My Speed Tests: XP SP2 -vs- Win7 Ultimate 32bit

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  1. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
       #1

    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.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 823
    OS
       #2

    We have a winner!!!
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 6,879
    Win 7 Ultimate x64
       #3

    And just for fun here is a 7 vs Vista gaming comparison,

    Windows 7 vs Vista VGA game performance
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 4,573
       #4

    Sassa said:
    We have a winner!!!
    aand hhis nname iis pparks1.

    Such an effort is truly appreciated and worthy of peer commendation - especially since the genesis was dictated in response to relentlessly unfounded and disingenuous commentary.

    +1
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 25
    Windows XP Professional
       #5

    Antman said:
    aand hhis nname iis pparks1.

    Such an effort is truly appreciated and worthy of peer commendation - especially since the genesis was dictated in response to relentlessly unfounded and disingenuous commentary.

    +1
    One person's testing doesn't count for everyone's - otherwise Vista would have been a huge 'hit' worldwide which simply wasn't the case.

    I'll rebuild my DELL 4600 3.0Ghz HT, 3.3Gb RAM, GeForce 6200 GPU, SATA 7200RPM disk ..first with Windows XP+SP3 then kick off the Windows 7 install so we get dual boot.

    I also appreciate pparks1 testing and will post up my own results based on his/her tests (perhaps everyone should be encouraged to do so?)

    Thanks for the awesome website!
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 7,878
    Windows 7 Ultimate x64
    Thread Starter
       #6

    spazzie said:
    One person's testing doesn't count for everyone's - otherwise Vista would have been a huge 'hit' worldwide which simply wasn't the case.
    To be fair, I wasn't testing Vista. And had I tested Vista upon release compared to XP...I would have expected to see my tests favoring XP. I wasn't a fan of Vista on release. And it's also the reason that I did numerous tests and provided information on what each step entailed. This way people could either duplicate or criticize my methods.

    spazzie said:
    I'll rebuild my DELL 4600 3.0Ghz HT, 3.3Gb RAM, GeForce 6200 GPU, SATA 7200RPM disk ..first with Windows XP+SP3 then kick off the Windows 7 install so we get dual boot.

    I also appreciate pparks1 testing and will post up my own results based on his/her tests (perhaps everyone should be encouraged to do so?)
    Thanks for taking the time to set up the test environment and going through the motions. I know it's time consuming...but lots of positives could come out of it. Who knows, you might even discover some problems in your configuration/drivers/etc that you never knew were there. I know that has happened before to me.
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 4,573
       #7

    spazzie said:
    ...I'll rebuild my DELL 4600 3.0Ghz HT, 3.3Gb RAM, GeForce 6200 GPU, SATA 7200RPM disk ..first with Windows XP+SP3 then kick off the Windows 7 install so we get dual boot...Thanks for the awesome website!
    It will be interesting to see how Win7 works on an older system like that.
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 11,840
    64-bit Windows 8.1 Pro
       #8

    meh ... it barely runs on my ancient rig...
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 28,845
    Win 8 Release candidate 8400
       #9

    Antman said:
    It will be interesting to see how Win7 works on an older system like that.
    I have a dell 8300 like that. P-IV 3.0, 512 ram, ati 9600, 5400HD, and im running win 7 Ultimate on it with surprising ease. Its my backup server.

    Ken
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 11
    Win7 & XP Pro
       #10

    I have a new system, Asus P7P55D motherboard, Intel I7 860 Quad Core, 8GB DDR, WD 1TB STAT2.0 Drive w/16mb cache, Asus X480 video, and Win7 Ultimate. I have only loaded a few programs so far and when I do a search on the hard drive it seems to take forever. Anyone have any suggestions?
      My Computer


 
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