Windows 7 vs. Vista - Upgrade Performance

Windows 7 vs. Vista - Upgrade Performance

The latest Windows 7 client has its precursor beat in terms of upgrade speed


Windows 7 is “outrunning” Windows Vista in more ways than one. Microsoft has labored to ensure that the latest Windows client outpaces its precursor in a variety of scenarios, from startup time, to common usage tasks, and to shutdown, to name just a few. Another aspect in which Windows 7 has Vista beat is upgrade performance. According to Chris Hernandez, from the Windows Deployment team, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to Windows 7 upgrades are at least 5% faster than Vista SP1 to Vista SP1 upgrades.

In fact, when it set out to do the operating system upgrade measuring contest, Microsoft was looking for at least a 5% threshold for upgrade scenarios involving Vista SP1 to Windows 7 was in comparison to jumps from Vista SP1 to Vista SP1. The Redmond-based company explained that the Windows Upgrade team monitored the Windows 7 upgrade performance during the development process, and that it compared it against its Vista baseline.

“The reason we choose to use a Vista SP1 -> Vista SP1 upgrade instead of Windows XP -> Vista as our baseline was for the following: Windows XP is a vastly different operating system compared to Vista and an upgrade from Windows XP -> Vista would not be a good comparison with Vista -> Windows 7. Windows XP did not support 64-bit upgrades and we wanted to track 64-bit upgrade performance as well as 32-bit upgrades for Windows 7. Vista SP1 -> Vista SP1 is a valid upgrade path that ********s all upgrade code (this upgrade is commonly used by Product Support Services for a repair scenario),” Hernandez explained.

Now, 5% doesn’t make a huge performance gap between the two operating systems. Still, users have to keep in mind that Microsoft used the Vista SP1 baseline comparison, and while I have heard countless complaints about Vista RTM, the barrage of criticism subsided with the advent of Service Pack 1, indicating a far superior user experience.

At the same time, the vast majority of end users don’t actually perform benchmarks, or monitor performance metrics. For them increased performance in every aspect of the operating system, including upgrade scenarios, is a matter of perception. In this regard, 5% is more than enough to deliver a palpable impression of boosted upgrade performance for Windows 7 in comparison to Vista.

“The upgrade performance tests used the metric of total upgrade time to gauge how Windows 7 upgrade performed against Vista upgrade. The tests were designed to measure total upgrade time simulating different user profiles (with different data set sizes, number of programs installed and settings) against different hardware profiles,” Hernandez added.

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is a 5% performance difference actually perceptible?

if all my apps sped up 5%, i don't think i would notice, not even with games. 10% maybe, but 5% is just too small.