Windows 7 Beta takes another crown, besting Vista in SSD performance

It's no huge surprise, since Microsoft was planning on improving performance on this front, but now we've got some of our first solid numbers on Windows 7 Beta SSD performance. Nothing crazy spectacular, but Windows 7 looks to have a slight edge over Vista pretty much across the board, with better speed, access time and lower CPU usage -- not bad for a beta, let's hope things continue to improve as we approach "Microsoft would like your money for this" status.

[Kris120890 @ Jan 18th 2009 8:28AM]

Hopefully it'll get better by the release date. SSDs are pretty fast anyway but you might as well optimize as much as possible.

[notYou @ Jan 18th 2009 11:18AM]

It should, but Microsoft is counting on industry hardware players to do their part too (which, I doubt, current SSDs provide yet).

See the WinHEC 2008 presentation "Windows 7 enhancements for solid state drives" - google for a lot more, but here's a PDF of the Session's powerpoint presentation:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/A/7/FA70E919-8F82-4C4E-8D02-97DB3CF79AD5/COR-T558_Shu_Taiwan.pdf

It appears they can make great strides with their SSD specific drivers and, with a little gettin' onbaord from the manufacturers, can make it seamless - where the OS can tailor the driver to the media, instead of today where it's using the same drivers optimized for platters as for SSDs.

[Levi @ Jan 18th 2009 10:41AM]

uhhh, well iEye, this is a desktop OS and iPhone OS is a mobile OS... so you can't really compare them...

[Sora @ Jan 18th 2009 10:57AM]

Well, this OS has copy/paste. And the OSX on the iPhone doesn't.

[Neha @ Jan 18th 2009 10:59AM]

What ever happened to the Hybrid Hard Drive's hype back in the Longhorn days.

[Flashpoint @ Jan 18th 2009 11:02AM]

I already know, the next PC I get has to have an SSD.
As for Windows 7, I'm on the fence...I'm having a great time with vista Premium, but windows 7 is likely gonna be buggy when released.

[Jeffrey @ Jan 18th 2009 11:08AM]

Windows Vista is a Beta of Windows 7 Beta

[William @ Jan 18th 2009 11:26AM]

so you are surprised a new OS out performs a new one........

[AJ in the East Bay @ Jan 18th 2009 11:53AM]

@Flashpoint:

You should give Windows 7 Beta a try. My laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium and I shrunk the volume to create a new partition for 7. I'm actually trying out the 64-bit and so far I'm impressed how responsive it is.

You are correct that Microsoft new OSs come out buggy initially, but since 7 is just Vista optimized, I would say it's easy to jump on board early and not wait for the eventual SP1.

[Steveorevo @ Jan 18th 2009 12:17PM]

Amazing what one can accomplish with a little self-realization that the original product is complete, utter, unoptimized fatware. Does it still take a beefy +$150 DirectX, 3D accelerated card to accomplish what a crappy mac mini does in OpenGL on a builtin Intel GMA shit graphics controller?

It'll be nice to have an "optimized Windows Vista" aka Windows 7 just in time when I switch to Snow Lepared aka "optimized OS X"... then I cry about if and when a Windows 8 will come out to speed up my slow Windows 7 beast with a +$200 graphics card.

[trashmymail @ Jan 18th 2009 12:18PM]

No doubt that the SSD is the "wave of the future" and it won't be long before is the standard.
Regards,
~DD

[Steveorevo @ Jan 18th 2009 12:22PM]

"to accomplish what a crappy mac mini does in OpenGL " .. by that I mean Window's Aero. I'd love to see a version of Windows that actually runs my graphics production suite (read: get work done) faster vs. slower.

[The Dude @ Jan 18th 2009 12:28PM]

Dumb troll is dumb.

What do you think all of the economically priced Windows desktops have? Discrete video cards? If it's not integrated Intel garbage it's the better Nvidia solution. They're running Aero just fine.

[Steveorevo @ Jan 18th 2009 12:40PM]

Thats Microsoft for ya. As long as they reach the holy grail of 'just fine' or 'good enough'. How about 'really good' for a change?

