Windows 8 vs Windows 7 Performance

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Still on the fence about Microsoft's new OS? HardCoreWare's Windows 8 versus Windows 7 Performance guide might help you decide if upgrading is right for you.

With behind the scenes performance enhancements, you might actually have a good reason to consider upgrading. We are going to look at Windows 8 performance from three different angles:

  • Integrated Windows Software (Internet Explorer, Media codecs, integrated cryptography, etc)
  • Desktop applications (Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, 3ds Max, etc)
  • Gaming (Unreal Engine 3, Frostbite 2, CryEngine, Creation Engine (Skyrim)
Click to expand...
 
MrLonghair said:
It would perform even better if you could turn off it's Aero.
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"It is Aero" ?

Besides that... Win 8 doesn't have Aero anymore. (there are some tricks to get a thing called Aero "Lite" working... but it's not the same thing).
 
pff yeah duh, of course is faster, i've been saying this three months ago :rolleyes:
 
Crazy that the FX-8350 showed some improvements in Windows 8 compared to Windows 7, depending on the game itself. Microsoft must have improved multi-threading in some way. It's still less than Intel, but it is an improvement nonetheless.
 
Very interesting take, to examine the frame times between the two OSes. I've noticed that BF3 and Skyrim (the only games I really play) are very smooth in Windows 8, and I agree there are way less 'turn a corner' or 'transition from inside to outside', etc. and get slight lag on Windows 8 type issues than what I've seen on Windows 7. While the drivers between the two OSes are mostly the same, I'm sure since Windows 8 is new and has some new/changed kernel features, there is a decent amount of performance or at least further lag reduction that NVidia and AMD can wring from it.
 
Win8 was a great improvement to my performance-starved notebook. I'll get the upgrade to all my Win7 machines.

Also, when you get used to it, the experience is awesome.
 
GreenMonkey said:
Turning off 'Aero' doesn't make the computer faster, but slower. Way to turn off hardware acceleration.

BTW here's an article on the extra hardware acceleration MS added to win8 for you.

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...osoft-has-hardware-accelerated-all-the-things
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Aero is just a name given to the transparent window borders and task bars in Windows 7. Everything in Windows 8 is still hardware accelerated despite the lack of transparent borders.

I rather like the solid borders in 8 myself.
 
One of these days I might pull the trigger. I figure I'll wait for the drivers to mature a hair and I have some free time to actually learn all of the new stuff.
 
colinstu said:
"It is Aero" ?

Besides that... Win 8 doesn't have Aero anymore. (there are some tricks to get a thing called Aero "Lite" working... but it's not the same thing).
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Windows 8 has the Aero desktop front and center. However, it no longer has Aero glass for the most part. (Except on the taskbar.)
 
I find it interesting that AMD finally got their optimization they wanted from Win8 that had been telling us for quite some time now. It still was a lot of work for very little performance increase. AMD exec's can't be happy about this product.
 
Other than post time and MS's own applications, I seem to recall 0% difference.

PCMark 7 also exhibits a propensity for Windows 8. Because it employs software from Microsoft built into its operating systems, differences there could be related to updates to Windows 8's apps specifically. We saw small improvements in certain threaded titles as well, such as WinRAR, so there's also chance that some of the changes responsible for nudging FX up by a couple of percent also benefit the Core i7 in our test machine.

Last week, Thomas determined that Windows 8 doesn't have a massive effect on the performance of AMD's Bulldozer architecture, and a quick check with Intel's Ivy Bridge design turns up the same result. It's hard to say how much effect more mature drivers will have on graphics performance, but we don't expect CPU-bound tests to change much. After a week of exploratory benchmarking, it would seem that your favorite apps run just as well under Windows 8.
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http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-8-benchmark-performance,3317-8.html
 
lowlight said:
That's what happens when you use hardware limited benchmarks ;)
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and Microsoft favored/influenced synthetic benchmarks with very few real world applications.

