Now that the Windows 7 beta is out, the
benchmarks are coming fast and furious, and while 7's been previously found to best XP and Vista during
"real-world" tasks, it looks like XP is still the outright speed champ on current hardware. That's at least the word according to
InfoWorld, which pitted all three systems against each other in a suite of tests designed to suss out how each performed on modern multicore systems, and while we won't pretend to grok all the data, there's nothing complicated about the final results, which showed that "any illusions about Windows 7 somehow being leaner or more efficient than Vista can now be thrown out the window." Sure, there was some speedup -- 7 was 60 percent faster than Vista during the dual-core workflow tests -- but overall, 7's just slower on dual- and quad-core hardware than XP. However, there's a silver lining here:
InfoWorld says the slowdown is in large part due to the extra code Vista and 7 use to manage multicore processors, and as the number of cores increase, the corresponding performance gains are much bigger than with XP since they can be used more efficiently. Of course, by the time we're all sitting pretty with 48-core
Larrabee machines this all might be just a distant memory, so for right now we're just going to get back to
installing the Windows 7 beta on anything we can find and reveling in the glory of perceived speedups.
Read - Analysis I (against Vista alone)
Read - Analysis II (against Vista and XP)
Update: The author of one of our sources here has seen been released from
InfoWorld due to breach of trust.
InfoWorld maintains that Randall C. Kennedy's "insight and analysis [is believed] to be accurate and reliable."
posted January 22nd 2009 6:52PM
Calm down Engadget its called a beta for a reason.
Yeah! Engadget, don't you realize that 'beta' means "made to be half speed of final product"? What did you think, it refers to stability or something?
Apparently Infoworld doesn't understand the term "beta." Not really Engadget.
I don't care what Infoworld has to say about it, Windows 7 feels damn snappy compared to XP or Vista. XP is officially old.
Uh, i dont know about you guys, but ive been waiting for benchmarks since windows 7 was announced. Looks like im going to be riding with XP for a lot longer than i thought... its too bad its so vunerable to so malware, adware, spyware, etc.
That just goes with the huge audience though.
Lots of text and not a single chart. Don't waste your time.
"Any illusions about Windows 7 somehow being leaner or more efficient than Vista can now be thrown out the window"
...
"you certainly won't lose anything by moving from Vista to Windows 7, and you may even gain a few seconds"
...
Something tells me those statements aren't compatible. And it's a beta. You can't expect massive performance gains but the fact that it's already faster than it's predecessor before the final tweaking is fantastic (while looking sleeker).
And engadget stop tooting your own horn. You did not install windows 7 on everything you can find. You installed it on like 6 macbooks and a vaio p. That is not everything. How about you install it on some more windows machines, you know the things that the majority of people will be using it on and the things that actually have varying hardware.
Or how about you make the article more interesting and actually try and install it on everything. Like a bootable flash drive, or a puppy. Something actually interesting.
Exactly. A lot of feathers are getting ruffled over this news. However, there is a certain segment of the population that might enjoy this news... the hardware manufacturers. Microsoft is pushing the envelope with the operating system to allow computer manufacturers -- and those in their supply chains (e.g., Intel and AMD) -- to sell the higher end machines at the premium prices. That is, if you really want performance.
The blades on my toy helicopter spin faster than the wheels on my car, but I wouldn't want to ride it into work...
The fact of the matter is that Windows 7 is not truly faster when running applications of the multicore/multithreaded nature. It just tells the gamers and data crunchers that XP is still more efficient for both these tasks (gaming IS picking up more and more multi-threaded/SMP techniques.)
It FEELS snappier because they finally started offloading some of the common tasks to other threads, but there is definitely more bloat as proven by the benchmarks. They just hid it in the other cores. So the DRM is still there, the Vista bloat is still there... they just allocated it to another process.
Cry that it's a beta all you want. They aren't going to cut it down THAT much by release unless they revert some of needless crunching going on in the background.