The point is they could have done it right the first time and avoid all the lawsuites that resulted when users bought 'Windows Vista' certified machines that really just barely met the specs to run Vista Home. Doesn't anyone remember that fiasco? Turned out that Areo didn't fly and the result was am operating system that ran software slower not better, not faster, but rather far worse then Microsoft's pride of and joy of running 'ok'.

Hopefully with Windows 7, they will reach a new milestone of optimized performance: 'barely good enough'

[Gnormie @ Jan 18th 2009 1:14PM]

What I really don't understand is why the hell does anyone expect a newer OS to be faster then the one it replaced? If that were the case historically then we'd all have operating systems using 10MB of RAM, but it isn't and how do people get off complaining that an OS should use less resources then the 8 year old one it replaces?

[Esteban @ Jan 18th 2009 2:13PM]

@Steveorevo

Do you have any idea how stupid you sound?

How exactly do you say that any given version of Windows is "good enough", rather than "great". You keep giving "proof", but don't back it up with any examples behind what you say. It is really easy to simply say something as fact rather than explain your reasoning. (Thats Propaganda 101 for you)

And as for that statement, how can you say that? A Mac doesn't have half of the capabilities that a Windows machine does out of the box. The networking capabilities are nowhere near as sophisticated, and as for deployment, people have pretty much no option other than the built-in options. I think you may be confusing a computer's usability with how flashy it looks. You sound like you are no more than a child fixating on a shiny object...

[Steveorevo @ Jan 18th 2009 3:07PM]

@Esteban
Wow Estban, do you know how stupid you sound? I'm a majority Windows user and developer but I do know that 'out of the box' a Mac BSD based operating systems comes with way more 'out of the box' then a Windows machine. Here are your examples:

Java is built in 'out of the box'
PHP is built in 'out of the box'
Perl is built in 'out of the box'
VNC is built in 'out of the box'
SMB is built in 'out of the box'
WebDAV and FTP (that works and doesn't have the crippled authorization that comes with Windows SP2) is 'out of the box'
iLife's iPhoto, iMovie, iCalendar, and Mail is way better then Outlook Express and Vista's late but alas (finally) incorporation of a Calendar in their 'out the box' solution. Majority of us had to buy Outlook in Office Professional to the tune of +$200 dollars -it doesn't come with Office Student and Home addition and that's certainly not 'out of the box'.

As for the other applications like 'Windows Movie Maker'? What a joke. Windows Media Player takes hours to catelog +300 CDs and even its search feature takes 30 seconds to a 1 minute to search. iTunes takes about 3 seconds and coverflow is way nicer.

The bottom line is that I use Windows because I expect to pay for or download way more applications to run on it. 'Out of the box' is definately not what I use Windows alone for. Thats a laugh! But I do have to hand it to Mac as 'out of the box' its great. Flashy? Hardly... my DELL XPS is way more flashy then any Mac I've seen...

[adrian @ Jan 18th 2009 3:09PM]

I belive a lot of users are going to be disapointed when Win 7 iwhen they start using it full time. The Microsoft PR machine and the media in general is working overtime on this one unlike Vista.

Users expectations are being raised to levels that Microsoft might not be able to match when released.

[Mark Anderson @ Jan 18th 2009 3:42PM]

And yet, adrian, the Beta has already been received better than any other Beta in Microsoft's history.

Imagine that.

[Hamidxa @ Jan 18th 2009 4:24PM]

Gnormie,

Because people like Steveo are out there, i.e. idiots without any sense of history, any sense of reality.

How many people here can name me one OS, one Productivity suite, one killer game built on a new engine, that came out years after its predecessor, and required less resources?

It can't be done, the improvements go hand in hand with the need for better components.

Let the idiots wallow in their own ignorance I say.

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 18th 2009 5:48PM]

@Steveorevo WMP found my 85gig/ music library in about 2min, and the search function is very fast, I have no idea what version of windows7/vista/w.e you have been using.

