Is Vista faster than XP

[Charlie]

Assuming the same high-end PC is tested with XP and then Vista. What kind of
performance advantages would one see with the Vista installation? IOW what
kind of noticeable "seat-of-the-pants" performance gains would one see with
Vista in this example?
Would apps load faster, how about boot time and shutdown times?

 

[Guest]

Hi Charlie,

Never has Mirosoft released a newer OS with more features that was faster on
the old features (same hardware & specs) than its predecessor. As well beta
OSes are always going to be slower than RTMs.

Having said that the latest releases of Vista (RC1 and pre-RC) show a huge
performance improvement over their predecessors. I honestly see the same
performance if not slightly better over the XP install I have which is
probably cleaner as it is really only used for fall-back.

If you want to go one step further (speed-wise) you can try using a USB key
to ReadyBoost your system... it acts as a Prefetch which will cache your most
frequently accessed programs and processes into the USB key which essentially
gives your computer a shot of adrenaline.

Have fun!

M

 

[MICHAEL]

For me, a clean install of WinXP Pro SP2 vs a clean install
of Vista, WinXP is "faster". Of course, comparing the seasoned
XP to a still beta Vista isn't quite fair. It may sound silly, but the
indexing and search functions in Vista are almost enough for me
to tell folks to go get it. XP's indexing service is really useless and
a drain on the system.

Also, if you turned off some services and special effects in Vista
and made the "contest" more even, the differences probably would
not be noticeable.

I think there are times some forget how long WinXP has been out,
code refined and user tweaked. If you need a refresher on just how
good XP is, do a clean install- no crap that's been accumulating for
years since a user last did a clean install. You might be surprised
at how good XP really is when "brand new". WinXP Pro is a great
OS, worthy of several more years of service.

-Michael

 

[Guest]

Michael,

I agree with almost everything that you say. I am not sure though which
would win a speed test if you used all of the advantages of Vista versus the
clean install of XPSP2 - I work on a lot of XP machines both clean and dirty
and I honeslty love the OS, but then I loved Windows 2000 too I will be
interested to see how much faster RC2 and RTM are but for now Vista is fast
enough (and certainly reliable enough!) for me to use it as my primary OS,
and leave the relatively clean (recent re-installed) XP SP2 as my fall back
OS

M
--
MDG, MCT
MCSA (2003), MCSA (2000), MCDST.
Certified Small Business Specialist
Visit my blog at www.mitpro.ca/Blogs/tabid/59/BlogID/2/Default.aspx

For me, a clean install of WinXP Pro SP2 vs a clean install
of Vista, WinXP is "faster". Of course, comparing the seasoned
XP to a still beta Vista isn't quite fair. It may sound silly, but the
indexing and search functions in Vista are almost enough for me
to tell folks to go get it. XP's indexing service is really useless and
a drain on the system.

Also, if you turned off some services and special effects in Vista
and made the "contest" more even, the differences probably would
not be noticeable.

I think there are times some forget how long WinXP has been out,
code refined and user tweaked. If you need a refresher on just how
good XP is, do a clean install- no crap that's been accumulating for
years since a user last did a clean install. You might be surprised
at how good XP really is when "brand new". WinXP Pro is a great
OS, worthy of several more years of service.

-Michael

 

[Bill]

I did a clean install of RC1 - happy with the performance. I haven't timed
it against XP, but my isn't-this-nice-all-things-considered satisfaction
level is real high. - Your level may vary.


Assuming the same high-end PC is tested with XP and then Vista. What kind of
performance advantages would one see with the Vista installation? IOW what
kind of noticeable "seat-of-the-pants" performance gains would one see with
Vista in this example?
Would apps load faster, how about boot time and shutdown times?

 

[Conor]

Assuming the same high-end PC is tested with XP and then Vista. What kind of
performance advantages would one see with the Vista installation? IOW what
kind of noticeable "seat-of-the-pants" performance gains would one see with
Vista in this example?
Non.

Would apps load faster, how about boot time and shutdown times?

It "feels" like it does.

