance, normally a bad thing, probably will be sufficient for Windows 7 to see great commercial success.  Windows 7 completes Vista's ascent into a OS X level of user interface polish, while holding its ground in performance, something that has placed Windows ahead of competitors Linux and OS X.

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64-bit?
By Spivonious on 8/5/2009 1:54:47 PM , Rating: 5
Why not test 64-bit? Vista x64 was noticeably faster than 32-bit on the same machine so I'm sure the same follows for Win7.

Also, when was the last time you booted your machine? I thought everyone used S3 sleep these days. In that respect Win7 is much improved over Vista, coming back and ready to go in <5s.

Overall, 7 just feels more responsive than Vista. Whether or not this is simply UI tricks (fast animations, etc.) or a real speed increase remains to be seen. Regardless, it is well worth the $50 upgrade price.




RE: 64-bit?
By tedrodai on 8/5/2009 1:59:21 PM , Rating: 4
I actually shut down my machine fairly often, though I've let it sleep more lately. The wasted metric in my eyes is shut-down time.


RE: 64-bit?
By theapparition on 8/5/2009 2:43:07 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
The wasted metric in my eyes is shut-down time.

"What's happening Peter? We're a little short staffed so I'm going to have to ask you to come in tomorrow. Yeah.......I'm also going to have to ask you to come in on Sunday, too. Great."

Shorter shutdown times would have helped Peter get out of the office faster than you can say TPS report. :P


RE: 64-bit?
By Souka on 8/5/2009 4:24:15 PM , Rating: 5
So you sit there watching the screen that says "shutting down" until the PC shuts off?

I believe, but correct me if I'm wrong, most people (who are normal) tell the PC to shutdown then do other things....like walk away...

Just my obersvation.... ;)


RE: 64-bit?
By TomZ on 8/5/2009 5:00:07 PM , Rating: 5
That depends if the machine in question is a laptop that you are about to stuff into a bag and go somewhere with.

I can remember several times when I ran XP that I'd get to my destination only to find my laptop very hot and with a dead battery because it didn't shut down.


RE: 64-bit?
By mindless1 on 8/5/09, Rating: 0
RE: 64-bit?
By StevoLincolnite on 8/6/2009 12:17:26 AM , Rating: 2
I personally disabled the Sleep/Shutdown when my lid closes on my laptop, however the Start-up/Shutdown times is a non-issue for me, because my laptop never gets turned off. (Been online and running for a month straight without a reboot).

The reason I disabled the Shutdown/Sleep when I close the lid is simple, I got tired of closing my laptop when I was moving it into another room and finding it turned itself off. ~ I've had this set-up for a good 8 years without issues.

And being a laptop I've already saved a fairly large portion of energy in comparison to a desktop as well.

The other day I formatted my neighbors computer and reinstalled Windows, at first I decided to chuck Windows 7 on it, the machine was an Athlon XP 2400+, 768mb of memory and a Radeon 9600pro, Windows 7 was extremely snappy on that machine, more so than I was expecting, in comparison Windows Vista would have brought it to it's knees and made the machine scream "I'm a teapot!".

However after discovering that with only 768mb of memory and Windows 7 consuming 450mb of memory on idle, games like Need for Speed: Most Wanted as well as Carbon ran as slow as molasses because of the constant paging to the Hard Disk.
So I formatted again and installed XP which solved that problem, unfortunately it takes forever for the system to shut down with XP, I remember when such a thing never bothered me, I would press the power button and walk off, while the machine shuts itself down. (Maybe I got used to the shutdown times of Windows 7 on my Athlon X2 7750, 4gb of ram ~ desktop?)

It was a low-end rig, so I didn't expect wonders, but Windows 7 on a low-end machine with less than 1gb of ram performs rather well, as long as it's for an Office/Web machine, and you don't intend on running any games.

Memory is cheap these days, unless you are hunting for brand new 1gb sticks of DDR400, or 512mb sticks of SD 133 memory.

I was actually going to attempt at checking out Readyboost with Windows 7, I had several memory sticks but none were functioning, which is unfortunate, I wouldn't mind seeing if 2x 4gb ready boost drives made much of a difference.


RE: 64-bit?
By Silver2k7 on 8/6/2009 5:01:28 AM , Rating: 2
iirc readybost only makes any difference with small ammounts of ram.. with 4gb or so it makes no difference..

but with only 768mb there might have been some difference.. but the best choise would probably been to just upgrade the ram in that machine..


RE: 64-bit?
By agris on 8/7/2009 12:33:18 AM , Rating: 2
I believe the shut down time on XP is primarily governed by two registry entries:

WaitToKillAppTimeout
HungAppTimeout

Both of which are set at a default 30000 (milliseconds). Changing both to 5000 makes shut down take about 5 seconds, the same as Vista / W7.

WaitToKillAppTimeout 5000 has the most effect


RE: 64-bit?
By TomZ on 8/6/2009 9:19:07 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
If your laptop wasn't shutting down you should have fixed the problem instead of letting it persist
The problem was with the power management driver for the Thinkpad I was using at the time. I didn't feel like writing my own driver to fix that.


RE: 64-bit?
By mindless1 on 8/5/2009 10:36:15 PM , Rating: 5
I've never owned an XP machine that took that long to shut down, they had some kind of configuration problem, hung app(s), or something similar. Pity the testers were too clueless to figure that out, I can't help but wonder if they have similarly misconfigured their own home systems so they never realized the problem.


RE: 64-bit?
By zzeoss on 8/6/2009 3:19:26 AM , Rating: 2
My work computer has so much "activity monitoring" crap installed, and my control over it is so limited, that something is bound to crash on shutdown (error window that just stays there).

And internal policy dictates that computers MUST be shutdown overnight/weekend.
So i have to just sit there and look at it while it shuts down ...


RE: 64-bit?
By deeznuts on 8/5/2009 4:28:09 PM , Rating: 2
PETER should have just held the power button for 7 seconds and walked. Sure he may have lost some data but that should have been saved already anyway ...


RE: 64-bit?
By xsilver on 8/5/2009 8:47:38 PM , Rating: 2
Peter should have cut the hard line... 1 sec and he's out the door!


RE: 64-bit?
By DEVGRU on 8/5/2009 5:50:13 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Shorter shutdown times would have helped Peter get out of the office faster than you can say TPS report. :P


...except the "PC" screens showing Peter's work computer shutting down is actually a Mac running (duh) Mac OS. Nice touch with the C:> prompt at the end though.


RE: 64-bit?
By joos2000 on 8/9/2009 6:12:02 PM , Rating: 2
This deserves a 6!


RE: 64-bit?
By DEredita on 8/5/2009 2:10:12 PM , Rating: 5
I agree that 64-bit should have been tested. I don't understand why the push is not being made across the board. It has to happen, so lets stop prolonging the inevitable and move forward. This includes tech reviews, articles, and blogs. 64-bit is here to stay, as 32-bit is on its deathbed and will be leaving us shortly.


RE: 64-bit?
By mmntech on 8/5/2009 4:48:07 PM , Rating: 4
Businesses would be my guess. Of the two computers sitting in front of me right now, one is a celeron, the other is a pentium iv. Both 32-bit, both still running xp. Microsoft still wants to keep that door open since it's cheaper to upgrade the os than it is to buy new workstations. The Atom and its popularity also presents a barrier to x64. It will come but the benefits just aren't obvious yet since most people don't need more than 4gb of ram at this point. Even most games still use 32-bit code. The only way things will change is if new system manufacturers stop offering 32bit as an option and just make it all 64. I know Apple is going to do that. Hopefully Dell et al follow suit. The 64bit software will quicly follow after that happens. From experience, third party devs are lazy. Sometimes they need a little extra push before they adopt a new architecture.


