Vista Performance Review

[idiotekniQues]

tom's hardware recently did a thorough analysis of vista performance vs xp.

i myself cant wait for dx10 games to come out so i can get vista and dual boot for those games.

but for application performance it seems xp is on top,

the conclusion here:

"Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer when it comes to executing single applications at maximum speed. Although we only looked at the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Enterprise, we do not expect the 64-bit edition to be faster (at least not with 32-bit applications).

Overall, applications performed as expected, or executed slightly slower than under Windows XP. The synthetic benchmarks such as Everest, PCMark05 or Sandra 2007 show that differences are non-existent on a component level. We also found some programs that refused to work, and others that seem to cause problems at first but eventually ran properly. In any case, we recommend watching for Vista-related software upgrades from your software vendors.

There are some programs that showed deeply disappointing performance. Unreal Tournament 2004 and the professional graphics benchmarking suite SPECviewperf 9.03 suffered heavily from the lack of support for the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista. This is something we expected, and we clearly advise against replacing Windows XP with Windows Vista if you need to run professional graphics applications. Both ATI and Nvidia will offer OpenGL support in upcoming driver releases, but it remains to be seen if and how other graphics vendors or Microsoft may offer it.

We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP. There aren't newer versions available, and we don't see immediate solutions to this issue.

There is good news as well: we did not find evidence that Windows Vista's new and fancy AeroGlass interface consumes more energy than Windows XP's 2D desktop. Although our measurements indicate a 1 W increase in power draw at the plug, this is too little of a difference to draw any conclusions. Obviously, the requirements for displaying all elements in 3D, rotating and moving them aren't enough to heat up graphics processors. This might also be a result of Windows Vista's more advanced implementation of ACPI 2.0 (and parts of 3.0), which allows the control of power of system components separately.

Our hopes that Vista might be able to speed up applications are gone. First tests with 64-bit editions result in numbers similar to our 32-bit results, and we believe it's safe to say that users looking for more raw performance will be disappointed with Vista. Vista is the better Windows, because it behaves better, because it looks better and because it feels better. But it cannot perform better than Windows XP. Is this a K.O. for Windows Vista in the enthusiast space?

If you really need your PC to finish huge encoding, transcoding or rendering workloads within a defined time frame, yes, it is. Don't do it; stay with XP. But as long as you don't need to finish workloads in record time, we believe it makes sense to consider these three bullet points:

Vista runs considerably more services and thus has to spend somewhat more resources on itself. Indexing, connectivity and usability don't come for free.
There is a lot of CPU performance available today! We've got really fast dual core processors, and even faster quad cores will hit the market by the middle of the year. Even though you will lose application performance by upgrading to Vista, today's hardware is much faster than yesterday's, and tomorrow's processors will clearly leap even further ahead.
No new Windows release has been able to offer more application performance than its predecessor.
Although application performance has had this drawback, the new Windows Vista performance features SuperFetch and ReadyDrive help to make Vista feel faster and smoother than Windows XP. Our next article will tell you how they work."

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/page11.html

all the benchies and an introduction are available there

 

[sam509]

A different and my opinion more balanced appraisal? the whole article at link below.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2090571,00.asp

The conclusion here:

So let's break it down: Has Vista got game?

The basic answer is that yes, Vista is a pretty great OS for gamers. Great, but not perfect. Last May when I looked at beta 2 of Vista, I called it a "B- gaming platform" due to some of the problems I encountered, but that was cutting the unfinished OS some slack for, well, being unfinished.

The final version of Vista is an A- gaming platform, dragged down to a B- by rough drivers?assuming the driver situation is improved in the coming weeks and months, Vista will be a great gaming OS. Even though I installed and tested a lot more games this time around, nearly all of them worked quite well, and only a handful needed just a minor tweak or two, like running the game as Administrator. Steam is hit-or-miss: the app and all its games seem to work fine, but the way it interacts with the Games Explorer is erratic.

Over the last few months, I have used early versions of Vista on my primary home machine?for gaming and everything else. The driver situation has gone from "worrisome" to "encouraging" but it's not yet as robust as Windows XP. Gamers are going to mostly care about graphics and sound drivers.

Vista is a big boon for people running integrated audio solutions. By taking most of the audio stack out of the hands of audio drivers and folding it into the OS's audio system, Microsoft has really done a lot to improve compatibility and performance of integrated audio. If you have an Audigy 2 or X-Fi sound card, you lose hardware acceleration and higher-level EAX support (EAX3 and EAX4, for example) in many games. Creative is working on a solution called the ALchemy project. It's a simple app that scans your game directories and puts a new directsound3d.dll and .ini file in there that basically interrupts DirectSound calls and translates them to OpenAL, which bypasses the Vista audio stack and allows for full hardware 3D sound acceleration. It's still early, but I tried it out and it works great. Creative's audio drivers for Vista for the Audigy and X-Fi lines of cards are still labeled "beta" but in my experience they're in fine shape. So overall, no big worries on the audio side, though I'd like to see that ALchemy thing come along faster and officially support Audigy and Audigy 2 cards.

