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My Speed Tests: XP SP2 -vs- Win7 Ultimate 32bit
Ok, to set the stage...I've been chatting with users who maintain that Windows 7 (just like Vista) is a bloated resource hog of an OS which needs to have numerous services disabled to attain performance levels equivalent to Windows XP SP2. The crux of the argument is typically on how Prefetch works and the caching of applications to RAM, thus not leaving large amounts of RAM free for the system and in generally just chewing up resources which are better left alone.
For this test, I performed the same steps on the same hardware. (In fact, I used the same exact machine). Here are the specs
* Asus P5QL Pro mobo
* Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 at 3.00Ghz
* 4GB Corsair DDR2-800 RAM
* 500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue hard drive
* Samsung 22X DVD Burner
* EVGA Nvidia 8600GT 256MB video cards
* Intel 10/100/1000 NIC's
In each instance, the machine was using the defaults as they come out of the box. Meaning that things like UAC, System Restore Points, Indexing, PreFetch and the like all remained on.
Test 1: Install the Operating Systems. This was from the first push of the power button until I had a desktop with no hourglass
Windows XP SP2: 19:19
Windows 7 Ultimate: 14:12
Test 2: Amount of time installing drivers after OS was up to eliminate all exclamation points in Device Manager
Windows XP SP2: 9:27 (video, chipset, 2 lan drivers, audio, ATK)
Windows 7 Ultimate: :41 (ATK driver from Windows Update)
Note: Not included was approx 35 minutes time downloading and identifying what XP needed. (sorry, had to put that in there, but it's true)
Test 3: Full typical installation of Office 2007 Professional Plus from CD.
Windows XP SP2: 4:29
Windows 7 Ultimate: 4:40
Test 4: Time to Open Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Word and Access
Windows XP SP2: 20 seconds
Windows 7 Ultimate: 17 seconds
Test 5: Compare install sizes of OS at the present point
Windows XP XP2: 7,113,970,880
Windows 7 Ultimate: 13,895.876,672
Test 6: Install from USB Key (CDburnerXP, FileZilla, Firefox 3.5.2, MediaMonkey 3.0.6, Paint.Net, OpenOffice 3.0.1 and 7zip)
Windows XP SP2: 3:58
Windows 7 Ultimate: 3:06
Test 7: Open OpenOffice writer, Calc, Impress and Base (and create a new DB to get to a ready window)
Windows XP SP2: 18 seconds
Windows 7 Ultimate: 19 seconds
Test 8: Restart computer, get back to desktop, shutdown and wait for machine to power off
Windows XP SP2: 1:17
Windows 7 Ultimate: 1:19
Test 9: Take 3.7GB of CentOS Linux install files on desktop and compress with 7Zip using Normal Compression
Windows XP SP2: 15:23
Windows 7 Ultimate: 15:36
Most notable observations:
- Complaints about slow speed of OpenOffice seem unjustified, speed differences could be my click speed. Open speeds are right in line with MS Office.
- Install size of Windows 7 is larger...but it's also got restore points and so forth which I didn't clear. (forgot to check right after install)
- Speed difference of MS Office install could be spin-up time of drive.
- Remember in Test 6...that I had 7 prompts for UAC that I had to click through and Windows 7 was still faster.
So, overall, to me it seems that Windows 7 in it's default state is a very quick and robust OS. It has all the drivers pretty much baked in, has advanced searching and indexing, has a much nicer interface than Windows XP, has been security with UAC....and still manages to pretty much be either faster or within a few seconds of Microsoft Windows XP SP2 with every test that I threw at it with all services like PreFetch up and running.