The performance difference that MS was touting, and AMD said up to 10%, turned out to be a whole zero percent. There are cases where Win8 wins by a few percentage points but there are just as many where it loses by a few percentage points as well.

Will it improve with drivers? Yes, but the non-marginal improvements will only come from recompiling and updating to newer ISAs, and that hasn't happened in years and won't happen for years to come. It's kind of difficult to ask a developer to cater to win8 when it's got a tiny market share and fragmented between two entirely different microarchitectures.
 
This is what I've been trying to explain to people (in person, not on the web).

Under the hood, Windows 8 is fantastic. Its faster, smoother and especially for SSDs, a god send.

Take away Metro, and you have an excellent OS.
 
I upgraded one of my systems. And it now loads the desktop more quickly... but there isn't a noticeable difference otherwise. The only program that's incompatible is Paragon Hard Disk Manager. So I'm going to use it on that one system for now. But in all honesty it was a $66 waste of time and money.
 
Dark-Colonel said:
Take away Metro, and you have an excellent OS.
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Take away Metro and you have an OS that's not well suited for tablets just like prior versions of Windows. This isn't to say that there weren't other ways to have made Windows more tablet capable.
 
colinstu said:
"It is Aero" ?

Besides that... Win 8 doesn't have Aero anymore. (there are some tricks to get a thing called Aero "Lite" working... but it's not the same thing).
Click to expand...

Windows 8 most definitely does have Aero. I think you're confusing Aero with transparency effects. Aero is just gpu accelerated GUI. The transparency has been dialed way back in the default theme. User created themes will almost certainly change that.
 
heatlesssun said:
Take away Metro and you have an OS that's not well suited for tablets just like prior versions of Windows. This isn't to say that there weren't other ways to have made Windows more tablet capable.
Click to expand...

Yes, yes. Take it away for desktop use. This is a non argument.
 
octoberasian said:
Crazy that the FX-8350 showed some improvements in Windows 8 compared to Windows 7, depending on the game itself. Microsoft must have improved multi-threading in some way. It's still less than Intel, but it is an improvement nonetheless.
Click to expand...

It's possible (although unlikely) that they finally fixed their retarded CPU scheduler. Rapidly bouncing threads between processors/cores is just stupid.
 
I observed the BF3 smoothing last weekend, we played before and after on my friends i5-750/GTX 470 machine and it was much smoother overall. Interesing to see numbers backing it up, I just attributed it to a fresh install of windows.

I'm enjoying metro..er modern whatever UI. I can hit the windows key and grab a new program much faster than I would with the start menu, its just a matter of setting it up the way you like it first. It feels the same to me as hitting an inventory menu real quick in a game more than anything. I guess some people don't like it because it blocks the whole screen but I don't mind at all.
 
LigTasm said:
I observed the BF3 smoothing last weekend, we played before and after on my friends i5-750/GTX 470 machine and it was much smoother overall. Interesing to see numbers backing it up, I just attributed it to a fresh install of windows.

I'm enjoying metro..er modern whatever UI. I can hit the windows key and grab a new program much faster than I would with the start menu, its just a matter of setting it up the way you like it first. It feels the same to me as hitting an inventory menu real quick in a game more than anything. I guess some people don't like it because it blocks the whole screen but I don't mind at all.
Click to expand...
I like launching that way too, I just wish they hadn't separated the regular program search with the control panel search.
 
lowlight said:
I like launching that way too, I just wish they hadn't separated the regular program search with the control panel search.
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\

I'm not sure what you mean by this :confused:

I guess its something I don't/haven't ever used.
 
Dark-Colonel said:
Take away Metro, and you have an excellent OS.
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I can visualize 20 years from now, where we have a holographic user interface.