RE: 64-bit?
By William Gaatjes on 8/8/2009 7:39:40 AM , Rating: 2
There is more to x86-64 then just a larger memory address space.

There are for example more registers to use, this will speed up execution of software.
There are at least 2 ways to speed up execution of a program.
1. One way is to run the processor at a higher speed.
2. The other way is by using more efficiënt instructions together with more internal processor registers.

The first way will speed up every program, programs that do not use the extra registers and instructions.
The second way will only boost speed of programs that are using the extra registers and instructions.
Fortunately, When using more registers and instructions also allows higher clocking. In the end you have only benefits.

In the x86 world a lot of swapping of registers is done because the x86 architecture has a limited amount of only 8 internal registers. Intel and AMD hide this be using a technique called register renaming :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_renaming

In effect, behind the scene the processor is doing housekeeping to hide the bottleneck of having only 8 registers. It does this in a way of having an hidden internal large register file, where the 8 x86 registers are mapped on to. What this means is although the processor has more registers you can only use 8 at a time because the x86-32 instruction set demands this !

Now this costs processor real estate and power. It is far more effieciënt in code execution to offload part of this bookkeeping of register use to the compiler by having more processor registers. And that is something x86-64 also provides. 16 64bit registers. That combined with more efficiënt execution of instructions speeds up software.

This is also another reason :
Instruction pointer relative data access: Instructions can now reference data relative to the instruction pointer (RIP register). This makes position independent code, as is often used in shared libraries and code loaded at run time, more efficient.

I do not have to mention how much DLL's windows has. And this feature makes the use of DLL's faster.

More details can be found here for example :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64


RE: 64-bit?
By B3an on 8/5/2009 2:16:32 PM , Rating: 2
These "benchmarks" are not even worth talking about. Anyone whos used Win7 knows it's overall faster and more responsive than either Vista or XP.

Like you say these idiots have not even tested 64-Bit. And only have a few tests, not very good ones at that.

I could do a better job of this myself. Just wait for actual benchmarks done right from Anand or something.


RE: 64-bit?
By DEredita on 8/5/09, Rating: 0
RE: 64-bit?
By Ammohunt on 8/5/2009 3:55:37 PM , Rating: 2
You still read that rag? when Boot magazine died so did any tech magazine worth reading.


RE: 64-bit?
By Morphine06 on 8/6/2009 10:08:56 AM , Rating: 2
I still get it in the mail, but mostly to argue with while I enjoy the benefits of my morning coffee.

The magazine that I really enjoy is CPU.


RE: 64-bit?
By san1s on 8/5/2009 4:41:49 PM , Rating: 4
have you ever wondered why the world records aren't set with all the ram slots filled? You can't overclock as high. Sorry if this is a double post, but when i first posted this, it didn't show up, I wanted 5 minutes, and it still didn'y show up, so I'm writing it again.


RE: 64-bit?
By Silver2k7 on 8/6/2009 5:05:10 AM , Rating: 2
and how many % of people bother with overclocking?


RE: 64-bit?
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 8/6/2009 8:48:06 AM , Rating: 2
That read tech sites such as this? I'd bet a good number.


RE: 64-bit?
By Mojo the Monkey on 8/6/2009 12:04:35 PM , Rating: 2
Its just good business to crank my 2.5 to 3.0 myself and not pay that exorbitant $600 difference.


RE: 64-bit?
By DEredita on 8/5/09, Rating: -1
RE: 64-bit?
By mikeyD95125 on 8/5/2009 3:43:16 PM , Rating: 1
I'd like to see 12GB of "performance DDR3" for under $300.


RE: 64-bit?
By Nobleman00 on 8/5/2009 5:28:40 PM , Rating: 5
RE: 64-bit?
By Omega215D on 8/5/2009 3:53:32 PM , Rating: 3
Remember this is CNET we're talking about. They are the worst people to go to for reviews, especially in PCs and are the biggest Apple fanboys around. The most recent piss off for me was the Sony X versus the Cowon S9, it's like they didn't even bother being objective about it.


RE: 64-bit?
By Screwballl on 8/5/09, Rating: 0
RE: 64-bit?
By B3an on 8/5/2009 10:10:41 PM , Rating: 3
Well i've only tried Win7 on two machines. And also the 7600 build that is meant to be final RTM. One of them a very high end machine (i7 at over 4GHz, 12GB DDR3, RAID-0 SSD's).
A lot of people on the forums i visit are agreeing with me which is why i said that.

Win 7 makes WAY better used of multicore CPU's and multitasking, and loads up the more the demanding software faster. Every single Adobe program in the CS4 suite loads faster on Win7 than any other OS i've tried.


RE: 64-bit?
By StevoLincolnite on 8/6/2009 12:29:08 AM , Rating: 2
Anandtech has already done Benchmarks of Windows 7 RC1 64bit against Vista and XP 64 bit, the results are interesting to say the least, the Benchies can be found here: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3557

Overall, Windows 7 is a better Experience than Vista, and in most cases superior to that of XP, the edge is still given to XP for systems with low amounts of memory however. (Less than 1gb).

I've tried Windows 7 on the following rigs:

1) Athlon XP 2400+, 768mb of memory, Radeon 9600. (Neighbors rig)
2) Core 2 T8100, 2gb of memory, Intel X3100. (My Notebook)
3) Athlon X2 7750, 4gb of memory, Radeon 3300. (My Desktop)
4) Pentium 4 3.06ghz, 3gb of memory, Radeon x850XT PE. (A friends machine)
5) Pentium E2180, 2gb of memory, Geforce 7150. (Neighbors Machine)
6) Pentium E5200, 2gb of memory, Radeon 4650. (My other rig)
7) Core 2 Duo E6300, 4gb of memory, Radeon 4650. (Neighbors)

And guess what? Windows 7 runs snappy on all those machines!
Except for the first machine where I attempted to run Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Carbon, otherwise Windows 7 was still great on that rig.


RE: 64-bit?
By Belard on 8/6/2009 3:27:19 AM , Rating: 2
1) AMD64 X2 3800 (2.2Ghz) / 2GB / 8600GT = 25sec boot. 3yrs
2) Intel PDC 2160 1.6Ghz / 1GB / X3100 = 30sec boot. 1yr
3) AMD32 3000 (2.0Ghz) / 512 & 1GB / 9200 = 50sec boot 5yrs

Win7 runs great on the first two. Actually pretty good on the OLD AMD 32bit CPU, which had a corrupted XP install, so why not try Win7 on it... runs very good considering. Even ran about 10 tasks... still faster than a Pentium4 3.x w/2GB that came pre-installed with Vista (sp2). Adding another 512mb to the PC made it much faster.


RE: 64-bit?
By Belard on 8/6/2009 3:20:41 AM , Rating: 2
Agreed!

I've clocked systems with a stop watch. I count the time when BIOS is done till the system is ready to go, not the desktop. But when system tray items are loaded and the computer is ready to use.

For fun, I've installed Win7 on a OLD AMD-XP/32 w/512mb that boots up faster than Vista... on a NEW computer.

Shutdown was about 3-5 seconds on the old computer.

My notebook, which came with XP by default (didn't want vista) runs better with Win7 on it. Boots in 30~35 seconds and this is a Pentium Dual Core 1.8Ghz 1GB w/5400 RPM notebook drive! Everything I do on the notebook is fast. Windows POP open quickly, shut down fast. Multi-tasking and overall performance is very good. On Vista, I've used more powerful computers that would choke.