Also, don't you remember that ms got sued for punting IE and WMP into there os? What do you think would happen if they added a whole suite like iLife?

Same goes for lots of things, antitrust!

[iamnotjamesh @ Jan 19th 2009 5:38PM]

microsoft just trying to get back user satisfaction. i highly doubt it can get any better than this. windows 7 seriously cuts back on features of vista for speed... not much better!

[MioTheGreat @ Jan 18th 2009 7:28PM]

"Windows Media Player takes hours to catelog +300 CDs and even its search feature takes 30 seconds to a 1 minute to search."

You're joking, right? WMP just indexed my entire mp3 collection (About 20 gigs) in like 5-10 minutes (I don't know, I went and got a snack), and the search is all but instant.

[giuliop @ Jan 18th 2009 7:36PM]

@Gnormie / Hamidxa

"What I really don't understand is why the hell does anyone expect a newer OS to be faster then the one it replaced?"

It's always funny to see statements this clueless. So the faster technology becomes, the slower the OS? Do you realise that by that reasoning, in 100 years we should have a PetaHertz machine that moves the arrow cursor one pixel a minute?

Resources are one thing, speed is another. With more resources (faster hardware), speed is supposed to increase. A current game requires many more resources than a 10-year old one, but is orders of magnitude faster. That's why a newer operating system, running on newer hardware, *has* to run faster, if done properly.

And citing history is just idiotic; just because Microsoft has always been sloppy at optimising operating system doesn't mean that it can't be done: then why is Windows 7 reportedly faster than Vista? How can it be, if it can't be done? Is this a time paradox? Are we gonna be swallowed up in a black hole?

Wake up people. All of you, idiotic low-rankers.

[Hamidxa @ Jan 18th 2009 8:07PM]

Guiliop,

Moore's Law has not been in effect for well over a year now.

Furthermore, respond to my challenge, name me one new OS, one new major productivity suite, one new major rendering engine, that has actually netted improved performance on the same hardware over its predecessor, and didn't require beefier specs than its predecessor.

Name me one.

I bet you can't do it.

Windows 7 however seems to be doing just that over Windows Vista.

Your failure to acknowledge this could be as a result of your disdain for Microsoft, or it could also be a symptom of your myopic and limited knowledge of the industry as a whole.

[giuliop @ Jan 18th 2009 9:53PM]

The fact is that you fail to acknowledge the existence of the word "optimisation". The comical thing is that while you insist that a "major OS" can't run any faster than its predecessor, you also say that Windows 7 is indeed faster than Vista. How can that be? Care to explain, with your far-sighted view of the "industry as a whole"?

*I* bet you can't. The reason is that most of the software is bloated and written sloppily because the evolution of hardware makes up for the inadequacy of code and of those who have written it, and "far-sighted" people like you think it's perfectly normal; which takes us to the answer to your futile - and ridiculous - challenge: *every* major rendering engine runs faster than its predecessor. If rendering engines were written by Microsoft we would have games that render one frame per hour. Have you ever asked yourself why, while rendering engines can move huge and ultra-complex images in milliseconds, Vista stutters when it has to move just a little more than a bunch of pixels and has its "visual effects" on?

[Bryant @ Jan 19th 2009 1:22AM]

@Steveorevo

Christ. You guys complained that Microsoft built in too many applications into Windows and was abusing its monopoly back in the day, and now you're saying they have too little?

H
y
p
o
c
r
i
t
e

[adrian @ Jan 19th 2009 8:13AM]

@Mark Anderson

When Windows 7 is released for real and users start bitching don't say I did not warn you and others.

[Angus Hedger @ Jan 18th 2009 8:33AM]

Hahaha SSD Beta Fish!

[Like_A_Glove @ Jan 18th 2009 9:37AM]

You mean "ate" ?

[superhobo @ Jan 18th 2009 9:54AM]

Siamese fighting fish. Also known as Betta in Greek or some other language.

Also, the fish has 7 bubbles.

[Like_A_Glove @ Jan 18th 2009 10:52AM]

@superhobo

You're being serious.
Of course it WAS a beta fish, well....... before it's been eaten by SSD drive.

