Vista or xp....

vanzack · 08-05-07, 01:25 PM

XP

I hate vista. Slow as a mother****er.

Omnivorous Frog · 08-05-07, 01:37 PM

I must agree, vista will be badly compromised until the service packs are available to fix all of the rollout bugs and glitches, and there are a bunch. Good question is when debugged will it still be that slow? I tried to get a new desktop with XP from Dell. I will be lucky to get a refurb as someone beat me to it. Good thread by jj on the issue also. Me personally, I will stick with proven OS until they pry my cold dead fingers from it.

t2wentyfou4r · 08-05-07, 02:03 PM

I work in the IT field. With every new OS that comes out, there will be issues. You should give Mircosoft some time to fix them before geting it. That's my 2cent.

Scorpion · 08-05-07, 04:01 PM

Conclusion: K.O. For Windows Vista?

Tom's Hardware: For The Hardcore PC Enthusiast

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

Tom's Hardware helps you buy the best hardware and build the best PC to play, create and work..

Conclusion: K.O. For Windows Vista?
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.

Tech Analysis: Windows Vista Sucks Performance
Windows Vista is Microsoft's next-generation desktop operating system. But does it provide next-gen performance on today's PCs vs. its predecessor, Windows XP?
The CRN Test Center set out to compare Vista's performance against XP's. The result: You might not want to move off XP just yet.

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Posted Friday, April 13, 2007

Tech Analysis: Windows Vista Sucks Performance

Windows Vista is Microsoft's next-generation desktop operating system. But does it provide next-gen performance on today's PCs vs. its predecessor, Windows XP?
The CRN Test Center set out to compare Vista's performance against XP's. The result: You might not want to move off XP just yet.

Vista is a resource-hungry operating system. Its minimum hardware requirements of an 800 MHz processor, 512 Mbytes of memory and a 20-Gbyte hard drive prove the point. New systems running Vista are heartier still, typically having a dual-core processor of around 2 GHz and 1 Gbyte of memory.

Regardless of the platform, Vista takes a long time to boot compared with XP. That's probably why Vista's shutdown button has been moved from the familiar XP location and replaced by a sleep button. By encouraging users to put systems to sleep rather than turning them off, the systems will seemingly boot much faster. If a system running Vista takes longer to boot than one running XP, could the Vista system take longer to do other tasks as well?

The Test Center decided to check it out. A new system sent to the lab came loaded with Vista. The system, made by Polywell, contained an Asus M2 NBP-VM CSM motherboard with a 2.2 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ dual-core processor and 1 Gbyte of memory. Engineers benchmarked the system using PassMark Software's PerformanceTest benchmark, which can be used free by anyone for up to 30 days.

The PerformanceTest software runs multiple tests on the CPU, graphics subsystem, memory and disk drives to generate composite average scores for each category. The composite averages are then used to generate an overall PassMark rating for the entire system. The latest version of PerformanceTest is compatible with Windows XP and Vista. PerformanceTest results can be saved as image files, and links are provided here for the results of the two tests (click for Vista performance results and for XP performance results).

Running Vista, the Polywell system earned a PassMark rating of 391.3. Next, engineers wiped the system and loaded Windows XP Pro (version 2002 with SP2). Running XP, the system earned a PassMark rating of 468.3; that's 16.4 percent faster than Vista, not an insignificant difference. Race car drivers will go to great lengths to shave a few tenths off their elapsed times but rarely perform upgrades that hurt performance. Yet upgrading to Vista can lessen a system's performance by as much as 58 percent, depending on what's being processed.

The news was not all bad, however. The PerformanceTest benchmark ran 24 individual tests, and XP was faster than Vista in only 18 of those tests. In six of the tests, Vista came out on top. More specifically, Vista beat XP at CPU string sorting, 2D graphics shapes, simple 3D graphics, medium 3D graphics, memory writes and random disk seeks.

For CPU string sorting, XP processed 2064.8 thousand strings per second, while Vista processed 2080.1 thousand strings per second. For the 2D graphics shapes test, XP processed 29.2 thousand shapes per second, and Vista processed 30.4 thousand shapes per second. For the simple 3D graphics test, Vista processed 125.8 frames per second, and XP processed 134.0 frames per second.