RE: 64-bit?
By LinkRS on 8/6/2009 11:54:19 AM , Rating: 2
Hi B3an,

Your post made me think of something that I learned in college. System performance is in the eye of the beholder. It doesn't matter what a benchmark says, it matters what the user experiences. You can have a much slower system, and with a few UI tricks, caching and background threads, make it seem much faster to the user. In fact, it was this kind of optimization in Windows XP that caused a backlash with Vista. With RTM Vista, the OS would not take the file copy/move dialog box away until the transfer was complete. That way when the dialog went away, the file was done. In XP, the system cached the file operation and took the box away rather quickly. The operation would continue in the background, but to the user it was "done." Vista stopped this to prevent data loss, cause if you shut your XP computer down (or it crahsed) before the operation was complete, data loss would occur. This also explains why XP can take a while to shutdown, it commits the changes to disk before powering off.


RE: 64-bit?
By DOOA on 8/6/2009 3:16:16 PM , Rating: 2
I am dual booting XP and Win7 which replaced my Vista install so it is running on the same hardware. Benchmarks are for 64 bit with all the updates and latest drivers.
Running all at max performance (all eye candy off) as time spent in the OS is a total waste IMO. Startup and Shutdown is a wash, neither XP nor Win7 is really faster, but both beat Vista. Once in the games I play (WoW, UT2003, Crysis, HL2 and their derivatives) there is little difference. Office (Industrial strength files in Word, Access, Excel) is fastest in XP, then Win7 with Vista taking last place.

What I don't see mentioned here is learning curve. I have yet to spend more than two or three hours on my Mac learning a new OS. XP configured to act like 98 took a little longer. Vista took literally days to learn and set up. Win7 is enough like Vista that I was back to 8 hours. Unfortunately Win7 is not holding its settings in all areas so that time is growing. Training time in a business is costly and needs a "benchmark" as well as actual time for computations.
Win7 "overall faster" than XP? Not at this point in time. Faster than Vista if you know Vista though.


RE: 64-bit?
By Breathless on 8/5/2009 4:15:10 PM , Rating: 2
I'm running vista Sp2 and windows 7 side by side on very good hardware and can confidently say that Vista SP2 resumes from sleep several seconds faster than 7.


RE: 64-bit?
By 4wardtristan on 8/5/2009 7:55:44 PM , Rating: 3
dont know about that, but i shutdown my machine every night :S


RE: 64-bit?
By JoshuaBuss on 8/5/2009 9:17:25 PM , Rating: 1
seriously. sleep mode? isn't that for noobs who don't know anything about computers?


RE: 64-bit?
By eman007 on 8/6/2009 5:46:52 AM , Rating: 2
64bit benchmarks from other sites definitely show the improvements. Even more with SSDs!!


RE: 64-bit?
By DeepBlue1975 on 8/6/2009 8:53:06 AM , Rating: 2
What you said is true...
As is also the fact that they miss the point with those benchmarks.

What's most important, is that in lower end machines, like netbooks, Windows 7 runs GREAT. I just bought an Asus 1005ha-p, and the first thing I did was getting rid of the preinstalled and arcaic XP and threw Win 7 rc1 in it. Runs much better, it's so much more comfortable to use (the gestures are a real blessing in those smaller screens, and don't even let me start talking about the usable preview in aero).

Feels more responsive than XP, and compared to Vista, which I tested on a previous netbook... Well. Vista just sucks on a little machine with just 1gb of RAM. It's not usable (tested vista ultimate x86, which is overkill for a netbook but was what I had at hand).

Win7 is the card that will enable MS to finally get rid of WinXP, and which will make Vista a thing of the past really fast, too.
The UI improvements, though not revolutionary, are big enough to justify the switching from Vista for those of us that work with lots of windows opened, and this is even so if you don't have any performance issues
On my desktop machine, Win7 and Vista ultimate, both x64, feel pretty much alike from a performance standpoint... But 7 is so so much better to use that I couldn't even wait for the RTM to use it as my main OS.
As soon as RTM hits the shelves, I'll be there happily paying for it.


By Depois on 8/5/2009 3:36:26 PM , Rating: 2
Check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay-gqx18UTM

Also scrolling a explorer window full of files uses a full cpu core at 100%. In XP the cpu usage is barely 15%.




By sapiens74 on 8/5/2009 4:04:56 PM , Rating: 2
Wow

I notice the same thing

So many little things are slow

And saying it's faster then Vista isn't saying much


By gigahertz20 on 8/5/2009 4:23:41 PM , Rating: 2
Hopefully they get this fixed, it seems like it's just a driver problem. But something like this should not be in a RTM release.


By Depois on 8/5/2009 4:36:30 PM , Rating: 1
It's not going to be fixed. Microsoft removed completly hardware acceleration from Windows Vista. Now in Windows 7 they have reintroduced about 10 gdi functions with hardware acceleration (only with WDDM 1.1 drivers), but they are not enough to make the gui as fast as Windows XP is.

Microsoft already have two hardware accelerated GUI apis in Windows 7: Direct2D and WPF. The problem is 99% of Windows 7 gui is GDI/GDI+ based, an so does 99% of 3rd party applications.


By GaryJohnson on 8/5/2009 6:26:51 PM , Rating: 2
You can still use the "classic" theme in windows 7, right?


By mindless1 on 8/5/2009 10:49:03 PM , Rating: 2
That doesn't bring back the acceleration.


By Kaleid on 8/6/2009 4:30:42 AM , Rating: 2
Correct. I just tried.


By StevoLincolnite on 8/6/2009 12:32:16 AM , Rating: 2
It's still better than Vista's implementation, in Windows Vista all the GDI information was duplicated in System and Video memory, on IGP's this was a waste, as essentially that information is duplicated twice in system memory, where-as in Windows 7 it's stored in the Video memory.

Windows 7 isn't perfect, but we still haven't gotten any service packs either for it yet. ;)


By omnicronx on 8/5/2009 4:42:36 PM , Rating: 3
Don't look too much into that video as unless you notice this in Vista, you won't notice it in 7. WDDM drivers force GDI rendering to occur in software, i.e there is no 2d acceleration.
So whatever he is claiming in 7 should also occur in Vista. So go try it yourself, do you really see it as a problem? I can't even see what he shows in the video.


By gigahertz20 on 8/5/2009 5:02:04 PM , Rating: 2
But why does Microsoft do that? I would think they would want hardware 2D acceleration in their OS, especially for people that have a decent video card. I guess they are afraid integrated video cards could not handle it or something, which is most of the PC market.


By omnicronx on 8/5/2009 6:14:36 PM , Rating: 3
I should have been more clear, they didnt remove 2d acceleration, they removed GDI 2d acceleration (Windows 7 actually has a few of those functions again). They also added Direct2D which going forward is what everyone should be using.

Don't listen to other posters though claiming 99% of windows 7 is still gdi as this is clearly not true. Not too sure whats up with services but most other apps don't have any sort of shadowing or weird behavior. In fact if you go to run and type 'services' i.e not services.msc it will bring you to a page called component services (contains event viewer services and a few other things). It is only when you go to services does it have this weird behavior, and this is from the same windows as the two other windows it does not have that shadow you see in the video, so I am not too sure whats up there. I have yet to find another app with this behavior. Feel free to try it out.


By EricMartello on 8/5/2009 7:13:36 PM , Rating: 3
I have none of these video issues in Vista 32-bit (GeForce 8800GT + NVIDIA WDM Drivers). None of my vista systems have these issues and their GUI performance is not surpassed by XP.

Seems to me like the test in the video may have been using the OS-integrated default drivers, not the ones that most normal people download from the manufacturer. The integrated OS drivers have never supported much in the way of hardware acceleration; they just do enough to allow you to get higher resolution, refresh rate and bit depths. The reason being that compatibility is the focus over performance with those integrated drivers. When you get your system working, it is wise to update all relevant system drivers.

