Benchmark: Vista vs. XP

[bb]

Brand new eMachines W3819
All of $250, yes it was marked refurbished, but it works fine.
Celeron D-360, 3.45GHz, 512MB, 120MB, Vista Home Basic

Yes, yes, I know. "Don't buy anything with Vista Home Basic; don't buy
Vista w/o 1G RAM." I've given that same advice. But we're a non-profit and
really, really need to replace our PIII/800s. We bought 10 of 'em.

Surprise, it turns out to be a pretty good machine. But our members hate
change (average age = 65+) and want their XP back. So with a bit of help
turned one into a dual-boot, Vista and XP. Works great.

I'm an engineer and like to measure things. Been running benchmarks since
my first Z80/4MHz. This dual-booting thingy is a great platform to compare
Vista and XP - same everything except the OS. Same drivers were used on
both sides with the exception of the display. Vista driver didn't work on
XP, XP driver didn't work on Vista.

Somewhat surprising to me was there was no significant difference between
the two OSs for Spinrite, HDTune, PC Wizard or AIDA32. I didn't even write
them down as they were so close. But then I ran the 'PassMark' demo
(http://www.passmark.com/.) Wow - a 36% difference between Vista and XP!
In the 'Graphics 2D-Lines' test there was a 83% difference!

Here are the results:
(Change to a mono-spaced font to make the columns line up.)

eMachines W3619
Test Vista XP % Diff
CPU - Integer Math 60.28 71.10 15
CPU - Floating Point Math 252.11 329.22 23
CPU - Find Prime Numbers 173.06 204.63 15
CPU - SSE/3DNow! 1068.47 1392.96 23
CPU - Compression 1767.78 2021.87 13
CPU - Encryption 17.94 20.37 12
CPU - Image Rotation 195.79 232.13 16
CPU - String Sorting 776.06 880.59 12

Graphics 2D - Lines 13.88 82.42 *83*
Graphics 2D - Rectangles 23.19 50.42 54
Graphics 2D - Shapes 8.68 23.69 63
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text 70.87 112.9 37
Graphics 2D - GUI 51.36 150.74 66
Graphics 3D - Simple 191.52 217.48 12
Graphics 3D - Medium 30.95 54.63 43
Graphics 3D - Complex 3.61 7.55 52

Memory - Allocate Small Block 974.56 1447.78 33
Memory - Read Cached 941.45 1970.22 52
Memory - Read Uncached 814.95 1827.35 55
Memory - Write 604.16 1117.27 46
Memory - Large RAM 17.76 57.51 69

Disk - Sequential Read 20.29 50.86 60
Disk - Sequential Write 20.47 51.24 60
Disk - Random Seek + RW 2.04 3.4 40

CD - Read 3.78 3.47 -9

CPU Mark 356.53 438.25 19
2D Graphics Mark 110.7 287.74 62
Memory Mark 247.88 474.65 48
Disk Mark 154.78 381.57 59
CD Mark 463.08 425.33 -9
3D Graphics Mark 72.35 89.5 19

PassMark Rating 237.7 369.38 36

I won't say if that's good or not (those d*m EULAs!) but I sure hope the
Vista SP1 fixes this!

-bb

 

[Peter in New Zealand]

Brand new eMachines W3819
All of $250, yes it was marked refurbished, but it works fine.
Celeron D-360, 3.45GHz, 512MB, 120MB, Vista Home Basic

Yes, yes, I know. "Don't buy anything with Vista Home Basic; don't buy
Vista w/o 1G RAM." I've given that same advice. But we're a non-profit
and really, really need to replace our PIII/800s. We bought 10 of 'em.

Surprise, it turns out to be a pretty good machine. But our members hate
change (average age = 65+) and want their XP back. So with a bit of help
turned one into a dual-boot, Vista and XP. Works great.

I'm an engineer and like to measure things. Been running benchmarks since
my first Z80/4MHz. This dual-booting thingy is a great platform to
compare Vista and XP - same everything except the OS. Same drivers were
used on both sides with the exception of the display. Vista driver didn't
work on XP, XP driver didn't work on Vista.

Somewhat surprising to me was there was no significant difference between
the two OSs for Spinrite, HDTune, PC Wizard or AIDA32. I didn't even
write them down as they were so close. But then I ran the 'PassMark' demo
(http://www.passmark.com/.) Wow - a 36% difference between Vista and XP!
In the 'Graphics 2D-Lines' test there was a 83% difference!

Here are the results:
(Change to a mono-spaced font to make the columns line up.)

eMachines W3619
Test Vista XP % Diff
CPU - Integer Math 60.28 71.10 15
CPU - Floating Point Math 252.11 329.22 23
CPU - Find Prime Numbers 173.06 204.63 15
CPU - SSE/3DNow! 1068.47 1392.96 23
CPU - Compression 1767.78 2021.87 13
CPU - Encryption 17.94 20.37 12
CPU - Image Rotation 195.79 232.13 16
CPU - String Sorting 776.06 880.59 12

Graphics 2D - Lines 13.88 82.42 *83*
Graphics 2D - Rectangles 23.19 50.42 54
Graphics 2D - Shapes 8.68 23.69 63
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text 70.87 112.9 37
Graphics 2D - GUI 51.36 150.74 66
Graphics 3D - Simple 191.52 217.48 12
Graphics 3D - Medium 30.95 54.63 43
Graphics 3D - Complex 3.61 7.55 52

Memory - Allocate Small Block 974.56 1447.78 33
Memory - Read Cached 941.45 1970.22 52
Memory - Read Uncached 814.95 1827.35 55
Memory - Write 604.16 1117.27 46
Memory - Large RAM 17.76 57.51 69

Disk - Sequential Read 20.29 50.86 60
Disk - Sequential Write 20.47 51.24 60
Disk - Random Seek + RW 2.04 3.4 40

CD - Read 3.78 3.47 -9

CPU Mark 356.53 438.25 19
2D Graphics Mark 110.7 287.74 62
Memory Mark 247.88 474.65 48
Disk Mark 154.78 381.57 59
CD Mark 463.08 425.33 -9
3D Graphics Mark 72.35 89.5 19

PassMark Rating 237.7 369.38 36

I won't say if that's good or not (those d*m EULAs!) but I sure hope the
Vista SP1 fixes this!

-bb

Absolutely fascinating! Thank you for taking the trouble to post your
results in such detail. I dual boot between Vista Home Prem and Windows
2000. The machine is an Athlon 2.2 Gig, with 1 Gig RAM. Naturally W2000
whips along quite a bit snappier than Vista. I have to say though I do like
Vista, and it trundles along OK on this hardware. Like you I hope SP1 will
optomise things for a bit more snap and sizzle. Once again, thanks for
posting results here.

Kind regards,