Netbook Vista vs Win7 (Not a result you'd expect)

[F1shF4t]

So I have upgraded my laptop and desktop from Vista to Win 7 and quite happy with the performance. The UI is more snappy and the comps feel generally quicker.

My netbook on the other hand has been a mixed bag. I got a Gateway LT31 and Win7 has been performing poorly enough that I've gone back to Vista Ultimate.
The Aero interface was significantly slower to animate than in vista and the battery life droped. (I have used the same power options in both os installs) Win 7 was quicker to boot and enter/leave sleep mode though.

Specs are: AMD A64 1.2ghz, 2 GB ram, x1270 integrated card, WD 500GB hdd

The results are opposite to what most people have been reporting and my experiance on my other systems. Seems odd, I was expecting the biggest improovement on the netbook.

Anyone know any reason why it would be otherwise, or had something similar happen? Does win7 Aero ui require more resources? (Turning Aero off really didn't improve battery life much though)

 

[tommo123]

honestly? win7 runs fine on my NC10 (1.6gig atom). as far as aero goes, afaik the GPU does all that work so i guess it depends whether the graphics you have supports accelerating aero or not

 

[F1shF4t]

It would have to, otherwise you could not enable aero (as far as i know).
Still doesn't explain everything since Vista aero works flawlesly. I get a score of 2.6 in the performance index for desktop graphics if that means anything.

 

[tommo123]

mine's 2.0 but afaik, it can let the CPU do the work but would slow things down. maybe that's whats happening?

 

[EarthwormJim]

Could be something as simple as bad drivers.

 

[F1shF4t]

I'll give another fresh install a try. Drivers I got off windows update since there are no win7 ones from gateway, and amd doesn't support these video cards under win7, so the video drivers are most likely vista ones.

 

[F1shF4t]

Ok after a fresh install its still the same issue. I managed to get ati 9.11 drivers for the video card but it still behaved the same.
It seems like the cpu is having to do some interface rendering.

The x1270 is not compatible with wddm1.1 drivers, needs dx10. Does win7 aero work differently if the drivers are only wddm1.0? Specifically is any of the ui has to be done by the cpu?