 

[Paula]

Exactly "Your level may vary"!
Have you noticed that when you buy a new PC and it's nice and speedy, then
after installing all your app's it slows down? So a lot depends on your
software too! That's why I hate Norton! It's a resource HOG! I'm going
OneCare all the way this time.
Paula

 

[Bill]

I agree Paula...................................I live in a Norton-Free-Home


Exactly "Your level may vary"!
Have you noticed that when you buy a new PC and it's nice and speedy, then
after installing all your app's it slows down? So a lot depends on your
software too! That's why I hate Norton! It's a resource HOG! I'm going
OneCare all the way this time.
Paula

 

[Chupacabra]

If you want to go one step further (speed-wise) you can try using a USB
key
to ReadyBoost your system... it acts as a Prefetch which will cache your
most
frequently accessed programs and processes into the USB key which
essentially
gives your computer a shot of adrenaline.

Does this really work? I can't imaging a USB key drive being faster than
system RAM, or even the hard drive.

 

[MICHAEL]

I don't disagree with you, for the most part.
Actually, the only part I do disagree is making Vista
my primary OS. I'm not ready to make that type of
commitment. There needs to be some more courting.

I will say, and there's a chance it's just my perception, that
WinXP Pro seems a bit more stable than WinXP Home. Even
though there's more to XP Pro, I've always felt that the code
was in some ways "tighter" and "sturdier". WinXP Pro just
always seemed to more robust.

I do have a question, which may open up a can of worms.
Like, where I got it, so on and so forth. Anyway, back to
the question/observation. On this laptop, I have build 5552
installed. It was an upgrade install from 5536, which was a
clean install. On a desktop, I did a clean install of RC1. The
desktop is newer and more powerful than this laptop. Both
versions of Vista run great. However, build 5552 seems to
be a bit snappier. Was 5552 on the same "branch" as RC1
or did it sprout off somewhere else? Itself being a candidate
for RC1? Before I had RC1 installed on the desktop, I had
5552 installed on it, too. I then did the clean install of RC1.
IMO, build 5552 ran better on the desktop, too. I'm not talking
about a major difference. But, at times, I do notice.
Just curious. You may not have any answers for me, but maybe
someone else will speak up. I just asked you because you have all
those 3 and 4 letter acronyms after your name. ;-)


-Michael

Michael,

I agree with almost everything that you say. I am not sure though which
would win a speed test if you used all of the advantages of Vista versus the
clean install of XPSP2 - I work on a lot of XP machines both clean and dirty
and I honeslty love the OS, but then I loved Windows 2000 too I will be
interested to see how much faster RC2 and RTM are but for now Vista is fast
enough (and certainly reliable enough!) for me to use it as my primary OS,
and leave the relatively clean (recent re-installed) XP SP2 as my fall back
OS

M

 

[MICHAEL]

Does this really work? I can't imaging a USB key drive being faster than
system RAM, or even the hard drive.

Yes, it works. However, the more RAM you have the less you will
notice.

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/04/14/576548.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

-Michael

 

[Steve Drake]

Have you found a USB Key that's fast enough?

My Hard disk gets about 120Meg Per Second (that's on a lappy) it peaks
higher than that.

My fast USB key gets about 12Meg Per Second, why would I prefect to it?

Its funny, I am sure MS have always stated that its each OS is faster than
the previous one but I cannot remember reading that for vista. But in
reality its not always that case, but... look at other things, like ASP,
ASP.NET is faster than ASP, ASP.NET 2 is faster than ASP.NET and ASP.NET 2
it does more, IIS6 is MUCH MUCH faster than IIS5. .NET2 is faster than .NET1
in most areas. I hear Vista paging algorithm is much better than XPs (I saw
Bill Gates say that years ago at a conference, he joked about the paging
algorithm not changing for years).

As for vista, I do see some things faster, like search and replace in
notepad, I don't do this often, but its is much faster, screen updates are
better in some cases, from a user point, shutdown is faster as you don't
have to keep clicking end task to end all the programs.

This is from some websites :

Launch applications 15 percent faster than Windows XP does
Boot PCs 50 percent faster than they boot currently and will allow PCs to
resume from standby in two seconds
Allow users to patch systems with 50 percent fewer reboots required
Reduce the number of system images required by 50 percent
Enable companies to migrate users 75 percent faster than they can with
existing versions of Windows.