And old pa will still be clamoring for a static and primitive start-menu that will occupy a small corner of that.
 
turning off eye candy doesn't really improve performance when a game is at full screen... If you play windowed or stream you may save a bit of memory and cycles but nothing really. Anyways as we see drivers mature for windows 8 there is going to be a small but noticeable difference if you read the notes on WDDM 1.2 and Dx 11.1
 
LigTasm said:
\

I'm not sure what you mean by this :confused:

I guess its something I don't/haven't ever used.
Click to expand...
Say you want to start Photoshop, just hit Start and type Photoshop.

But if you want to access something like "printers" or "devices" or something in control panel, you have to type it, hit down twice, enter, then you can see it.
 
lowlight said:
Say you want to start Photoshop, just hit Start and type Photoshop.

But if you want to access something like "printers" or "devices" or something in control panel, you have to type it, hit down twice, enter, then you can see it.
Click to expand...


Ah. Yeah I don't generally search for anything like that so I didn't know. I do really like the windows+X menu for finding things though.
 
Seriously guys...

My grandfather is 84 years old, uses his computer every day to read newspapers, google around, online banking and write his books.

He is open to embrace new things than most around here. WTF?

He uses computers since Windows 3.11, and he finds something awesome in every new version of Windows/Office. The hated Ribbon everyone talk about: he loves it. When I got Office 2007 to him I thought he wouldn't learn at all, but he picked up fast. And I'm talking about someone who has written more than 12.000+ pages with Word, and uses many of the features.

If my 84 year old grandfather can give new things a try, why don't you?
 
Not bad. Great for gamers.

I'd say the lack of gadgets is the ultimate deal breaker for me. I absolutely couldn't imagine working on my computer without the many gadgets I have installed. I know there's rainmeter, but it's not the same.
 
TheGamerZ said:
Windows 8 most definitely does have Aero. I think you're confusing Aero with transparency effects. Aero is just gpu accelerated GUI. The transparency has been dialed way back in the default theme. User created themes will almost certainly change that.
Click to expand...

Actually you have it backwards. Aero doesn't exist in Windows 8, but the compositing window manager remains.

Aero was nothing more than the skin of Window Vista/7, like "Luna" was for Windows XP.
 
dexvx said:
I can visualize 20 years from now, where we have a holographic user interface.

And old pa will still be clamoring for a static and primitive start-menu that will occupy a small corner of that.
Click to expand...

I can visualize now where old people who were apparently born yesturday are all using their dated 70s touch interfaces and being all "yeah this is teh future yo!" while their senile hands poke at playcubes.

Theres 2 types of technology. Theres new tech, which is new and brings improvements, and old tech rehashed with something pointless to make it "new". You have to use some thought as to which is which. Spoiler: this isn't category a. :p
 
Also, let me tell you that my weak AMD C-50 notebook feels a lot faster with 8. Well worth the upgrade price for this reason alone.
 
cdr_74_premium said:
If my 84 year old grandfather can give new things a try, why don't you?
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What new things are you talking about? :confused:

Windows 8 brings very very little new stuff, and just rearranges a few buttons in a kind of weird and anti productive way. It's not breaking new ground anywhere, don't be fooled. :p
 
DeathPrincess said:
I can visualize now where old people who were apparently born yesturday are all using their dated 70s touch interfaces and being all "yeah this is teh future yo!" while their senile hands poke at playcubes.

Theres 2 types of technology. Theres new tech, which is new and brings improvements, and old tech rehashed with something pointless to make it "new". You have to use some thought as to which is which. Spoiler: this isn't category a. :p
Click to expand...

Ok, I don't even understand the first sentence of what you're trying to explain (seriously). Please explain.

As for the "type" of technology, it is clearly too early to tell. But from where things are going, it's also seems inevitable that touch will be intergrated into the UI.

The last major paradigm shift in UI's (imo) was incorporating the mouse or a pointing device. I'm not old enough to remember this shift, but I clearly recall talking to folks who were arguing the same thing as we are arguing about touch today.
 
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