Vista vs. Vista SP1
We’ll start with our Futuremark benchmark applications, 3DMark 2006 and PCMark Vantage. 3DMark in spite of being a graphics benchmark is sensitive enough to pick up on any changes in CPU or GPU performance (in this case any optimizations that reduce overhead), while PCMark Vantage is a full suite of benchmarks to measure overall system performance. It’s also one of the few benchmarks that we’re using that has a 64-bit mode.
Starting with 3DMark, the change in performance is effective imperceptible at 0.2%, well within experimental variance. This just goes to show there haven’t been any changes in overhead. PCMark however is far more interesting; here we get a full 7% score increase, indicating that SP1’s effects are felt outside of our earlier benchmarks. Drilling down ino PCMark’s subscores, we found that the higher score is a result of improvements in data compression scores, data encryption scores, and searching in Windows Mail, all of which can be attributed to improvements in file I/O performance. All other subscores are virtually unchanged.
Moving on to our application specific benchmarks, we have our DivX encoding test, our iTunes/LAME MP3 encoding test, and the Retouch Artists speed test for Photoshop. DivX stresses I/O somewhat, while the rest of the tests are largely memory and CPU-bound.
Here we see no notable changes in performance moving to SP1. All of the application tests come back with virtually identical scores.
Finally we have our gaming tests. Games tend to be good
a great way to stress all the components in a system, so this should give us a better idea
of how far improvements in Vista’s file I/O system stretch. For our games we have the RTSes World in Conflict and Company of Heroes, and the FPSes Crysis and Unreal Tournament 3.
In spite of the more rounded nature of gaming tests compared to our application tests, the results are the same with no perceivable improvement in performance. At this point it’s clear that what performance improvements Vista does offer are limited to a handful of situations where we are specifically file or network I/O bound. What this means for any given application is that it is unlikely to see a performance improvement due to SP1.
We also ran some quick testing with startup and shutdown times to see if Vista improved performance there at all; there were a couple of hotfixes in SP1 that dealt with these matters.
| Vista Startup/Shutdown Performance | ||
| |
Pre-SP1
|
Post-SP1
|
| Startup Time |
33 Seconds
|
28 Seconds
|
| Shtudown Time |
32 Seconds
|
31 Seconds
|
| . | ||
While shutdown time doesn’t see any real performance improvements, we are surprised to see an improvement in startup time by several seconds. Vista is not notably slow to start up in the first place, so we weren’t expecting much improvement if there was to be any at all. Shaving off 5 seconds for a 14% improvement in startup time (getting startup below 30 seconds altogether) is a pleasant surprise.
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Griswold - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
Unless you are using vista NOW, you're not qualified to claim knowledge about performance issues NOW.mechBgon - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
I think you should brush up on Windows Integrity Control and Kernel Patch Protection (for x64). These mandatory access controls are > users.Also, you are sadly incorrect in thinking that malware can only get onto a system with user cooperation. As the 4th-ranked SiteAdvisor reviewer worldwide (by total reputation), I have a fair amount of insight on the subject. ;) Between trusted sites being hacked and turned malicious, Mpack/Icepack-type exploit suites and vulnerable third-party software that people don't think to update, there's plenty of need for proactive security and mitigation.
You like WinXP? Great. For a 7-year-old OS, it can be secured fairly well, if you want to, and I even have tips to help with that: http://www.mechbgon.com/build/security2.html">http://www.mechbgon.com/build/security2.html But it's time for OSes to be more secure by default, in my opinion. The latest Security Intelligence Report from Microsoft showed WinXP SP2 is 2.5x more likely to have malware detected by the Malicious Software Removal Tool than Vista SP-zero, to throw one statistic out there.
Food for thought. I haven't seen much at AnandTech yet on that aspect of Vista.
Microsoft MVP ~ Windows Shell/User
kmmatney - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
I don't see exFAT being useful right away unless windows XP is updated to support it.Staples - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
Vista SP1 mostly has all the updates that MS has released over the past year on Windows Update. I did not notice a difference either and I installed SP1 a few weeks ago. If this was a vanilla install I was installing it over, I am sure I would notice quite a few improvements. I have been using Vista Home Premium since Jan and it definitely had some problems then. Since about July, the drives were mature enough and other than the slow slow file copying (which now still is slower than XP), everything has been running well for months.KeypoX - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
On both laptop and desktop :( but i didnt really have any problems before... or after.johnsonx - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
"That experience has been unified somewhat with SP1, now the x86 environment can install the x64 version of the OS (but ____ the other way around, interestingly enough)."I do think a 'not' goes in that blank.
(btw, none of the comment buttons like B, I, U, Quote, etc. are working for me atm)
InternetGeek - Tuesday, February 26, 2008 - link
I've been using SP1 on Vista Ultimate and it does bring some improvements. It took about one hour to install without any trouble at all. I simply started it and one hour later it was up as running.In general I find my laptop to be more responsive (Toshiba P105-S921). It restarts faster and comves alive from suspend faster as well. Applications in general feel the same, though tonight I'll play Oblivion and get a more "objective" feel of it. I used VS.NET 2008, Sql Server 2005, Photoshop CS2, Office 2007, DVDFab Platinum, Alcohol 120%, iTunes/WMP for media.
Div 6.8 stopped working all together after applying 6.1. It either crashes while analyzing the subtitles or while encoding. The movie is Transformers.
In general, I find that SP1 does bring good things for Vista on which, in general, I'm having a better experience than on XP.
aguilpa1 - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
From that list you don't use any heavy duty applications, so yes you probably wouldn't notice a difference...Spivonious - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
Photoshop, SQL Server, and VS2008 aren't "heavy-duty" applications? Just what is heavy-duty in your opinion?Griswold - Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - link
I bet using his favourite browser, posting crap like that in comments like this, is what he considers "heavy-duty".