Windows 7 Beta Outperforms XP and Vista

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ZDNet’s Hardware 2.0 blog has pit the most recent Windows 7 beta against Windows Vista and XP and the results are a bit surprising. It looks like a clean sweep by Windows 7, even though it is hard to really tell the actual performance difference between the operating systems because of the scoring system used by the author (no raw data given). Gripes about the scoring method aside, it is encouraging to see Windows 7 performing well in these early tests.

Rather than publish a series of benchmark results for the three operating systems (something which Microsoft frowns upon for beta builds, not to mention the fact that the final numbers only really matter for the release candidate and RTM builds), I’ve decided to put Windows 7, Vista and XP head-to-head in a series of real-world tests to find out which OS comes out top.
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Although I've become a big fan of Vista-64 for MS to create a brand new OS so close to the release of the last one may become disturbing.

Unless MS decides on a course of action allowing current Vista users to upgrade and some sort of special pricing they will do nothing more than create headlines along with angst in the MS community.

Add to that the current state of the economy I can't imagine many businesses are anxious to upgrade since they are doing quite well with the currently installed base.
 
Let's see here... Win98 came out about 2 years after 95 did... 2000 came out about 2 years after 98SE did... XP less than 2 years after 2000 did... then the huge entrenchment of XP till Vista... and now people wanna use the gap from Vista to Windows 7 as something to debate over?

NEXT!!!
 
It's not quite a clean sweep. w7 came in second in 4 of the 46 tests.
 
Actually aside from the business issue. I think Windows 7 is Windows Longhorn I think they just had so many problems with Vista they went back to kernel and redid it. Guess all of us who said were skipping Vista may not be so wrong if it does indeed get released this years.
 
Joe Average said:
Let's see here... Win98 came out about 2 years after 95 did... 2000 came out about 2 years after 98SE did... XP less than 2 years after 2000 did... then the huge entrenchment of XP till Vista... and now people wanna use the gap from Vista to Windows 7 as something to debate over?

NEXT!!!
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Why bother typing, all you had to do was copy and paste you sig;)
 
Im sceptical to windows, always is, the next version have always been more bloated, more demanding, and worse, and we actually get pushed to the next windows by almost brute force.

DX10 any1?
CFX any1 ?

Just 2 small features, and well what about support, and on we go with stuff.

But well, this time MS wont need to force us to a worse operating system if we look vista vs win7.

Surely, its more bloated, no deny there, its NOT user friendly, its hard to navigate compared to operating systems prior to XP.
stuff isnt logical for my brain, and nor for my co workers.

Is it faster: Yes.
Is it stable yet in a beta : YES
Does it swollow memory : NO
Is the new taskbar practical : Yes/No. better than other windowses for sure.

Lastly:
Is my experience with windows 7 good : YES
but windows doesnt have the potential linux has, clearly not, its not faster, more practical from an developers point of view, its not more stable either, and probaly never will be, but if you have to use windows, which many have to use, including me, go Windows 7, i got my vista install for compability issues (not really compability, more punkbuster issue)

So i've put away my vista install for Win7, and i require stability, so far since the "release" of the prebeta, i've used it, upgraded to beta recently now when i got an email bout its being awaible.
Not a bluescreen, not a crash, almost pure stability, explorer have crashed, but my usage is tough to be mild, and the operating system respond better than any microsoft operating system, except 3.x.
This time around, new was better, and feels like vista IS win7's BETA.
 
Alot of us N10 users have been running 7 on our netbooks, and even tho Vista is pretty decent, 7 is much better. It pulls much less memory at any given time, which is good because were limited to 2 gigs. Plus, unless using a vlite, 7 is more snappy moving around your computer than Vista, and I can only imagine a .. er , 7lite? Plus, you get the battery performance and better security of Vista combined with the lower resource pull and responsiveness of XP, all with next gen features, who could argue?
 
piscian18 said:
Actually aside from the business issue. I think Windows 7 is Windows Longhorn I think they just had so many problems with Vista they went back to kernel and redid it. Guess all of us who said were skipping Vista may not be so wrong if it does indeed get released this years.
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The biggest problem with Vista was and is the ineptitude of the user base. I've yet to have a problem with any of my machines.

