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November 27, 2007 5:13 AM PST
Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test
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Vista's first service pack, to be released early next year, is intended to boost the operating system's performance. However, when Vista with the Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta was put through benchmark testing by researchers at Florida-based software development company Devil Mountain Software, the improvement was not overwhelming, leaving the latest Windows iteration outshined by its predecessor.
Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds.
Vista's performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1--much lower than XP's SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials.
In response to the test, a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement that although the company understood the interest in the service packs, they are "still in development" and will continue to evolve before their release. "It has always been our goal to deliver service packs that meet the full spectrum of customer needs," the spokesperson said.
If SP1 does not evolve sufficiently, it could be another setback for Vista, with many businesses waiting to adopt the operating system until the service pack is released.
A year after its launch, only 13 percent of businesses have adopted Vista, according to a survey of IT professionals.
Microsoft admits that the launch has not gone as well as the company would have liked. "Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista," corporate vice president Mike Sievert said in a recent interview at Microsoft's partner conference in Denver.
Microsoft has not done enough to make users aware of the benefits of Vista, NPD analyst Chris Swenson said at the conference. "The problem is that there are a lot of complex new features in Vista, and you need to educate consumers about them...much like Apple educating the masses about the possibilities of the iPhone or focusing on a single feature or benefit of the Mac OS in the Mac-versus-PC commercials. Microsoft should be educating the masses about the various new features in a heavy rotation of Vista in TV, radio, and print ads. But the volume of ads (for Vista) has paled in comparison to the ads run for XP."
XP has proved to be more popular than its younger sibling, with the first six months of U.S. retail sales of box copies of Vista 59.7 percent below those of XP's in the equivalent period after its release.
Microsoft has had to allow PC manufacturers to continue to sell XP on new PCs, setting a deadline for the last sale at January 31. However, the pressure from manufacturers and consumers has been so great that Microsoft has been forced to extend the deadline another five months, until June.
According to Microsoft, sales of Vista have been picking up, with the software giant reporting 88 million units sold.
Suzanne Tindal of ZDNet Australia reported from Sydney. CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this article.
See more CNET content tagged:
service pack,
Microsoft Windows Vista,
benchmarking,
Microsoft Windows XP,
spokesperson
Ideally, the test would be done on machines that were optimized for each OS. XP could be run on a 2 GHz single core machine with 1 GB RAM and Vista could be run on a 2 GHz dual core machine with 2 GB RAM, then it would be equal.
Vista is not just developed for today, it will grow with future hardware developments - as has every other OS launch with MS. Windows 95 runs quicker than XP on my old machine, but nobody from the news says anything about that, do they?
No OS is perfect, but Vista really was a let down.
They have it backwards, I think Microsoft was NOT 100% ready to release Vista. Yes the test was fair. It's just like Windows ME, man did we get ripped off on that one.
If you test Windows 95, it will work even faster. This is a no-brainer.
And all you MS bashers out there, compare the system requirements of latest versions of Mac OS and Ubuntu and compare it to the versions released five years ago.
apparently won't be after SP1.
As a MSFT stockholder I hope MS is hard at work on a Vista
replacement, and a plan to keep offering XP for a few more
years until "AfterVista" is ready.
Otherwise they should expect a slow but steady migration of
customers to other operating systems.
Translation:
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We'll be sure to add some arbitrary, performance-crippling code to XP SP3 before it gets out of beta.
All of them run smoothly (my 15 year old kid last week asked me what is a "blue screen of death" - because he NEVER saw one!). However, I really prefer Vista over XP.
The question, for me, is not "performance", as in "speed", but rather, "performance" as in "functionality". And "security". And "ease of use". And... Well, you get my point (I hope).
I didn't run the tests, but I can only guess that Windows 98SE RUNS FASTER ON A 1 GB MACHINE THAN XP! Duh... That's why the point raised by another poster here about "unfairness" is a good one.
As for myself, my machine has 4 GB of RAM (RAM is REALLY cheap nowadays) and I don't complain. In fact, Vista actually *uses* the 4 GB of RAM; I doubt that XP benefits as well by adding more RAM above 2 GB.
In the end, nothing of this really matters, because one year from now, Vista will rule (more than now) and XP will have fade into oblivion.
P.S.: So let me get this straight: for years, XP was a bad OS; now that we have a better one (Vista), it suddenly it is a good OS? Oh dear...
An OS shouldn't need to use a tremendous amount of system resources to run... It's supposed to be a platform for my apps not THE APP. It should also be intuitive which XP wasn't really and Vista is less.
Vista wasn't 100% ready for the world. MS could actually fix Vista long before they could fix the world. Maybe.
It's time for Microsoft to admit that Vista is DOA. The only reason Vista is selling at all, is to people that are buying new PCs and don't know better.
Microsoft, It's time to cut your loses, Dump the crap, and create a new operating system that works. One that does not require anyone to update the hardware, allows you to startup with only the applications that we select, and not the kitchen sink. Do You Think You Remember How To Do That?
Here's the CNET article on XP from last week in case you all missed it:
http://www.news.com/Microsoft-exec-calls-XP-hack-frightening/2100-7349_3-6218238.html?tag=item
1. Where is the link to the test results?
2. What version of Vista was used? Was Aero turned on?
3. It is EXPECTED that the OS that has less features/processes running would run faster. This is why MS recommends A LOT MORE computing power for Vista. This is true for every new OS.
4. Why was only one system configuration used? To have a scientifically sound benchmark, you need multiple computers with different hardware configurations in order to get rid of the variables. For all we know, Dell's hardware configuration could be affecting the outcome, positively or negatively.
5. Because of point #4, we don't know WHY XP is faster. It likely is a RAM issue, but we would need to test to be sure.
Therefore, this "benchmark" study is basically useless, which tells us nothing new.
- Was it a fair comparison?
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by scalemaster34
November 27, 2007 8:16 AM PST
- I'm not yet a Vista fan, but would be nice if CNet would provide a few details about the test. Were all of Vista's enhancements running, or had they been turned off?
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See all 322 Comments >>Too be honest it make since that a newer OS would be slower than an older one. You would expect there would be additional features with a new OS that would require additional recourses.... New OS are designed to take advantage of the advancements in the newer hardware available today.