Another issue you may encounter is the driver for your favorite game controller. Drivers for Logitech's line of game controllers aren't yet available. So you may want to hold off on that upgrade until Logitech releases its Wingman Profiler for Windows Vista. If the controller uses a fairly standard set of inputs, such as a typical joystick with four buttons, you won't encounter any major problems. But programmable controllers may be a problem. Some companies are on the ball, though. For example owners of the high-end X52 Pro flight stick from Saitek can download drivers from Saitek. It goes without saying that Microsoft products, such as the Xbox 360 Controller for Windows, work fine out of the box.

How about graphics? Well, Nvidia's has 97.46 drivers for Vista on all cards up to the GeForce 8800 series, and 100.59 drivers for those GeForce 8800 cards, which support DirectX 10. It supports SLI only on those 8800 cards, and only on DirectX 9 titles. Performance on Vista isn't quite where it needs to be on Nvidia's drivers, with some games running very close to WinXP speed and others falling way too far behind. Still, I found some irksome driver problems in a couple games (the Gothic 3 example above comes to mind). OpenGL performance isn't where it needs to be yet, either.

ATI just released the WHQL certified Catalyst 7.1 drivers for Vista, with support for their whole modern lineup of cards. It also supports every current CrossFire dual-card configuration that is supported in Windows XP, and will soon support the "alternate frame rendering default in all games" feature that was just added to the Windows XP driver. ATI's OpenGL driver in Vista is totally rewritten from the ground up, and only promises stability; performance improvements are coming in future drivers. I don't like the sound of that, and I don't like the way CrossFire is not supported in OpenGL. ATI's Direct3D performance under Vista is quite good: Many games appear to run around 5% slower than XP, some are more like 10% slower, some are even a little bit faster.

The long and short of it is that Vista gamers can expect to generally lose a small amount of performance until a few months have gone by and the drivers can be better optimized. I expect this to happen pretty quickly, and for Vista performance to be comparable to Windows XP performance, overall (with some games up to 5% slower, some up to 5% faster).

Vista may have a lot to offer gamers in the future. This is an OS that will be around for years, and it's important to take that view of it: Windows XP wasn't the best choice for gaming the day it was released, either. Parental controls, the Games Explorer, DirectX 10, and the Games for Windows logo program can all be good things for PC gamers. The only thing holding up the OS is a month or two worth of patches and driver improvements. Even so, I'm generally really happy gaming on Vista and impressed enough with the way it looks and behaves when doing non-gaming tasks that I don't have any desire to boot up Windows XP. There is no compelling reason for gamers to run out and upgrade immediately just for the games, but I don't think a gamer who upgrades is going to be disappointed. The standard "your mileage may vary" caveat applies, but gaming on Vista is a surprisingly pleasant and relatively painless experience so far, and only stands to get better as drivers improve and games are patched.

 

[idiotekniQues]

so that is more balanced how?

because it only addresses games rather than all applications?

interesting perspective.

maybe it is more thorough for gamers, but your microsoft fanboyism shines thru when you consider that as more balanced when all you quote is a review of gaming benchies and audio benchies related to gaming vs a review that touched upon applications from a plethora of angles.

i mean i game enough where gaming benchies mean a lot, i cant wait for dx10 games and vista, but i do a heck of a lot more with my pc 🙂

 

[sam509]

About what was expected... a ad-hommen attack with no substance just hollow Microsoft and Vista bashing.

If game performance comes around so do all other applications as gaming is about the most intensive thing a computer does.

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: sam509
About what was expected... a ad-hommen attack with no substance just hollow Microsoft and Vista bashing.

If game performance comes around so does all other applications as gaming is about the most intensive thing a computer does.

I am sorry, but you are saying a conclusion based on not fact but a speculation on if the driver sitution will improve, and if the improved drive will bring better performance is a more balanced review?

And no, game performance have lots to do with GPU than CPU where many other applications totally CPU intensive and have nothing to do with GPU.

 

[sam509]

Originally posted by: rchiu

Originally posted by: sam509
About what was expected... a ad-hommen attack with no substance just hollow Microsoft and Vista bashing.

If game performance comes around so does all other applications as gaming is about the most intensive thing a computer does.