I suppose that this guy is going to do a 3D game benchmark to complain how slow Quake 2 runs on Windows 7 vs Windows XP...then he'll top it off by showing how "skippy" Doom is. -.-


By EricMartello on 8/5/2009 11:45:42 PM , Rating: 3
Vista and Windows 7 are pushing AWAY from GDI based UI because it is OUTDATED. If you are using Aero in Vista you will have NONE of the issues shown in the video. If you disable Aero and use the standard GDI based UI it will be slower and it will use more system resources.

Windows XP/Vista/7 owns Mac OSX in terms of graphical performance, hands down no question, especially where it matters like GPU performance. Mac OSX video drivers are pitiful by comparison to what is available on Windows.

If you run an old XP era computer, stick with XP. If you want to upgrade, start by getting a new system along with an updated OS.


By mindless1 on 8/5/2009 10:53:59 PM , Rating: 1
yes you do have these issues, apparently your eyes just can't keep up. The difference is clearly present.

We've compared system after system after system, NOT only using integrated OS drivers, and even contrary to the nonsense some claim that if only one had a beefy enough modern system /then/ Vista is faster, it's totally untrue. The only advantage is when something was pre-cached, a situation with trivial difference since you have to wait for it to be pre-cached after a bootup, else later it was also cached after ran on xp or for those really desperate to load something fast that's where a shortcut in the startup folder comes into play.

If you really had an XP system as slow as on Vista, you had something wrong with your XP installation because it FLIES like greased lightning compared to Vista.


By EricMartello on 8/5/2009 11:38:18 PM , Rating: 4
No, I do not have the issues and there is nothing wrong with my eyes. I notice things like this and if I did have these issues I would have a problem with Vista.

As for GDI acceleration...really guys, 2D is so 1990s. Are you seriously going to compare XP, an OS designed to run on hardware that was around 8 years ago, to a modern OS designed to run on TODAYS hardware? DOS/Win3.11 runs even faster than XP...but I don't see anyone making that comparsion...why not? Maybe because it would be...oh, I dunno...completely retarded?

Also, Vista uses AERO which is based on GPU assisted acceleration. It does not rely on GDI/GDI+. Again, you people who can't get over XP need to get with the times.


By walk2k on 8/5/2009 9:50:51 PM , Rating: 2
What am I even supposed to be seeing here??

I don't get black artifacts or anything like that.

This guy has a sh*tty computer or bad drivers.


By walk2k on 8/5/2009 11:04:11 PM , Rating: 2
Nope, I have no black artifacting like that, and scrolling a full window is not particularly slow.

This guy must be using the default drivers or using integrated video or something.

Try a real video card.

I've been using a GTX275 with latest Nvidia drivers on Win7RC (x64) and no problems.

Maybe this is on a laptop buildin video.. but that's to be expected.


By TomZ on 8/6/2009 9:22:31 AM , Rating: 2
I'm using Win7RC with Radeon X1850 and AMD drivers...I can repro the same problem here.

Interestingly it only happens on that services window - other windows don't have the same problem. I'm guessing it is an isolated issue with that particular type of window.

But hey it's fun to imply that all windows have the same issue as the guy in the YouTube video does.


By mindless1 on 8/7/2009 9:26:56 PM , Rating: 2
You really mean your eyes or mind is too slow to see it.

That makes you one of the users who everyone call pull one over one because your performance is the bottleneck to system use instead of the OS.

I'm glad tomorrow's "standard" PC suits you, but it disappoints those of us who were always more productive and proficient. Those of use who are, are slowed down by these bad decisions while you are happy to pretend this artificial equalization (handicap) makes you feel more capable.

DUMB people need things done for them, and that is exactly what Vista and Win7 even moreso is tailored to do, make dumb people feel more capable when they still aren't doing anything but clicking a mouse.

On the one hand I do feel this is an important improvement, everyday Joe should not have to be a computer expert to run a system he bought, but on the other hand, these Joes needs to accept that only being unable to do normal things makes it more viable for the OS to do it on every boot than to have the optimal environment set once and always persist.

For all those that pretend Vista or Win7 has good points, I have never seen anyone use it remotely as well as a seasoned XP user has.

As they say, the proof is in the pudding. Forget propaganda delivered as biased benchmarks, look at fair ones and actual user performance.

But, back to facts, you do in fact have black artifacting, you as a user are just too slow to notice. Others do, so just quit pretending you are good at this and spend you time on what you really are good at.

That is life, you are definitely better at lots of things than others are, and are approaching if not an expert on these things, but at the same time it is obvious you are not so adept at GUI pauses and quirks, I see people all the time that think their computer has no such issues and am startled at what a snail and unsightly mess their system has become.


By EricMartello on 8/9/2009 11:13:08 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, I'm sure you're convincing us all by telling us what we are and aren't seeing - as if someone who can't even produce a valid counterpoint is some able to telepathically visualize my computer through my eyes and tell me there IS video issue that doesn't exist.

XP was a great OS for its time, but its time has come and gone. Let it go, bro. Let it go...the horse is dead and you smell like ass.


By walk2k on 8/5/2009 10:01:48 PM , Rating: 2
Also no, scrolling a window full of files only uses 30-40% cpu with it set on "details". If I do a folder full of pictures at "extra large thumbnails" it uses about 60% big deal.


By mindless1 on 8/5/2009 11:00:47 PM , Rating: 2
System I'm typing on, not even all that modern by today's standards running XP w/SP3, the CPU utilization scrolling with a window full of files set to "details" doesn't even jump up enough to notice that I'm scrolling at all, maybe 4% inbetween dropping back down to 0-2%.


By walk2k on 8/5/2009 11:07:45 PM , Rating: 2
I agree that's a big difference, but it's not a dealbreakers, and could just be drivers that will hopefully improve over time.


By StevoLincolnite on 8/6/2009 12:36:14 AM , Rating: 3
Windows 7 is only using 2-5% CPU time on one core while I scroll a folder full of pictures. :/
So in theory I still have 195% of CPU time left over to scroll more folders full of files. xD


By deegee on 8/7/2009 12:26:59 PM , Rating: 2
I'm surfing on an Intel Atom 330 cube system (Dual Hyper @1.6GHz, 2GB 266MHz, GMA950, WD 320GB) which dual-boots Ubuntu 9 and Windows 7 RC x86 (was x64). I built this for a system I can leave on 24:7 for email and surfing with low power usage.

Even on Windows 7 x86 or x64 this system is very usable for anything but serious gaming. My shutdown times are only 11 seconds.

I don't get the Explorer folder scrolling cpu hit even on this low-end system (28-30% total on the 4 "cores" unless it is either creating thumbnails on new files or indexing new folder content, then it is more cpu but the amount varies by the total folder content size).
I do get the black-box resizing on Services, and since that doesn't occur on any other apps I'm betting that it is the method/order of handling the WM_RESIZE and WM_PAINT messages in that specific app. So it is a totally bogus example.

If you want to see a real slow GUI, try booting into Ubuntu on this Atom system. Scolling through folder lists etc. is so slow that it is completely unusable in that manner - I have to click-wait-click-wait. Windows 7 Aero on this system even with the old GMA950 integrated video simply flies past Windows Basic mode (~2x) and Ubuntu (~4x+).


By Depois on 8/7/2009 7:24:26 PM , Rating: 2
I commented the guy what I saw about explorer scrolling and he confirmed it in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToFgYylqP_U


meh I want more comparisons!
By goku on 8/5/09, Rating: 0
RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By lotharamious on 8/5/2009 2:50:40 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
...considering that you've got the same programmers putting millions of lines of inefficient code, with most of it beginning with //.
You do realize that Microsoft probably doesn't include comments in shipping binaries right?