"Windows 7 feels damn snappy compared to XP or Vista."
People have said that about every new version of dos/windows since the beginning of time.. it is hilarious.
Engadget, please correct the title of this post to read "Windows 7 *BETA* ...", no need for misleading titles!
The biggest thing no one seems to have remembered:
There's lots of debugging code in the FRE builds of Windows 7 Beta 1. (I'm not talking about the CHK builds which are so loaded with debugging code that they might run as sluggishly as Windows Vista RTM).
A good chunk of this debug code will be removed from the RTM branch of 7 near the end of the development phase.
I'm with Penguin Warlord, the summary was worded poorly. Sounds like this particular beta is faster than Vista but slower than XP. We'll see if it can be faster than XP when it's released, but of course people like to hear prerelease status.
Yeah and they said that about 98 when XP came out, but they can both suck up viruses and crapware like nobody's business. Does everyone forget DX10 or 11 or whatever 7 has under the hood. It isn't going to perform tasks faster all the time, but it sure as hell will do a better job at it.
What kinda weirdo puts the taskbar on the left? Stay away from my childern.
C'mon, guys! can't you also see that Engadget was also trying to poke fun of Vista? clearly Windows 7 has beaten Vista in a lot of areas and it's a friggin' BETA!!!
you can't, however, compare it to XP, mostly because XP has been out for 9 years now.
I didn't know that anyone took InfoWorld seriously anymore since they became the Chris Crocker of tech blogs with their "Leave XP Alone!!" campaign. When can I expect to see topless girls on Page 3 of Engadget?
jesus christ...the speed difference between windows 7 and xp is really not that huge. for all you people running well, less than ideal spec'd hardware, ok stick w/ xp. but if you're running any dual core processor w/ 2 GB+ of RAM. why the _____ are you still running xp? dude...shiets old, get w/ the times. u people are turning into the same ones 5 years ago that REFUSED to give up their VHS players.
I'm sure they understand Beta, after all, their comment system is still in Beta, right?
Infoworld LOL
Second only to Compuworld in complete lack of credibility.
Exactly. Complete nonsense. Working for software companies, I can't count the number of times I've noted performance problems in Betas. The response from engineering is invariably either (a) "we know, there's a lot of debug code in there right now" or (b) "i agree, we need to review that area of code and see exactly what that guy did wrong in there". Either way, it's fixed way before the final release. Windows 7 may or may not be a huge improvement, but this is no way to evaluate it.
In other news Windows 3.1 is a SPEEDY BALL OF LIGHT compared to XP. Come on, new hardware, old code, what do people expect. XP is over, move on.
"In other news Windows 3.1 is a SPEEDY BALL OF LIGHT compared to XP. Come on, new hardware, old code, what do people expect. XP is over, move on."
LOL so very true and what happens when Microsoft and other software manufacturers do the unthinkable and "stop supporting XP". Oh no, then your XP is just as useful as that copy of 3.1.
I knew with an article like this the pro-XP anti-anything new crowd would jump on this and preach how great XP is. I havent been running XP for a while and after using Vista, i personally would not go back to using XP on any of my computers. On a side note, Windows 7 runs a lot better on my parents computer than XP ever did. I installed it for them on their Dell Dimension 2400, which if you look up the specs, has a Celeron 2.0GHz and i upgraded the ram to 1GB. They've never been more happy with what Win7 Beta has brought to their computer. Even cold boot time is improved over XP.
A note to Engadget, install it on some other computer configurations, i wanna see an in-depth on how it runs on say a single core processor that is not a netbook. I wanna see the average joe computer get Win7 on it, not your flashy MacBooks and Vaio P.