All the complaints I see now about Vista are exactly the same complaints people had about XP, people simply don't adapt well to change.
 
Well that was a whole lot of optimization in a short time. It's almost like they planned it... I agree that this is the real Vista. Now, what is this gonna cost?
 
BillR said:
The biggest problem with Vista was and is the ineptitude of the user base. I've yet to have a problem with any of my machines.

All the complaints I see now about Vista are exactly the same complaints people had about XP, people simply don't adapt well to change.
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What he said.
 
DanNeely said:
It's not quite a clean sweep. w7 came in second in 4 of the 46 tests.
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That is the issue I had with the testing, posting 1st, 2nd and 3rd doesn't say much. Results that are virtually identical like this:

Windows 7 boot time = 45 seconds
Windows Vista boot time = 45.5 seconds
Windows XP boot time = 46 seconds

Windows 7 Open 100 page Word doc = 3.5 seconds
Windows Vista Open 100 page Word doc = 3.6 seconds
Windows XP Open 100 page Word doc = 3.8 seconds

Windows 7 Open / Move 100MB files = 60 seconds
Windows Vista Open / Move 100MB files = 61 seconds
Windows XP Open / Move 100MB files = 61.5 seconds


Turn into:

Windows 7 1st place, Windows Vista 2nd place and Windows XP in 3rd.


I'm not saying that is what happened, I am just saying that without the raw data it is hard to take anything away from these numbers.
 
I agree with BillR. It's so nice to hear others with this point of view. There for a second I was beginning to think I was the only person who liked vista and I couldn't understand why people hated it so much. IF you have the hardware to run it, Vista64 screams. :D
 
styx0r said:
I agree with BillR. It's so nice to hear others with this point of view. There for a second I was beginning to think I was the only person who liked vista and I couldn't understand why people hated it so much. IF you have the hardware to run it, Vista64 screams. :D
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This. So tired of idiots crapping over Vista. :eek:
 
If 7 is all it's cracked up to be, I'll make the switch. I have no problem being an early adopter.
 
Let's just hope that it doesn't get messed up when it is finally released. IIRC Vista looked promising in the alpha/beta stages as well.
 
I still don't get the point of all these windows OS vs each other, they are all the same garbage. Windows is a giant bundle of programs users are forced to use together, and if one part sucks, look at the trouble it causes. Take the whole IE integration with explorer thing. What windows should do to actually make an OS people would like, it to release some sort of stripped down core that users can build upon and add features they want to use like any good linux distro. To me the most frustrating thing about windows is the User interface. XPs was simple enough, but then in vista they change the entire layout and it feels like there hiding stuff. it takes several more clicks to get to the desired item I'm normally looking for.

Neither OS is terrible by any means, its just that your supposed to be paying hundreds of dollars to use it and you don't get nearly the feature support, performance, or customization like a free OS has. I may be way more tech savy than the average user, but really, all the average user does is surf the web, check e-mails, and write a few crappy documents in word, that they just paid 100 bucks for. I set my parents up a nice lighting fast Gentoo installation on a rather slow via based machine that only cost 200$ for the entire build and they never had a problem, besides DVD playback was kinda slow, but it wasn't meant to be a media box.

The real problem alternative OSs fail is not that they are harder, just different like people have said, people even complained jumping from one windows OS to another,even though they work all the same.

Sorry for the rant....
 
BillR said:
The biggest problem with Vista was and is the ineptitude of the user base. I've yet to have a problem with any of my machines.

All the complaints I see now about Vista are exactly the same complaints people had about XP, people simply don't adapt well to change.
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There may be a margin of truth to that. Especially amongst the large number of people who purchased new computers for the first time. Little credence among [H]'er's though considering most of us have already addressed the legitimate and glaring problems of Vista...at nausea.

I don't know which is more humorous - Vista fanboys whining about why nobody likes Vista or ineptitude Vista users whining about Vista. It's great entertainment for XP and XP64 users.
 