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By Spivonious on 8/5/2009 3:02:43 PM , Rating: 5
You do realize that compilers strip out all comment code when they convert to assembly, right?


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By goku on 8/5/09, Rating: -1
RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By MrPeabody on 8/5/2009 4:07:08 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
Well then explain to me how Windows XP's memory footprint has quadrupled since it was first released?


Oh, you're probably right then. Worthless Windows programmers, loading all those comments into memory . . .


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By goku on 8/5/09, Rating: 0
RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By GaryJohnson on 8/5/2009 5:39:14 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
why does fixing security holes magically quadruple the system's memory footprint


It doesn't. Here's some becnhmark comparisons between XP SP1 & SP2. There's no significant negative performance trend.

http://icrontic.com/articles/does_service_pack_2_s...


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By mindless1 on 8/5/2009 11:04:23 PM , Rating: 1
Re-read what you replied to. It was a comment about more memory used which is exactly what your link shows, NOT about performance differences during benchmarks necessarily. Also remember the context of several prior posts about the OS, it's GUI itself NOT the apps benching.


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By TomZ on 8/6/2009 9:28:52 AM , Rating: 3
Sorry, but it's stupid to say that SP2 requires 4X the memory of SP1 or RTM. We all ran SP2 on the same boxes as pre-SP2 without any issues.

I suppose you also agree with the OP that the "cause" of this supposed issue is that Microsoft put too many comments in the code? Because that makes about as much sense as the 4X idea.


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By boogle on 8/5/2009 6:30:51 PM , Rating: 2
Erm making stuff up because you don't know the real answer doesn't make what you made up 'true'.

Unless you work for MS and have access to the Windows source code, I don't think you can really comment on any of the code used in Windows. And your comments comment implies you haven't even seen a compiler.

I'm also sure those few MB of memory you're saving have increased your fps by 100 in every game and Crysis runs as 2560x1600 and 900fps on your super-optimised PC running an old SP. No issues at all with malicious software either because your warm uber-glow makes the computer immune.


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By mindless1 on 8/5/2009 11:15:06 PM , Rating: 1
You've gone and guessed at things not in context. The prior comment was correct that fixing the flaws shouldn't add substantially to the memory footprint.

I had a HTPC with WinXP (pre, then SP1) that had only 128MB of memory in it and it captured, played back, did all normal HTPC tasks not only without issue but with memory to spare once unnecessary services were turned off.

Compare that to modern systems doing the exact same tasks(!!) and there is a very troubling trend when it takes hundreds of MB more memory to do the same things today. At least memory has gotten dirt cheap and a lot higher bandwidth, that is our only real consolation but MS has managed to effectively erase our hardware performance gains with the GUI sluggishness.

It wouldn't be so bad if navigating a GUI were some kind of rare event, but instead it's one of the most fundamental things about a windowed OS.


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By Spivonious on 8/6/2009 11:14:46 AM , Rating: 3
I'd rather have MS add features that take advantage of the newer hardware than have them make the OS run smoothly in 128MB of RAM on a Pentium 60MHz.


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By mindless1 on 8/7/2009 9:17:05 PM , Rating: 2
Which means you are against optimal performance because making it run well on an old system makes it run all that much better on a newer one.

The "great lie" is the idea that you need some magical system spec for it to run "ok", rather than seeing that if it is running well, there is no magic system, then the faster the system the faster it runs... even faster on that mythical ideal system.


By DominionSeraph on 8/9/2009 4:03:24 AM , Rating: 2
No, making an OS that runs well on an 8088 gives you DOS 2.0. Why would I pay money to upgrade when I could just break out my 5 1/4 floppy? That business model doesn't make much sense.
And how much more 'snappy' do you need a command-line shell to be? DIR /p would fill the page in less than a second on a 4.77MHz processor, so I challenge you to tell the difference between a 100MHz 486DX4 and a 3GHz Core2 Duo.


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By tastyratz on 8/5/2009 2:51:18 PM , Rating: 3
to clarify, sp3 is faster than sp2 - but yes sp2 was a load to begin with.
People want their cake and to eat it too. I think the fact that it is just as fast in performance is fine. It FEELS much faster which leads to a better perception - which is all that matters to normal users. Add on all the additional features and functions of windows 7 and you have a success.

Since when is a newer os actually leaner and faster?

Anyone remember the windows 98 vs xp benchmarks? Can you imagine going back to 98 now that you settled into xp?


By mindless1 on 8/5/2009 11:07:28 PM , Rating: 1
If '98 had the hardware support and lack of bluescreens that XP brought, since these most significant things don't differ between XP and Vista, yes many many more people would have stayed with '98 if the next PC they bought hadn't came with xp.


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By Belard on 8/6/2009 3:47:59 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
Since when is a newer os actually leaner and faster?


Uh... AmigaOS.
On my 1985 Amiga 1000, I've used AOS 1.3, 2.x and 3.0.
1.3 = 1987 Desktop = 4 colors 2 floppies (880k each)
2.0 = 1989 Desktop = 4 colors 3 floppies
3.0 = 1992 Desktop = 16 colors 5 floppies

The A1000 was 7mhz (I added 14mhz CPU). 2.0 used as much memory, included better HD tools and other OS advancement.

3.0 was an amazing job. It was so efficient in that even thou it allowed 16 color desktop, it used the same amount of graphic memory as 4 colors from version 1.3... but a tad slower. So I ran my desktop in 8 colors, I had more colors AND even more memory... and a faster running OS to boot for a computer that came out 7 years earlier. When I upgraded to the A3000 (25mhz, more RAM & better video), I had 16 colors of course.

Check out the video of AmigaOS 4.0 in action (youtube). Shutdown time is 0.05 seconds still. Amigas don't "shutdown". Just press the OFF button. No registry to update or get corrupted. Reboot time is about 5 seconds on a 600mhz or so PowerPC CPU.

Of course, Amiga as a platform is pretty much dead. :( Still neat tech... but its 20+ years old.

BTW: Those with Amigas built in 1985 and more so in 1989 (25mhz A3000) can use a web-browser. Its just a matter of add-ing a video card for more colors. :)
Then again, someone made a browser for a C=64...???


RE: meh I want more comparisons!
By Belard on 8/6/2009 3:34:48 AM , Rating: 2
I can agree with that.

I've notice that XP with SP3 to have slower shut-down times and just does things a tad slower here and there. So I don't recommend using it unless theres a problem or security issues that a person can't deal with.

Lets see... SP3, when installed eats up what.. 1GB of HD space?

A big thing is looking at the amunt of services running after boot up. Vista is 50~55. XP in the mid 30s... Win7... about 38. That makes a difference.


Shenanigans
By Smilin on 8/5/2009 1:45:10 PM , Rating: 3
So I'm going to call shenanigans on the boot time metrics.

The time from hitting the power button to the time I can actually perform a task is much shorter in Windows 7 than Vista on two machines that I have.

My machines are "moved in" as well with all my usual startup apps and devices. This obviously introduces way more variables than the testers did but in some ways makes it far more real world.

My observations are currently subjective but after seeing this I'll go take a stopwatch to it.




RE: Shenanigans
By CSMR on 8/5/2009 1:57:13 PM , Rating: 2
Whether they measured time to load fully or time until the system becomes responsive would affect the results. It's not clear from the cnet article.


RE: Shenanigans
By GaryJohnson on 8/5/2009 5:42:01 PM , Rating: 2
If your system isn't immediately responsive after hitting the desktop then it's due to background processes and not the OS.


RE: Shenanigans
By mindless1 on 8/5/2009 11:09:19 PM , Rating: 2
Not necessarily true, with XP you have processes then idle time but with Vista or Win7 you have processes then precaching so it is really the OS doing things.


