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Vista vs XP: Performance tested, and Vista is slower
There's plenty of negative press about Vista, but how much of it is fear of change and trendy Microsoft-bashing? We put Vista head-to-head with its biggest rival - XP - to see how Microsoft's new OS performs
It’s been more than six months since Windows Vista has been released, and it’s not been plain sailing for the new OS. Saying anything more definite than that has been tricky though – for every report claiming Vista uptake is sluggish, Microsoft has its own sales figures which it claims to be happy with.
Looking at sales figures might be interesting for people wanting to assess the whole PC market, but if you’re an individual wondering if it’s time to go out and buy a copy of Vista, is far from the most relevant benchmark. Linux – particularly Ubuntu – might be getting a lot of positive press at the moment, but for most PC builders, especially gamers, the key question for Vista is how it compares to its predecessor, Windows XP, particularly when it comes to performance.
We decided to put Vista head-to-head with XP, performing the same tests on each OS using the same hardware. We looked at our own benchmarks, as well as DVD ripping and encoding, file copying and 3D rendering. We also tested a whole range of games – from new titles such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to older ones such as Far Cry, along with some of the best looking games available on the PC today, including Oblivion and Company of Heroes. When gaming, we tested with both ATi and Nvidia hardware, in order to see not just how Vista compared to XP, but how the Vista versions of the Radeon and GeForce drivers differed.
The full results and discussion are available in our 7-page feature, and they don’t do Vista any favours. In all but a few exceptional cases, the new operating system was equalled or bettered by Windows XP. Using TMPGEnc to encode a DivX video to MPEG-2 was around 6 per cent slower under Vista compared with XP. Our Media Benchmarks 2007 were 6 per cent slower overall with Vista – and again, it was in video encoding that Vista was weakest, being 10% slower than XP when encoding using the H.264 codec. Even file copying was slower with the new OS.
Perhaps the most telling way of showing how slow Windows Vista is compared with Windows XP is the fact that there were quite a few benchmarks in which Vista only achieved scores comparable to those of XP when the processor was overclocked by 12.5 per cent; this implies that you'll need a 12.5 per cent faster CPU clock to obtain the same 2D application speed.
However, in gaming, the results were less decisively in XP’s favour. Now that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. actually works in Vista, it positively flies – it was faster with both ATi and Nvidia hardware when compared to XP, its average leaping 50% with the Radeon and 47% with the GeForce. In Oblivion, the GeForce averaged 71fps in Vista compared to 57fps in XP – as long as you remained outdoors. Indoor environments saw a slight drop, from an average of 66fps to 58fps. It’s seems that under Vista, the unified shaders of the GeForce 8800 GTS card we used for testing dealt with the increased vertex demands of the outdoor scenes better than they do in XP.
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Ok, I know don't know about the "Vista vs XP" fuzz and everything, but for me an older OS is usually faster compared to a newer one because of the gap between their system requirements. Don't get me wrong, but what you did here is just like pitting ye olde Windows 98 to XP during the latters younger years. I don't really care that much about Vista's performance and on how XP smoked it because some of the components that are fit for the newer OS is still coming out, (DD4 memory and Barcelona / Xeon for resource hungry Vista anyone?) Just my two cents guys...
Comment by PatatasX at 3:16pm 24th October 2007
Ok, I know don\'t know about the \
Comment by PatatasX at 3:15pm 24th October 2007
Vista isnt an option for me at the moment i play far too many old games as well as my new ones. I guess i may keep my current machine as a xp rig and then build\buy a new one for vista.
Comment by MIPhantom at 8:40am 23rd October 2007
I thought this was already proven long ago? I thought that it's mainly because the OS is itself "doing more". I also thought that dual cores were also faster on XP Pro than when running on Vista. Who the hell cares about frame rates when you're well over 60fps anyway? You can't even tell the difference with the naked eye! This article seems nothing more than BS to me and just tries to pile on the negative hype about the Vista OS and leaves more questions unanswered then answered.
Comment by Warrior24_7 at 10:40pm 22nd October 2007
I think everyones got over the mindblowing fact that an OS released 6 years ago, with 6 years of updates and optimizations and 6 years of user feedback performs better than an OS released 9 months ago.
Comment by D_Cypher at 10:32pm 22nd October 2007
I've had Vista for a couple of months now and I have to admit I think its a million times better than XP, it loads faster for me, its more stable than XP (hasn't crashed once so far), I also run openSUSE, gentoo, and mac osx, and although I love customising linux, have to say vista is prob my favourite, I think its a huge improvement, XP always felt like a half arsed, patched together effort. if you think its just about looks, you really need to try it out, superfetch is awesome, everything i use the most loads instantly, kinda like in tiger, love it!
Comment by samuelc at 10:03pm 22nd October 2007
I've given up on Vista and gone back to XP. I might go back to Vista when SP1 comes out but until then I'm giving it a wide berth. The key improvement for me has to be compatibility with games (I like games to work with Vista) and gadgets (for instance my phone can't connect with Vista PCs) and an improvement to DX10. At the moment DX10 is complete twaddle and there's nothing in the near future to suggest an improvement; it kills framerates and offers little if anything by way of better graphics.
Comment by Grotmonkey at 6:43pm 22nd October 2007
If you look at the performance of SSD's, Vista is sometimes 200 to 400 percent quicker.
Comment by TomHarling at 2:35pm 22nd October 2007
I'm running Vista Ultimate x64 and now I have everything setup as I want it's brilliant. Bring on SP1 for improved performance...
Comment by DC187x64 at 2:11pm 22nd October 2007
As the benchmarks feature open-source programs, I'd be interested to see how Ubuntu compares to both Vista and XP in the latest CPC benchies - it certainly opens GIMP quicker! Wonder if Spode can sort it out?! I do agree with WoodSpoon though, having to use XP in work is slumming it by comparison. I don't care if its slightly slower in benchmarks. It holds its own in gaming and is an all-round more complete package compared to XP.
Comment by gavomatic57 at 2:09pm 22nd October 2007
Its interesting that PC Pro had a feature in the last issue covering this very topic. Although, they put Vista in front overall. Not that it matters to me, I\'ll be sticking with XP until I have no choice. I have used vista plenty and ran the release candidate for several months. I just can\'t see the justification for the outlay. Looking pretty doesn\'t cut the mustard.
Comment by Spreadie at 2:02pm 22nd October 2007
I dont give a monkeys what anyone says, I'm running Vista ultimate and I'm loving it! Love it or loathe it, but get used to it as it's obviously here to stay!
Comment by WoodSpoon at 1:03pm 22nd October 2007
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