I am sorry, but you are saying a conclusion based on not fact but a speculation on if the driver sitution will improve, and if the improved drive will bring better performance is a more balanced review?

And no, game performance have lots to do with GPU than CPU where many other applications totally CPU intensive and have nothing to do with GPU.

It is a conclusion based on history not speculation, all one need to do is look back at the XP launch to see similar shortsighted nonsense. Are you seriously going to propose drivers and apps are anywhere near optimized for Vista? seriously?

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: sam509
About what was expected... a ad-hommen attack with no substance just hollow Microsoft and Vista bashing.

If game performance comes around so do all other applications as gaming is about the most intensive thing a computer does.

wow. you are in pretty deep.

i wasnt bashing microsoft or vista. in fact i quoted the entire conclusion which says many positive things about vista as well. in fact i also noted i will be purchasing vista in the near future for dx10, and of course after SP1 i will probably adopt it for my main OS.

regardless, that is not the point.

the point is you got ownt and your replies reflect that.

tomshardware clearly notes that this is common at the early stages of a new OS and that performance usually doesnt go up, and the good new features come at a performance price and this is just fine. and he also notes that driver changes will positively affect some things as well. obviously this is for people that want to buy vista now and very soon. no ****** sherlock that things change with software and driver updates, but one has to review how things perform now, not just how it will have to get better later so dont bother now. that is more idiocy.

so how is this vista bashing?

only because you are such fanboy do you take it as such.

the fact is you replied to a review covering a large range of real world application usage and some gaming benchies and proposed that a review focusing only on gaming is more accurate and balanced as an overall performance review on an OS.

in fact you continue to defend this farce in a follow up post.

yeah, if all people did on a pc is game you may have ea point. but back in reality, you look like an ass.

 

[Lord Banshee]

HOLY CRAP about the specview score ....

Nvidia/ATI/Microsoft needs to make sure they fix this soon for profession design/engineering firms will never go to vista... WOW just WOW!

I have yet to try any real CAD programs on my version of Vista, I might give it a try later tonight and see what happens... kinda scary.

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
HOLY CRAP about the specview score ....

Nvidia/ATI/Microsoft needs to make sure they fix this soon for profession design/engineering firms will never go to vista... WOW just WOW!

I have yet to try any real CAD programs on my version of Vista, I might give it a try later tonight and see what happens... kinda scary.

dear sir,

dont worry about this because vista games pretty well so far and that pretty much sums up the criteria an OS should be gauged upon performance wise. plus it will get better eventually anyway so again such reviews are pointless now for the early adopters.

yours truly,
sam509

 

[sam509]

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
HOLY CRAP about the specview score ....

Nvidia/ATI/Microsoft needs to make sure they fix this soon for profession design/engineering firms will never go to vista... WOW just WOW!

I have yet to try any real CAD programs on my version of Vista, I might give it a try later tonight and see what happens... kinda scary.

dear sir,

dont worry about this because vista games pretty well so far and that pretty much sums up the criteria an OS should be gauged upon performance wise. plus it will get better eventually anyway so again such reviews are pointless now for the early adopters.

yours truly,
sam509

Keep playing stupid you do it so well.

 

[idiotekniQues]

Originally posted by: sam509

Originally posted by: idiotekniQues

Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
HOLY CRAP about the specview score ....

Nvidia/ATI/Microsoft needs to make sure they fix this soon for profession design/engineering firms will never go to vista... WOW just WOW!

I have yet to try any real CAD programs on my version of Vista, I might give it a try later tonight and see what happens... kinda scary.

dear sir,

dont worry about this because vista games pretty well so far and that pretty much sums up the criteria an OS should be gauged upon performance wise. plus it will get better eventually anyway so again such reviews are pointless now for the early adopters.

yours truly,
sam509

Keep playing stupid you do it so well.

Originally posted by: sam509


If game performance comes around so do all other applications as gaming is about the most intensive thing a computer does.

also, the fact remains is that you compared a purely gaming review as more balanced when the topic was a review covering performance in a large variety of situations which also noted many positives as well as that the future will be better - but also which is a review for the present.

anyways, i think my point is proven about your failing logic, in fact complete and utter lack of it.

good day sir 🙂

 

[tatteredpotato]

Children, simma down now

 

[Smilin]

I haven't read the article so I can't really comment. Besides it looks like this thread is already in the toilet. 🙁

I just had one thing though..


Why does tomshardware think that everyone is doing so much audio/video encoding? It's like every f'n article he has includes that crap. If he was just using it as some synthetic benchmark then ok, whatever. He's not though. I swear the dude really thinks that that is what everyone does with their computers.

😕