RE: Shenanigans
By walk2k on 8/5/2009 3:50:09 PM , Rating: 2
40 seconds to boot up?? MY GOD what are they running a 386?

Takes maybe 10 seconds tops on mine (Win7RC x64) and it's far from top of the line (Core2Duo E8400, 4 gigs ram, Geforce 274GTX)


RE: Shenanigans
By protosv on 8/5/2009 4:39:00 PM , Rating: 3
Totally agree with this. Glad someone pointed this out. The desktop comes up on WinXP about 5 sec faster on my C2D E6750 with 4GB of DDR2 than it does for Win7, but then I have to wait an additional 20-30 seconds before I can open a program with any reasonable speed. With Win7 RC1(7100), I can open programs quickly about 5 seconds after the desktop comes up....


RE: Shenanigans
By Sazar on 8/5/2009 6:27:15 PM , Rating: 4
Completely concur.

I boot up and pretty much as soon as the taskbar loads, I can start opening apps and use them pretty quickly. Under XP? No dice. I can launch something but then I have to wait for a long time for a usable state to begin to interact with the application.

You cannot judge these OS's simply by measuring metrics like this. It is too black and white and does not represent actual performance/usage.

Windows 7 and Vista are close in many regards but Win 7 is simply cleaner and snappier in my experience.

XP may be great for a single app or two but the way it allocates it's memory is archaic and the slow-downs when multi-tasking are grossly apparent for anyone using Vista or Win 7 (which allocate more memory to in-focus applications).


RE: Shenanigans
By Belard on 8/6/09, Rating: 0
RE: Shenanigans
By Belard on 8/9/2009 4:33:27 PM , Rating: 2
Why vote down.

Someone posts that XP can't multitask more than a few programs and that is "Wrong" to call them out on it?


RE: Shenanigans
By MrFord on 8/5/2009 4:53:36 PM , Rating: 4
It may very well be the case... the first couple boots after a clean install. Before Win7 put the most used programs in SuperFetch, it does take more time to boot up, at least a good 30-40 seconds. I just did a clean reinstall of Windows 7 on my X2 4200, and after getting used to 10-15 seconds boot time maximum, the first couple times felt like something was wrong. But after a couple days, it came back to normal.
Maybe that's why?
Unlike XP, where it didn't take long to go from a 30 seconds to a minute long boot time...


RE: Shenanigans
By walk2k on 8/5/2009 9:41:23 PM , Rating: 2
Ok I just timed it. 28.9 seconds from the time I selected OS (dual boot) to the desktop screen.

40 seconds must be on a P4 with 1 meg or something. Do they even say what specs were?


RE: Shenanigans
By Smilin on 8/6/2009 9:47:40 AM , Rating: 2
I'm thinking they are adding POST time maybe?

I dunno, it's CNET man. We're a bunch of Anandtech and Tomshardware (etc) readers here so we don't know how to handle retarded and ambiguous benchmarks.


RE: Shenanigans
By Smilin on 8/11/2009 3:06:16 PM , Rating: 2
Ok I said I was going to take a stopwatch to it...I did not.

I was playing a Unreal based 3d shooter last night on my main monitor. On the second monitor I was running several apps including Zune (playing files from a homeserver) and running a backup (!!) to an external drive.

My framerate didn't dip in the slightest.

I don't give a crap what these benchmarks say. I'm going Win7.


By n0nsense on 8/5/2009 8:56:44 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
something that has placed Windows ahead of competitors Linux and OS X.


Reading the article that almost completely opposite to my half year experience with 7. And this is actual office workstation used 10hr/5days per week.
HW: C2D E2200, 3GB RAM, 8400GS dual monitor
OS: Win7 RC 64bit

Pros:
Useful interface (compared to previous Windows and inferior to OS X and properly configured Linux)
Nice uptimes

Cons:
Ridiculously sluggish (compared to XP, OS X, Linux)
Ridiculously resource hungry
Ridiculously high footprint
Freezing interface
AND MISSING DRIVERS

Now as free text.
I volunteered to be the "test user" and using as my primary workstaion OS for more than half year.
My experience is mixed but tends to be negative.
The HW specs are above average and feels far from enough.
Average memory usage is almost 100% which is fine (don't like wasted HW), but Linux with similar load uses at most half.
I do have a lot of open apps with multiple instances.
I'm unable to use network printers - no drivers - no businesses.
On the application level - changes to file system functions maid "home made" applications incompatible (even Excel macros) with XP.
Watching icons in start (and other menus) menu painted few seconds after the menu opened makes me wonder if anyone of the people stating that it has slick and fast interface ever used OS X or Linux with Gnome.
People stating that Aero is better than Compiz are really never used later since it has ALL Aero features (mostly) prior to Aero existence and much more of useful features. Scale windows is the best example as Alt+Tab switching not useful with 20+ windows open. Why to have 20 windows? Simply because my uptimes generally 1-2 month. I don't like to wait until application loaded and became useful.
"Minor" glitches like freezing for few seconds, reordering my desktop icons etc. are to many to mention.
Just for fun, I installed 7 RC 32bit on my X31 which is comparable to netbook in terms of performance, it's unusable compared to Linux and even XP which performs almost like Linux after clean installation for some (very short) time.

Talking about XP to SP1 SP2 and SP3 posts above.
The major resources requirement addition come from new services like security centre. Just compare number of running services.
I started to use XP with 256MB of RAM and it was enough until SP2. When SP3 released, i tried all 4 installations since i was curious like you, but not lazy like

So as usual with MS, good idea, poor implementation.
But they do have the resources for PR. Most of the people will just buy what available at the store. Most of the reviewers have no idea what OS should be and if they have, M$ will pay enough to shut them. Currently internet flooded with "news" and "positive reviews" about 7.
But what all mainstream tech sites afraid to say is that 7 nothing more than Vista with facelift.
10 bonus points to M$ PR machine.

P.S.
fanboy (any camp) comments, please save your time. this post based on my personal experience with this and other OSes for over 2 decades.
Yes I can do (and did) things like LFS or Gentoo which is my choice for years.
But on the other hand I do have a lot of experience with "computer illiterate" users like my parents.
They are faster to adopt Ubuntu than with any version of Windows. Not tried to give them Mac and probably will not as it too expensive for what they need.




By djcameron on 8/5/2009 10:40:48 PM , Rating: 3
Sorry man, but as one who is pretty OS agnostic, I find that the only area that OS X is more responsive (on a unibody Macbook) is the way it returns from sleep mode. Intellij loads my project faster under Win 7 on a similarly spec'd machine. Ubuntu beats them both, but I'm starting to hate the driver incompatibilities, otherwise my Macbook would be a LinuxBook.


By damianrobertjones on 8/6/2009 4:27:06 AM , Rating: 3
"Watching icons in start (and other menus) menu painted few seconds after the menu opened makes me wonder if anyone of the people stating that it has slick and fast interface ever used OS X or Linux with Gnome."

Somethings wrong there as my three machines (Usual spec, core 2, at least 3/4gb ram) don't do that.

"Minor" glitches like freezing for few seconds, reordering my desktop icons etc"

That usually happens upon an explorer reset... otherwise, nope.

Cons:
Ridiculously sluggish - Not noticed that
Ridiculously resource hungry - Not noticed that. Turn off Ready Boost as that WILL try to use as much available ram as possible. You should know this!?
Ridiculously high footprint - No compalins there.
Freezing interface - Nope, didn't happen
AND MISSING DRIVERS - That's obvious!

At the end of the day, if you've been testing for half a year, then you'd KNOW that these things can and will happen as it's a BETA or rc. Come back later and comment on the final release. I'm not getting at you n0nsense, it's just that some of your comments are a bit silly.