In the medium 3D graphics test, XP processed 16.0 frames per second, while Vista processed 18.6 frames per second. For the memory write test, XP processed 950.5 MBps and Vista processed 954.6 MBps. And for the random disk seek test, XP processed 2.91 MBps, while Vista processed 3.88 MBps. Except for the random disk seeking, the difference between the other five tests is negligible.

But the bad news was bad. Of the 18 tests in which XP beat Vista, the difference in seven of them was significant.

For the 2D graphics lines test, Vista processed 76.3 thousand lines per second, whereas XP processed 138.3 thousand lines per second. For the 2D graphics rectangles test, Vista processed 39.7 thousand images per second, and XP processed 94.3 thousand images per second. That's a difference of 58 percent.

In the 2D graphics fonts and text test, Vista processed 115.2 operations per second, while XP processed 172.7 operations per second. For the small block memory allocation test, Vista processed 1349.3 MBps and XP processed 1861.6 MBps. For the large RAM memory test, Vista performed 127.2 operations per second, and XP performed 229.2 operations per second. For the sequential disk read test, Vista processed 32.4 MBps, whereas XP processed 65.4 MBps. For the sequential disk write test, Vista processed 39.4 MBps and XP processed 60.6 MBps.

The significant differences in these individual tests resulted in significant differences for the overall 2D graphics mark and overall disk mark. For the overall 2D graphics mark, Vista scored a composite average of 289.0, while XP scored 466.7. And for the overall disk mark, Vista scored a composite average of 273.4 and XP scored 466.1. The differences in those two main categories greatly contributed to the 16.4 percent overall difference between the two operating systems.

The low performance of the sequential disk writes hinted that Vista's .Net performance might be affected as well (click to see a comparison of Vista vs. XP .Net performance).
After running PerformanceTest under Vista, engineers installed and ran Microsoft's XML Mark 11 test to measure the .Net runtime performance. They then did the same with XP. The XML Mark 11 test can be downloaded from Microsoft's Visual Studio Download Center. XML Mark 11 simulates a multi-threaded server application running a SAX and a DOM parser. The test measures number of threads, retrieval speed of items in an XML document and various transaction processes. In addition to .Net, the XML Mark includes Java code. However, engineers used the C# portion of the test without modifying the code.

The XML Mark test was originally written by Sun Microsystems about two years ago to show Java's XML processing speed relative to .Net 1.1's XML parsing. With the release of .Net 2.0, however, Microsoft adopted the test and was able to show that C# code ran just as fast as Java code.

Because Vista includes .Net 3.0, engineers had to recompile the C# code using Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), from the November 2006 CTP version. Microsoft does not have a finished .Net 3.0 framework out yet for Visual Studio developers. In addition, engineers had to install the .Net Framework 3.0 Redistributable package on XP.

During compilation, a few warning messages were received because a couple of the XML API methods were obsolete. Microsoft changed some of the XML parsing technologies in its .Net framework between versions 2.0 and 3.0. For XML Mark to compile and run properly on both operating systems, engineers added .Net 3.0 as an additional prerequisite to .Net 2.0, instead of eliminating .Net 2.0 from the compilation process completely.

As suspected, Vista hampered .Net's performance as well.

The XML Mark showed that XML applications run faster on XP than on Vista when both operating systems use .Net 3.0 runtime. However, the test produced different results between the two parsers. With the DOM parser test, XP ran about 20 percent faster than Vista. However, Vista ran about 3 percent slower with the stream parser (SAX) test.

These results were expected and were in line with the PerformanceTest results. The DOM test provided a more precise view of .Net's memory architecture because of the large objects it created and deleted. .Net's garbage collection was far more stressed with the DOM test than with the stream test.

The results show that Vista's memory architecture is significantly slower than XP. Microsoft released a product that will make many .Net applications run slower. At this point, we do not recommend running client-based .Net applications on Vista that require large data processing. And unless it's imperative that users have an operating system with a more exciting look and feel, XP will offer better performance than Vista.