[zioncat @ Jan 18th 2009 1:15PM]

Well that's not surprising because vista was not built around SSD but your convectional drive. So of course it would perform better. A lot more SSD's will be running Windows 7 next year.

[superhobo @ Jan 18th 2009 1:51PM]

@zioncat: I prefer microwave drive myself.

[LondonConsultant @ Jan 18th 2009 8:39AM]

Yet again, it looks like my decision to stick with XP until Windows 7 arrives was the right one... :-)

[Adderz @ Jan 18th 2009 9:01AM]

MS changed ALOT of things when they went from XP to Vista. It just means you have missed out on all the new features for the past few years..even if it was at the expense of some system resources.

Windows 7 was not the release Windows was "supposed" to be. Its a refinement release. Just like Snow Leopard is a "refinement" of Leopard. Ive had kernal panics and freezing problems with Leopard, but i would NEVER go back to Tiger, i would be missing out on too many things.

Vista is a great update from XP...always was...to me...but im a person that can live with the odd problem or inconvenience, so i can experience all the new features and interface updates. I use Leopard as my main OS, and have Vista installed through bootcamp, im a happy camper.

[Luigi193 @ Jan 18th 2009 9:35AM]

You've had a kernel panic recently? I don't remember my last leopard kernel panic...

[Nate @ Jan 18th 2009 9:48AM]

@LondonConsultant - skipping an OS release you don't find any worth or benefit from is always a bright idea. On the other hand, I'm sure those who have been using, enjoying, and finding productivity benefits from Vista are glad they took the plunge instead of waiting.

[Levi @ Jan 18th 2009 10:54AM]

@ Adderz

Resources, boot time, and ESPECIALLY compatibility are all reasons not to upgrade to Vista. I play some older games, I'm quite into amateur indie game programming, etc, none of which has compatibility that has even come close to that of XP. Granted, XP had the same problem with compatibility when it came out, but Microsoft, as well as individual programmers, came up with fixes. Now we have an immense pool of fixes and patches for the compatibility issues on XP. Vista has a lower install base and a shorter life span, so the compatibility issues haven't been fixed. I couldn't even pay my phone bill on a Vista machine. I was online trying to pay the bill, it would just not work. I was no the phone with customer support to see if it was something on their end. It was not. I went, "hold on a sec," ran upstairs to my bro's XP machine, and it worked just fine. Same exact browser.

Let's talk about pricing. Why bother to upgrade if you don't feel like paying for it? Hell, I've been running a bootlegged copy of XP for years because I don't feel like paying for THAT, let alone the crazy prices for Vista. To enjoy any of Vista's nice features beyond widgets (available on XP btw) or the dynamic search, you'd have to get a more expensive edition, and I would have to upgrade my PC. Not worth it.

Vista is pretty much a bunch of unoptimized code layered on top of XP, whereas Windows 7 is a build from the ground up. This is how they are achieving the faster boot times, system performance, and lower system requirements.

I personally am actually interested in 7, and I'm keeping it on my radar. As someone with a P4 system, I'll still probably not have the need to upgrade, as I won't be able to enjoy any games that take advantage of DX10. I'll be interested to see what sets this apart from XP and Vista besides system performance, though.

[j.d.ripper @ Jan 18th 2009 11:00AM]

@ Adderz

I've also missed out on shelling out a few hundred dollars to pay for the vista license and hardware upgrades to run the OS.
And really, I'm glad I missed out on that.

[MioTheGreat @ Jan 18th 2009 11:15AM]

"I don't remember my last leopard kernel panic..."

Just like I can't remember my last Vista BSOD.

7, on the other hand, seems to loathe my ATI card...

[Dracorius @ Jan 18th 2009 11:25AM]

@Levi: I don't know how you're experiencing it, but vista is not unoptimized code layered on top of winXP. WinXP is NT v5.1. For vista, they have rewritten a whole lot, and named the resulting kernel NT v6.0. This is exactly why there were so many compatibility issues. With Windows7, they took the vista kernel, en applied some optimisations, an fixed some issues. The result is kernel NT v6.1. The reason why people will be experiencing a smooth transition to windows 7, is because by now, developers have had the time to adjust, and make there programs and drivers decently compatible to this new kernel version.