By n0nsense on 8/6/2009 1:52:50 PM , Rating: 2
As you might noticed, i'm talking about "heavy" usage.
And long uptimes compared to XP. XP was working fine for a week or two, but then restart was necessary.
With 7 i have much longer continues work.
The most pleasing thing is networking.
Somehow it connects faster and have higher transfer rate when working with network storages.
Then comes the Interface. And finally, this thing can be installed from USB stick !!!

But I'm not looking at 7 and comparing it only to M$ products. Inside M$ it is definitely step forward.
It is almost useful 64bit OS from M$ for home user.

But it has some price.
I'm a happy owner of fast, but small and pricey SSD drive.
I paid ~10USD for each GB. So the footprint does matter after all.
I guess that I'm not the only SSD owner in the world and I trully can not understand this footprint for empty OS.
Full Linux installation with all programs (Office, Messaging, Programing, Mail+Web+File+FTP server, Creativity) requires only a fraction of all this disk space.

But whatever.
I just shared my experience and I'm happy that you have better


By TomZ on 8/6/2009 9:44:26 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
lots of useless drivel
You are obviously seriously biased, a liar, or both.

Come on - Windows 7 sluggish - no way! I have been using Windows 7 on a number of machines since the start of the preview programs, and it hasn't been slow on any machines I've seen. Sure there are some minor bugs here and there (it is BETA SOFTWARE after all), but it is already far better than Windows XP and Vista even before its final release.

And spare us with your whining about resources/footprint. Have you checked the specs lately for "average" computers. Gigabytes of RAM and hundreds of GB of HDD. Your complaint makes no sense in that context. Microsoft is not targeting 5-year old machines with Windows 7 - they are targeting today's and tomorrow's machines. Don't you realize that?

And spare us your Linux praise - most of us here are informed enough to know the truth about Linux and why it is AN UTTER FAILURE in the desktop market. It has not achieved any significant market share even though it is free. People would rather pay Microsoft and Apple to get a decent commercial OS instead of Linux. Frankly you couldn't pay me to take Linux.


By robinthakur on 8/6/2009 10:47:43 AM , Rating: 2
The biggest problem I had with 7 RC x64 was that IE 8 crashes on launch a high percentage of the time (both versions). I quit, retart and it then loads correctly. Happens a lot on my current machine and I reinstalled it to make sure its not just a duff install. Have experienced sluggishness also, but not as bad as Vista's. Time from start up to the OS being actually usabcle is also better than Vista but then it was pretty bad under Vista (with a Q6600, 4GB of RAM and not having reinstalled for about 6 months)

Mentioning the interface slowness, I noticed that 7 doesn't feel as accelerated as Vista did at launch. A bit like its all software rendered. And where's Dreamscene gone?!? Granted its one of those use once and forget features but I liked playing around with it :)


By crystal clear on 8/6/2009 10:40:07 AM , Rating: 2
Speed Test: Windows 7 RC not much faster than Vista
Users might not even notice any difference, testing finds

May 7, 2009 (PC World) Improving performance is one of Microsoft's design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers (including ours) have said that the new OS seems peppier than Vista. But tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users.

We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and then ran our WorldBench 6 suite. Afterward we compared the results with the WorldBench 6 numbers from the same three systems running Windows Vista. Each PC was slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5%, our threshold for when a performance change is noticeable to the average user.



http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/91326...


By freeman70 on 8/7/2009 9:57:44 PM , Rating: 2
I think we may be on the same page. Like you, I am not a fanboy but I have a lot of experience using different operating systems over the past 26 years. I think Win 7 is overrated. I tried it on my netbook and on my Q6600 overclocked desktop and didn't find it to be any faster than a good tweaked XP install and the UI didn't seem any better than a good linux distro with compiz. Maybe, old hands like us are just fans of lean and fast machines that do exactly what we want.


Aero more polished than compiz?!
By Integral9 on 8/5/09, Rating: 0
RE: Aero more polished than compiz?!
By thebrown13 on 8/5/2009 2:46:48 PM , Rating: 2
Please, Compiz is just cheap effects that look ridiculous. Aero is eye candy without being a distraction.


By lotharamious on 8/5/2009 2:52:18 PM , Rating: 4
Aero is also MUCH more stable.


By Integral9 on 8/6/2009 8:26:09 AM , Rating: 2
wow. I can't believe you're calling a half-assed implementation of a 3D desktop better than something that has was out years before and offers 10 times the features and waay more customizable a, 'distraction'. Perhaps you are not ready for a fully customizable and feature rich 3D desktop yet.


Nice Headline
By GeorgeH on 8/5/2009 2:31:46 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
let's look at a recent benchmark by CNET

Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.




RE: Nice Headline
By Sazar on 8/6/2009 12:28:29 PM , Rating: 2
For what it's worth, I do find their Auto-tech reviews quite interesting.

Occasionally they correctly identify the circular thingy on the driver's side of the cabin as a steering wheel. It's quite profound, really.


Incorrect.
By ActorMW on 8/5/2009 1:47:08 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Interestingly, between the 7600 build and the 7100 build, Windows 7's performance in Microsoft Office and iTunes actually dropped. Nonetheless, it manages to still beat Vista and XP in the Office benchmark and tie with XP in iTunes (but slightly behind Vista).


Umm... Did you read the notes above each graph? Shorter bars = better performance. That means that the truth is exactly opposite of what you wrote. Windows 7 performance improved from build 7100 to build 7600. It still lags behind XP & Vista in Office.




RE: Incorrect.
By ActorMW on 8/5/2009 1:49:12 PM , Rating: 2
For clarification:
The article comment on Cinebench is accurate. It was the only CNET test's graph in which longer bars equated to better performance.


RE: Incorrect.
By erple2 on 8/5/2009 7:40:34 PM , Rating: 2
I'm more interested in finding out if "187" is actually statistically different from "188" in that test, an 'increase' in performance by a whopping 0.5 percent. Yes, a 1/2 of one percent.

I'd strike that one as "the same" as Vista and the 7100 release...


The problem with vanilla benchmarks
By SiliconAddict on 8/5/2009 6:13:26 PM , Rating: 2
is that they don't take into consideration more abstract things. Take for example the boot times listed. Vista on anything other then a 7200RPM drive and a fast system is virtually unusable for a few minutes after login as the system is beating the hard drive to death doing various things in the background. Not so with Win 7. I can start doing stuff within something like 10 seconds after seeing the desktop.
Also what versions of office are they using? I'm actually finding the Office 2007 works better in Vista and Win7 then in XP.




By tygrus on 8/5/2009 9:20:55 PM , Rating: 2
Change in code optimisation ? Removal/optimisation of embedded debug code ?

Too many unrolled loops and alternative code (different versions of same procedure for different CPU) greatly increase code size. Software optimisation in isolation shows little impact by code size but when everything is put together it hinders more than it helps.

Increased code size increase disk usage, more data needs to be read which is spread over a larger area which pushes up random read/write delays. More RAM used means that less code/data can be kept in RAM so pagefile gets a big workout and system frequently stutters.


By clarkey01 on 8/5/2009 4:53:30 PM , Rating: 2
....This seems ever so selective to make W7 look bad..

If you go over ALL of the benchmarks, instead of cherry picking the worst and closest you will see clearly W7 stands head and shoulders above.

I am very surprised by the 'intention' of this article




BS benchmarks
By smartalco on 8/5/2009 5:05:45 PM , Rating: 2
Are they timing to when the start menu pops up, or having an actual usable desktop?
With fresh installs of XP and win7, I still boot win7 in half the time. After a few months of use, it took XP 3 minutes to get to a [i]usable[/i] desktop. Having the win7 RC installed since May, I'm still at about a 45 second boot time to usable desktop. I actually shut down my computer at night, because the boot time isn't ridiculous, whereas I always did S3 sleep when XP was my primary OS.