Omnivorous Frog · 08-05-07, 04:32 PM

Like I have been saying, this vista is a bust. If it were not forced down manufacturer's throats they would stick with XP. It is a lot of fluff, a resource hog and a performance detriment. I always ask the geeks what does Vista buy me performance wise. I have yet to receive an answer. According to these findings, it actually goes backwards for the tasks I require. I think the migration to Vista is going to be met with some resistance by certain groups. When is an upgrade a downgrade?

jjgold · 08-05-07, 04:54 PM

I use Vista on on, both are basically the same with speed. Most users will see no difference, I would pick vista mainly because we are going to have to as it will the operating system of the future.

Scorpion · 08-05-07, 07:59 PM

jj
too late, i already ordered with xp os.
i hope i got a good deal

Item # Item Description Unit Price Qty. Extended Price
1014230R Gateway NX860XL $1,687.99 1 $1,687.99
3402488 Genuine Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 1
3402430 Microsoft Windows XP Media Center OS Backup Media 1
3402853 McAfee 90-day Internet Security Suite Comp Sub (XP) 1
3408001R Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T7400 (2.16GHz, 667MHz, 4MB L2) 1
3402544R 2048MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (2-1024) 1
3403385R 160GB 5400rpm Serial ATA hard drive 1
3402787 Cyberlink CDRW and PowerDVD Solution 2-Channel DWL only (XP) 1
3408602R 17.1" WUXGA TFT Active Matrix (1920 x 1200) Dark Tungsten 1
3408608R Chassis w/ Intel 945PM Chipset & IEEE1394 (Son C) Dk Tungste 1
3402773R nVidia 7900 GS 256MB Graphics Card (for Sonic-C) 1
3400473R 120 Watt AC Adapter & 2-pin Power Cord for M460/M680/M685 1
3402443R Integrated Intel 3945 802.11a/b/g Wireless Networking 1
3402445R Bluetooth Wireless Networking Module 1
3402635 Intel WLAN to Bluetooth Cabling 1
3403730 DWL Napster Trial 1
3403942 DWL ebay Desktop Icon 1
3402750 Non-Microsoft Software EULA - US 1
3403922 OOBE - Text - US English/Canada English - Retail & Direct 1
3403843 Consumer Standard Limited Warranty Documentation (1) 1
3402329 Brand, Gateway (DWL) 1
3402349 System Type, Notebook (DWL) 1
3402339 Locale, English (USA) (DWL) 1
3402327 Channel - Direct (DWL) 1
1535429 Microsoft Works 8.5 1
1533625 C-ValuePln 1yr Parts/Labor/NoOnsite/TechSup-MBHigh1Yr 1
3408961R 8x Multi-Format Dual Layer DVDRW With DVD-RAM- Dark Tungsten 1
3402448 Primary 8-Cell Lithium Ion Battery w/ 1 Yr. Limited Warranty 1
9100532 RTY FOR NON MICROSOFT SOFTWARE 1
9100534 RTY FOR MICROSOFT OPERATING SYSTEM 1
9528127 $8 CA Electronic Waste Recycling Fee (15" to <35" display) 1

Subtotal: $1,687.99
Tax: $130.20
Shipping & Handling: $0.00

Order Total: $1,818.19

MonkeyF0cker · 08-05-07, 08:34 PM

Originally posted by Omnivorous Frog

Like I have been saying, this vista is a bust. If it were not forced down manufacturer's throats they would stick with XP. It is a lot of fluff, a resource hog and a performance detriment. I always ask the geeks what does Vista buy me performance wise. I have yet to receive an answer. According to these findings, it actually goes backwards for the tasks I require. I think the migration to Vista is going to be met with some resistance by certain groups. When is an upgrade a downgrade?

Well the difference will be that it will, in the end, allow you to run 64-bit applications which will perform slightly faster and better than their 32-bit (current architecture) counterparts. However, Vista is a stepping stone. Microsoft went through a similar end-user transition from DOS/Win 3.1 to Win95. And there were many issues with both performance and compatibility. They are merely growing pains. Microsoft's OS and software are always resource intensive and generally released ahead of mainstream hardware that is capable of running their releases seemlessly. It also fuels the hardware industry since many need to upgrade to utilize their new platforms (conspiracy theorists please refrain). However, I'd hold off until more affordable, higher-performance hardware, Vista Service Pack 1, and the availability of 64-bit applications become a reality. For the vast majority, it's simply not worth the hassle or the money at this point.