Also from MS

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/performance.mspx

 

[Andre Da Costa [ActiveWin]]

I don't consider Vista to be faster than XP, but the performance is very,
very acceptable and there is no noticeable lag. Of course with PC's, there
will always be a decrease performance sometimes when install a new version
of Windows on old hardware. The install time for me was 42 mins, startup 42
seconds, desktop load 15 to 20 seconds.

Sempron 64-bit 1.6 GHz
512 MBs of RAM
Geforce FX 5200 128 MB AGP.

 

[Guest]

Hi Michael,

The decision to make Vista my primary OS was actually made in November of
last year, but I quickly recanted and made it my secondary OS until mid-May.
I have been using a dual-boot configuration for all of this time, and it took
a lot of builds for me to decide that it was time. I do not expect that most
people have made that commitment yet, and do not fault you for it!

I cannot explain definitively why 5552 was snappier than RC1, but from my
understanding there are not different `branches`of builds, at least not
publicly. I suspect that some of the internal builds may be tweaked for
specific tests which may lead to some technologies being disabled (even
though you may never know it) hence leading to it being quicker. I remember
a couple of internal builds back in October that seemed pretty stable
compared to the public builds, but nothing I could hang my hat on.


My advice to you is to stick to the public betas - the support is much more
standardized!

M

 

[Paula]

Yes!
I just got the Apacer HT203 4 gig flash drive and it is very fast.
200X
Works great!
Paula

 

[Guest]

Wow... if I were to list the reasons I am disenchanted with Norton that would
be in the top five, but I cannot give it credit as the only reason I hate
Norton

I understand what you are saying Paula. I think we were actually talking
about clean installs side-by-side on identical hardware.

M

 

[Guest]

Hi Andre,

I am right there with you on install time... between 38-41 minutes. One of
my machines is a Ferrari 4005 laptop with 2 Gigs RAM, the other is an Intel
960 proc (3 GHz dual core) with 2 gig RAM... of course that one installed
faster because the hard drives are fast SATA drives compared to the quick IDE
notebook drive in the Ferrari.

Having said that it is a hell of an improvement on my first install of 5231
on my old Toshiba Satellite (still a 3.2GHz P4) - 4.5 hours or so!

M
--
MDG, MCT
MCSA (2003), MCSA (2000), MCDST.
Certified Small Business Specialist
Visit my blog at www.mitpro.ca/Blogs/tabid/59/BlogID/2/Default.aspx

I don't consider Vista to be faster than XP, but the performance is very,
very acceptable and there is no noticeable lag. Of course with PC's, there
will always be a decrease performance sometimes when install a new version
of Windows on old hardware. The install time for me was 42 mins, startup 42
seconds, desktop load 15 to 20 seconds.

Sempron 64-bit 1.6 GHz
512 MBs of RAM
Geforce FX 5200 128 MB AGP.

 

[Paula]

I understand...I was just sticking my two cents in. <g>
Paula

 

[Stephan Schaem]

Not sure about Rc1 , but beta 2 was very very sluggish at all levels.
From boot time to shutdown.

On my 1gig, XP 3200+ with 256meg X800XT I turned off Areo after a couple of week to make the system more usable with 3d
applications.
I have nothing installed on that machine but a couple of games... I did try to install Adobe photoshop element but it just crash on
Vista.

Also video card drivers are in development stage and game run slower and have a huge problem with resource sharing.

As you can see, I'm not that hot about vista. Allot of hype for not much improvement yet,

Stephan

 

[Steve Drake]

I have just done some tests.

I have tested a CHEAP USBKEY, it worked with ready boost, it got SEQ read
tests off about 9MB/s and RANDOM readtests of 0.9Mb for a range of 31719.

I got an expensive corsair that was faster, eg, look at the reviews and it
gets very good reviews, this did not pass the windows ready boost tests, it
got 16MB/s on SEQ reads, thats very good, but only got 0.6MB/s on the same
range for RANDOM reads.

On smaller ranges, the figures were closers but the cheap stick still won.

Interesting results, I think mem stick companies should post the random disk
performance figures not just the SEQ ones.

I used CHDDSPEED found at
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd.html