By sapiens74 on 8/5/2009 5:44:59 PM , Rating: 2
Boot time, shut down time.

However, it still feels sluggish compared to XP and OSX

this could be driver issues, as the test machine was using Nvidia hardware.....




By Belard on 8/6/2009 4:22:10 AM , Rating: 2
Excellent, educational and fun videos:

Boot up, start MS-Word and Shutdown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cxbstn2IZM

Vista vs XP:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FEvD9RHlccc

The lost Laptop Hunter AD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odxZY776COA




By damianrobertjones on 8/6/2009 4:34:58 AM , Rating: 2
I'm, personally, glad that oems now ship desktops and laptops with at least 2gb of ram. The pc industry has nothing but itself to blame for the bad reputation and it's a shame that Microsoft seems to get the kicking.

How many times have you setup a machine with 256Mb, 512Mb ram with XP (let alone Vista with 512mb... shame on them) and cried as the task bar filled with twenty small icons! Symantec alone has caused many problems over the years with it's suite of apps that degrade pcs to a snails pace.

Here's to clean, fresh, properly configured oem machines, 4gb of ram, Windows 7 and no junk. Fingers crossed. Otherwise, Windows, again, will get the blame.




Source of water
By Zingam on 8/6/2009 11:28:36 AM , Rating: 2
If I have the only source of clean, drinking water in the world. I will have tremendous commercial success but the reason won't be that I'm a great trader the reason is that everybody needs water and only I have it.

I've not bought a new PC for the last 5 years and I'll soon need to buy a new one. In that way I'll contribute to the success of Win7 but the only reason for that is that there is not way I could get anything else as OS :)
\Linux is not an option unfortunately\




Here we go again
By SavagePotato on 8/6/2009 12:41:14 PM , Rating: 2
And the anti Microsoft shills that bashed Vista incessantly are at it again, here we go for round 2.

It's like a time warp back to 2007.




W7
By wallijonn on 8/6/2009 3:57:20 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
As the experience and feel are much smoother than the previous two OS's, the standstill in performance, normally a bad thing, probably will be sufficient for Windows 7 to see great commercial success.


The fact that it needs one half to one quarter the amount of memory that Vista demands will be enough to make the masses buy W7. Yes, memory is inexpensive, but older machines may only have two memory slots and paying for a/two 2G RAM stick(s) is still expensive.




Compare boot times with OSX
By sapiens74 on 8/5/09, Rating: -1
RE: Compare boot times with OSX
By GoodBytes on 8/5/2009 4:42:14 PM , Rating: 2
Hopefully, you will stop saying FUD.
If you said the truth you would have explained your test in details, used hardware (equivalent and proper for both OS), and covered all aspect of your testing environment and presented drawback from your test.

All I see is a lame, weightless claim that you like spreading on forums and comments.


RE: Compare boot times with OSX
By sapiens74 on 8/5/09, Rating: 0
RE: Compare boot times with OSX
By erple2 on 8/5/2009 7:47:25 PM , Rating: 2
No, someone had a double helping of trying to find meaningful results.

The poster was right - I can give you TONS of info that shows that my windows laptop boots in less than 1/5 the time than my mac laptop. Does that mean that windows is better than mac? Of course not. It says nothing.

What if I then said that my mac laptop is an original 12" G4 with 256 megs of memory running OSX 10.2? And that my windows laptop is a brand new laptop complete with an good SSD, 4 gigs RAM, and modern dual core processor? Would you then think that Windows was better?

Of course not. The poster was complaining that your conveyance of your conclusions was worthless without more details. Testing methodologies (I turn them on, wait for them to be usable by me at a desktop), hardware (they're both Core2Duo's, both have 4 gigs memory, and a 5400 RPM harddrive) and the like. Without that data, your statement is, as the poster said, more or less worthless as a means to form accurate conclusions.


By KoolAidMan1 on 8/6/2009 2:04:57 AM , Rating: 2
I think Windows 7 is plenty snappy and I like it a lot, but that said I have been dual-booting both the beta and RC1 on the same Macbook Pro (2.5ghz Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 8400m GT 512MB), and OS 10.5 is most definitely faster in terms of boot up time (there is no contest here), shut down, waking from sleep, and opening applications.

Then there are the battery life comparisons that Anand did, with the first link showing that Windows 7 RC1 is showing slightly poorer battery life than Vista (let's hope this gets fixed):

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3582
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=354...
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3435&p...

I like Windows 7 and think it is the best version of Windows so far (I'm currently running it on a desktop and my MBP, plan on getting full copies for both), but there is no way I can say that is it faster on the same hardware than OS 10.5.


RE: Compare boot times with OSX
By Belard on 8/6/2009 4:05:07 AM , Rating: 1
Since Win7 is very stable when it comes to Sleep/wake functions...

Just set it to hibernate. Reboot to desktop from sleep is about 5~10 seconds.


RE: Compare boot times with OSX
By riottime on 8/6/2009 7:44:56 AM , Rating: 2
i use hibernate a lot. one button to put it into hibernate and one button to bring it out of hibernate. it's great because all of my apps are already opened with the size and position where i want them. like my browser is opened with all of it's tabs already on the web sites that i want to read.

it's great. winxp is a dog when it comes to shutdown.

they really need to include x64 versions. i've seen another benchmark where win7 x64 beat out all on startup/shutdown. it varies between win7/winxp on gaming. some games are faster on win7 than winxp. while other games are faster on winxp than win7.


RE: Compare boot times with OSX
By WinstonSmith on 8/6/2009 9:59:23 AM , Rating: 2
"Since Win7 is very stable when it comes to Sleep/wake functions..."

Using build 7100, mine cannot be revived after going into hibernation.

The only reason there are any raves for Win7 is because it's better than Vista which was/is total garbage. Win7 has zero significant added value for me and, actually, I've come across a number of "features" that I find much less user friendly than XP along with things I use regularly that are now buried. Had they implemented something useful like a new logging file system, it might have been worth a $50 upgrade. As it is, the only reason I'll be buying Win7 is that it will be the only Windows OS available.

From the tables above, it looks like the only advantage is shorter shutdown times. BIG deal. They should do a benchmark on file moves/deletions. It still seems to be as unbelievable slow as in Vista. Folders with large numbers of files can take forever.


RE: Compare boot times with OSX
By Roffles on 8/6/2009 11:46:54 AM , Rating: 2
Wiston,

As much as I enjoy your rants, you should probably understand that your dislike for Win7 is because you don't know how to use it.

Their isn't a single OS feature that can't be quickly fetched by hitting start and typing it into the search field. Type anything you want, like "system properties" "uninstall" "display properties" etcetera and you will get what you want faster than the old XP way. This is also a great way to quickly execute programs, open files and folders. Assuming you have all your fingers, your keyboard has a win key and you know how to type, Win7 is much faster for the basic computing functions you complain about.

You should study up on Win7's features...knowledge is power.


By SavagePotato on 8/6/2009 12:44:33 PM , Rating: 2
Brace yourself for Vista launch round two...

The FUDgates have opened and the trolls are coming out of the woodwork again.


RE: Compare boot times with OSX
By Belard on 8/7/2009 2:21:33 AM , Rating: 2
He stated that he's using Win7RC...

I've been using Win7RC for almost a month, I LIKE IT... not quite perfect (It is RC and I'm fine with XP, don't care for Vista).

Win7 memory manager is improved over vista... which won't ever be fixed... why bother, when you can have the end-user spend $50~120 on an upgrade :/


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