Why the hell doesn't Microsoft just add another service pack to Windows XP and be done with it. Vista and Windows 7 isn't even necessary. If Windows 7 goes over as big as Vista, Microsoft might as well just quit the OS business. Windows XP is just fine. One of the best products MS has ever produced. They could just keep upgrading it forever. Add a few interface tweaks and it's just as good as a whole new OS. All this new Windows 7 OS stuff is just a way to extort money from gullible Windows nerds seduced by the better, much faster, more stable, get more women spiel. Face it, Windows 7 is new Vista 2009. Make it easier on the Chinese and Russians. Let them continue to use pirated versions of Windows XP.
this is to be expected. its not really news worthy.
in recent news: water is wet.
damn it, since when is water wet? =)
there's three different clocks showing three different times on the desktop.
No Jack, there are four you fail at math.
ugly desktop..*shudder...
hurry up and announce a release date for this POS, so Apple can come back over the top and pull the covers off Snow Leopard.
Plus the clock on the taskbar.
Well, conor, you fail at grammar.
@ ivanpertsev
Since it melted.
People settle down! There's plenty of fail to go around!
Well obviously XP won, it has less features, which makes it take up less resources.
I, personally, would choose Windows 7 or even Vista for the new features even if it would run slower.
The features of Vista and 7 make up for their sluggishness when compared to XP.
If you aren't using those features though, why would you want them taking resources?
For me, the primary task of an operating system is to run other programs, the programs I tell it to run. Therefore the OS that can run these programs better is the better OS.
@Loonie
Please stay with XP for the rest of your life then. If you don't want any upgrades at all, then why bother criticizing new things. If you want to be able to call people efficiently, don't get an Iphone. If you want to be able to simply cook, then don't get a microwave. But don't bitch at us when we all are running a hacked Windows 7 on our 5th gen Iphones while the Iphone is cooking my pizza.
Just what "features" are you talking about?
mmm..iPizza
Apple is obviously going to go in a radically new direction with Steve Jobs out of the picture.
Gfxlonghorn - er, are you sure you were reading my post? Only I don't remember saying I didn't want upgrades, or criticizing a new thing.
Actually, the more times I read your response, the less sense it makes.
I didn't even read his response and it didn't make sense
@Loonie
What you fail to realize is that you CAN (and probably should) uninstall elements of the OS you arent using. If you want it to run just other programs, then by all means, you should be trimming it down.
Once you cut out some of the bloat and luxury features, Vista/Win7 will run about the same speed as XP.
Look at it like this. You've got two cars. They have the same engines in them. However, one car weighs 1,200lbs less than the other. Which do you think is going to go faster?
The lighter one of course! However, if you remove the extra weight from the heavier car, you are back to getting identical performance.
Computing is the same way. If you cant handle the current load, get rid of what you dont need and try again.
Joshua Walters - How easy is it to "remove the extra weight from the heavier car"?
Again, if features are not actually in use, why should they need to take any resources at all, HDD space aside? Imagine if you had a powerful car with a tow bar, so that you could add the extra capacity and weight on if needed, and if you didn't need it, you could simply unhook it.
I am aware of the ability to remove parts of the OS, if you're going to use Windows for music production, you pretty much need to anyway.
I agree its just beta. Wait till full version comes out.
......and wait until manufacturers release fully Windows 7 compatible drivers. Until then there is no need to make these performance results a big deal as the software is just in beta.
chill down engadget.
I don't think windows 7 will have a problem with drivers like vista did/does.
Why is XP always faster than newer version of Windows? Because it was designed for hardware back nine years ago. This story is really getting old. Run XP on top of the line machines from 2001 and see if it's really faster than Windows 7.
A logical statement...
I salute you!
I have to agree with your astute observation. I'm sure if I could run Win 3.1 on modern hardware, it will also be speedier than Windows 7
The problem is that XP still runs programs that are made today, all on a framework that was designed for machines with 1/8 the ram average PC's have today, and 1/20th the processing power.
So those applications have a whole lot of hardware to access, since XP does nothing with it, unlike Vista and 7.
It is absolutely no suprise that XP is still the leader at this stage.
What is a suprise is that 7 is still in beta and comes pretty damn close.