I don't think the Raw data matters at this point. All that matters is that in most cases, it's faster than XP on more modern hardware, the type people are using today. It uses the hardware in day to day operations, not necessarily total system throughput. Windows 6 caching and prefetch improvements are a huge performance boost alone over XP. But what about performance under full load? I doubt it will be faster than XP.

Would 7 be faster on hardware that was around when XP came out? Absolutely not, no way.
 
Seemingly the only people who dislike Vista are those who don't use it. It was the same way when XP was released, everyone bitched a fit. I will say, there are still a couple of things I don't like - the permissions sharing/networking and the UAC. So woo, turn UAC off. UAC is really meant for novice users who may not be aware of what exactly they're installing when they install things, anyhow.

Yes, Vista does use more memory. You do get some features for that memory usage, such as Aero and superfetch. If you don't like em, turn em off. My Vista system still runs fine with 2gb of ram. And with 2gb of ram being <$20, I don't think there's too much you can bitch about that these days.
 
ICOM said:
It's great entertainment for XP and XP64 users.
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What's more entertaining is watching people group themselves into groups based on their fanism based on what Windows OS they like better such as yourself. It's almost as bad as the video card groups nowadays.

Gosh... I wonder what group I should take sides with... I have XP on 3 PCs, Vista 32 on a laptop, and my main machine has Vista64. I guess I will have to flip a coin and start spewling FUD out about the other OS's after I join the club of the one I pledge my undying fanism to.
 
I have a couple questions for Win7 Beta 1 users.

1. Will it install fresh onto a SSD drive (vista absolutely won't do this for me, and hear the same for others!!)

2. What is Windows 7 Beta 1 initial disk space usage? (still over 13gigs for install?)

3. Whats the normal memory usage of win7? I have a norm of 700-800mb with superfetch, prefetch, readyboost, indexing all turned off, and around 1-1.2gig with those turned on.

4. Are you still forced to have crap installed that you don't use? Like games, built-in applications taking up space?

Thanks!!
 
Met-AL said:
What's more entertaining is watching people group themselves into groups based on their fanism based on what Windows OS they like better such as yourself. It's almost as bad as the video card groups nowadays.

Gosh... I wonder what group I should take sides with... I have XP on 3 PCs, Vista 32 on a laptop, and my main machine has Vista64. I guess I will have to flip a coin and start spewling FUD out about the other OS's after I join the club of the one I pledge my undying fanism to.
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Grouping? :confused:

I've got Vista running on two laptops, XP32 on a back-up desktop and XP64 on my primary gaming box. They all run fine. I only know that many XP users like to tease Vista users because they're so easily set off. I enjoy stirring the pot. :p
 
RogueTrip said:
I have a couple questions for Win7 Beta 1 users.

1. Will it install fresh onto a SSD drive (vista absolutely won't do this for me, and hear the same for others!!)

2. What is Windows 7 Beta 1 initial disk space usage? (still over 13gigs for install?)

3. Whats the normal memory usage of win7? I have a norm of 700-800mb with superfetch, prefetch, readyboost, indexing all turned off, and around 1-1.2gig with those turned on.

4. Are you still forced to have crap installed that you don't use? Like games, built-in applications taking up space?

Thanks!!
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unistall that stuff. I don't have the games installed on my work machine. You can uninstall/turn off a number of windows features based on your needs. There are even some that are not on by default (like a telnet client) that I turn on. If you don't have a tablet then turn that functionality off, if you don't have multiple machines that you are syncing a share accross then turn off DFS. That said, I don't think that solitare being installed on your machine is hurting you. If that is taking up too much harddrive space for you then you might want to invest in a new harddrive.
 
Exavior said:
unistall that stuff. I don't have the games installed on my work machine. You can uninstall/turn off a number of windows features based on your needs. There are even some that are not on by default (like a telnet client) that I turn on. If you don't have a tablet then turn that functionality off, if you don't have multiple machines that you are syncing a share accross then turn off DFS. That said, I don't think that solitare being installed on your machine is hurting you. If that is taking up too much harddrive space for you then you might want to invest in a new harddrive.
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lol, I just got my new drive, a 64gig SSD drive, hence why saving space is would be great so I have more room for apps for OS drive.
 