Cheerz
Dracorius

[eggothewaffle @ Jan 18th 2009 11:35AM]

"Vista is pretty much a bunch of unoptimized code layered on top of XP, whereas Windows 7 is a build from the ground up. This is how they are achieving the faster boot times, system performance, and lower system requirements."

This is the frontrunner for "the catastrophic failure in posting of the year" award so far.

[homoerectus @ Jan 18th 2009 11:49AM]

I logged in just to reply to levi's comment.

"Vista is pretty much a bunch of unoptimized code layered on top of XP, whereas Windows 7 is a build from the ground up. This is how they are achieving the faster boot times, system performance, and lower system requirements."

WTF. Where have you been?! The ENTIRE internet has been saying the exact opposite for about 3 months now.

Vista was where they changed everything and made XP programs uncompilable.

As for windows 7, all the linux fanboys have been constantly complaining about how windows 7 IS windows vista with some minor adjustments. Not "built from the ground up".

I agree this is the single biggest fail comment I've heard all year.

This guy sounds like he wanted to jump on the bandwagon but got it 100% wrong. He cant even follow correctly. My advice, uninstall windows. Unplug your computer. Don't even use a computer again.

[homoerectus @ Jan 18th 2009 11:52AM]

on second thought this guy is probably trolling us, nobody is that stupid. Right? right?

[Boyprodigy1 @ Jan 18th 2009 12:24PM]

@ Levi again and maybe late:
Windows 7 is the same kernal as windows vista. Seriously, you should probably do some research before you go talking smack about an operating system you know nothing about. I do all of those things that you said you couldn't do on windows vista (literally every single one). Maybe the problem lies in you, not the operating system.

PwNeD

[Mr. Ford @ Jan 18th 2009 12:47PM]

@Levi
If you are using a bootlegged version of XP, then that means you installed it yourself. That also means, that in all likelihood, unless you are using "bootlegged" hardware as well, that you qualify to use this version of Vista. (they never check anyway)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116480
For only $89, I highly doubt that this is what you consider to be "crazy prices".

As far as the reasons why you stay with XP, compatibility for example, doesn't apply to most PC users. I really don't feel that my grandmother/mom/uncle/sister/friends/clients need the ability to do things like "amateur indie game programming". In most instances, Vista has provided a more intuitive way for many of my non-techie clients to learn to use a PC for the first time. Most of these Vista users immediately told me when shopping for a computer that Vista wasn't an option. When I asked them why, they couldn't give an answer. After comparing XP and vista, guess what they chose?

Most of us who visit Engadget are the techie type. We probably have needs that sometimes cannot be met by the newest OS. That doesn't mean that we should automatically assume that it won't meet the needs of anyone else.

BTW, I'm typing this on a machine that dual boots XP and Vista. As a systems integrator/IT consultant, I have only run into a couple of programs that I use day to day that I need XP for.

[Andir3.0 @ Jan 18th 2009 2:08PM]

You DO see that that is an OEM version, right? That means you legally MUST buy a hard drive with it or you are breaking the law. Tack on about $50 or more to that price.

[Reece @ Jan 18th 2009 2:47PM]

@Andir3.0

Actually, all you have to do is buy any piece of hardware, a USB Cable will do. If he built his own machine then he also qualifies.

[Pend @ Jan 18th 2009 3:58PM]

@Adderz
I've been waiting for 7 on XP also, I look that any OS that is 3 to 4 times the requirements no matter how many features is not right. It was like when I was on 3.1 and went to 95. True was a lot of differences but when I went to 98 was just a improved version of 95. When i saw ME on my friends PC there was no way I would get on there and jumped on XP. Now the way I look at Vista is just like 95 and 7 is 98 so in my theory I have waited for the right time to redo a whole new computer and be ready for Starcraft 2 and Diablo III on Windows 7.