Windows 7: The Definitive Windows 7 vs Vista Performance Compariso

The official launch of Windows 7 is upon us, and there has never been so much hype for a new Microsoft OS since XP was first revealed. To most people, Vista is either a complete piece of junk, or a necessary evil, although I think that is somewhat unfair. To me, Vista is an improvement over XP in every conceivable way, and I really can’t think of any good reason for someone to be using XP in the last 3 years. Many people do though, and Microsoft wasted no time in working on a replacement for Vista.

One thing is for certain though; after using Windows 7 for a few months, I can say that Windows 7 is what Vista really should have been. Although it’s not a revolutionary product compared to Vista like XP was compared to 98, it just does everything better.

But I digress; we’re not here to compare the functionality of Vista and 7, we’re only concerned with performance today. You may be convinced that 7 sounds good on paper, with everyone praising the UI improvements for months. But what about performance? How will it handle the applications that you run every day? Will gaming take a hit? Or will it be improved? Will the touted multitasking improvements be noticeable?

To offer what I think will be the definitive performance comparison of Windows 7 and Vista, I put both versions through dozens of tests, mostly using the programs that people actually use every day. We tested 3 different systems as well:

High-End 8-threaded PC- Core i7 965 with Radeon HD4890
Middle-Range Dual Core PC – Athlon II X2 550 with Geforce 8800GT
Low-End/Outdated Single-Core PC – Athlon 64 3000+ with Geforce 8800GT

The result of dozens of hours of benchmarking and over a hundred charts will answer quite a few questions:

1) If performance is improved, will it be due to improved multitasking and/or multithreading?
2) Can users of old systems (and single-threaded Netbooks) expect a performance increase as well?
3) Will gaming improve on an older CPU with a newer graphics card?
4) Will any gaming improvements be related to driver software (Nvidia vs AMD)?

And probably a lot more!

All of the components were identical in all systems, including the memory used:

Core i7 965 Athlon II X2 550 Athlon 64 3000+
Motherboard Intel DX58SO (X58, DDR3) Asus M3A78-T (790GX, DDR2) Asus M3A78-T (790GX, DDR2)
Memory 4GB OCZ Blade
DDR2-1066 @ 5-5-5-18 4GB OCZ Blade
DDR2-1066 @ 5-5-5-18 4GB OCZ Blade
DDR2-1066 @ 5-5-5-18
Video Card ATI Radeon HD4890 1GB, Catalyst 9.8
Nvidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB, Forceware 190.38
Audio Disabled
HDD Hitachi DeskStar 250GB 7200 RPM SATAII (reviewed here)
OS Windows 7 Ultimate Edition x64 RTM
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x64 SP2
I had to keep the results separate, since putting the Core i7’s scores in the same graph as the 3000+ would make it very difficult to compare results. The end result is an astonishing 100+ charts to look at, after which we will know for sure whether Windows 7’s benefits go deeper than just eye candy and UI improvements!

All benchmarks will be shown in this order: Core i7 (red), Athlon II (orange), Athlon 64 (blue).



More after link.