IIRC just talking about the kernel; server 2008 = Vista SP1

Although it would not surprise me if Server 2008 does perform certain things better than Vista SP1 since the kernel will behave differently, but getting things to run on it will be more fun since it sacrifices compatibility with security. I run windows server 2003 x64 with a modified system hive (kernel thinks its in HPC mode) on my laptop and it is faster than windows 95 running. What I hope for is that windows emulation on linux gets good enough (eg. be able to run certain high priced software packages from windows) in Linux. My next laptop will be running Xubuntu (or whatever fast linux is out); and this one will become an experiment for Windows 7 Server once it is released.
 
release speed is what im interested in. If anyone played around with XP beta know it is 10x faster then the release version.Maybe its the endless patches slowing it down or what it is.
 
"And if you’re put off by things such as activation and DRM, then Windows isn’t the OS for you (good news is there are others to choose from)." - from the article.
What is that SUPPOSED to mean, exactly? Anyone?
 
Well, I hope it comes to be all it's supposed to. XP was a major step, and frankly, it will last me for a long time. Vista came with the last computer I bought, so I didn't go out of my way to get it after I used it when it was RC, but overall it's been fine - not exactly a major improvement though. If 7 is what it's claimed to be, I will probably put together a new build, and move to 64bit at the same time.
 
SixtyWattMan said:
Windows 7 > Vista > XP

Fixed again.
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Yup. If you actually read the article, you'll notice that on a reasonably modern machine (Phenom 9700, 4GB RAM), Vista outperforms XP. On their slower test system with only 1GB RAM, XP wins, but only by one "point".
 
I thought that the choice of test hardware was interesting. But this simple fact makes his comparison somewhat useless for me. Which does not mean I'm not interested in Windows 7... It's just that I'll have to check it out for myself. :cool:
 
JimmiG said:
Yup. If you actually read the article, you'll notice that on a reasonably modern machine (Phenom 9700, 4GB RAM), Vista outperforms XP. On their slower test system with only 1GB RAM, XP wins, but only by one "point".
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Yes and we should be testing everything on technology no one will be buying anymore.
 
AtkinS said:
Im sceptical to windows, always is, the next version have always been more bloated, more demanding, and worse, and we actually get pushed to the next windows by almost brute force.
Click to expand...
Such is progress of the OS. It's not just Windows, each OS release adds more functionality which means greater hardware requirements.

And who is FORCING you to change? Nobody.

It's just that common business sense tells application developers to write apps for NEW software and not old stuff. It would make no sense for a game developer to go out and create a NES game again, so why does it make sense for them to keep writing for old Windows releases?



JosiahBradley said:
Windows is a giant bundle of programs users are forced to use together, and if one part sucks, look at the trouble it causes. Take the whole IE integration with explorer thing.
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It's easy to tell that you've never touched Vista, or have a clue what you're taking about... because IE is no longer integrated with Explorer.
Shoot, IIRC they even broke that off with either XP SP2 and/or IE7... So it's not even a Windows Vista-only thing.

And FWIW, users like having applications preloaded. They'd rather not spend hours downloading crap just to use their PCs.

*nix fanboys :rolleyes:


donald_k said:
IIRC just talking about the kernel; server 2008 = Vista SP1

Although it would not surprise me if Server 2008 does perform certain things better than Vista SP1 since the kernel will behave differently, but getting things to run on it will be more fun since it sacrifices compatibility with security.
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You're right on the kernels.

Server 2008 is basically Vista, minus a crapload of features, either their missing or just disabled by default. Superfetch, Aero, those types of things that give you performance boosts are missing.

Unlike XP/Server2003, there's very little performance jump running 2008 over Vista. You'd actually experience a decrease in performance due to decreased compatibility, so spend a whole lot more time getting stuff to work correctly. Of course, some folks run it just fine.

You can also apply the reverse. Strip Vista's features back to the nil and you'd have Server 2008 (minus many of the Server features, naturally).
 
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