Windows 7 Performance Guide
by Ryan Smith and Gary Key on October 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
What’s New since Win 7 RC
Unlike Vista, which was furiously being developed right through SP1, there’s very little to report for Windows 7 when it comes to what has changed between the release candidate and the final version.
Internally, the issues we encountered with the RC and mentioned in our RC article have been resolved. Our stuttering HTPC no longer stutters, and Windows 7 now recognizes the JMB363 drive controller in one of our test systems correctly. At this point we have yet to encounter any issues that we can chalk up to a bug in Windows 7, which is a very promising sign.
There have been no notable changes to any of the programs or components of Windows 7 compared to the RC beyond simple bug fixes, so if you’ve use the RC then you’re going to find that the release version behaves the same way.
The only new bit of information we have is that last month Microsoft revealed that Windows 7 has greater CableCARD support, which we believe is a product of the new Protected BDA driver subsystem. Unfortunately the Digital Cable Advisor tool needed to enable this feature, and the associated firmware for the ATI Digital Cable TV Wonder (the only CableCARD tuner currently on the market) missed their release date of the 22nd, so there is no way to use this functionality at the moment. We don’t have any idea of when these will become available.
Externally, Microsoft’s hardware and software partners have been getting their houses in to order. Since the driver model s aren’t changing this time around there’s not nearly the kind of churn we saw with Vista. AMD and NVIDIA are the outliers here: they have been pushing out new drivers to support DirectCompute, Media Foundation Transcode, and the other features that are coming with 7 and/or DX11. Anti-virus vendors are the other group that stand to be most affected by the launch of 7, as they have been publishing new versions of their suites that include official support for Windows 7.
Finally, battery life, one of the sore spots with the RC, has finally gotten the kick in the pants we were expecting to see. We’ll get deeper in to this later when we look at benchmarks, but for the time being we’ll note that while the RC offered a battery life similar to Vista, the release version of Windows 7 offers battery life well ahead of Vista in all cases, and depending on the exact hardware used similar to if not better than battery life as compared to XP. It looks like Microsoft and driver authors have finally come through on significantly improving Vista’s lackluster mobile performance.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
207 Comments
View All Comments
Tewt - Monday, November 2, 2009 - link
Toms pretty much had the same conclusion as Anandtech. Here is a quote from their conclusion:"From the benchmarker’s standpoint, the change from Windows Vista to Windows 7 is simply a matter of documentation."
I wish someone would quantify the "snappy" feeling or the "it feels faster" they get from Windows 7 because I'm not seeing a compelling reason to move from Vista from either article on the two sites.
werfu - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I absolutely love Win7. I've installed the RC on my Thinkpad T61p and it's a real pleasure to use it compared to Vista. It's more responsive, not like Vista sluggish experience. However, the ACPI driver for the T61p don't work right. The screen doesn't dim and power management don't work right. I think that's really odd, as it's been working right under Vista and Linux.Also, I wonder if the NAS test was done using a Large Packet enabled NAS. It do make a huge difference on networking gear that support it.
strikeback03 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Have you checked for updated drivers recently? Lenovo had a bunch of Win7 drivers for my T43 which were all dated within the past week.7Enigma - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Did you happen to do any benchmarking or "general user responsiveness" when you upgraded the systems? I have upgraded 3 systems since Windows 95 and in every case I ended up reformatting and doing a clean install; not because of a hardware/software issue, but rather because some unknown demon made the systems chug.I've seen this same issue with the move from XP SP2 to SP3 on my dad's computer (in this case to the point where we actually rolled back to SP2). In that instance it is possible the extra security features/etc. on an older system that just couldn't take it, but in the other instances it seemed to be a major problem.
Any comments by the authors would be greatly appreciated.
Ryan Smith - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
One of the systems that I did the upgrade install on was my personal system. I'm not going to publish any numbers since they aren't rigorous enough, but before and after testing didn't reveal any differences in performance. It continues to perform just as well as any other Win7 system I have.7Enigma - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
Thank you for the response Ryan. Honestly while the articles are fantastic, it is the timely comments from the authors that make this site the best.Postoasted - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Had been using XP64 for about 4 years and lived through all its teething problems. Had been totally satisfied except that with some programs it couldn't regulate the RAM efficiently. I have 6 gigs of RAM and would ofter run out while using some apps. With 7 Ultimate I can watch an H264 movie, have FF open and encode a movie all at the same time and have RAM left over. For me Windows 7 was the fix.nafhan - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I'll go out on a limb and say that anyone who feels comfortable configuring POP3/SMTP settings would also be comfortable downloading the free mail client from MS (or Thunderbird, etc.). Businesses will likely have MS Office installed (including Outlook). Non-technical users generally use webmail.So, the only group I can come up with who would want it installed by default is tech-savvy users without Office, that prefer MS's free desktop client over webmail, and don't have admin rights to install it themselves or access to IT support to install it for them.
jay401 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Gary - Whatever happened to the P55 motherboard reviews and round-up articles you mentioned last month? Are they still on the way? I think we've seen 3 or 4 P55 motherboards reviewed so far at Anandtech. Are you still going to review the others?It's not so much the performance that's important or unknown, since they're all relatively similar. It's the technical specs comparisons, the board layout images and commentary, any issues you experienced while testing with them, etc. Would love to see the round-ups.
Gary Key - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
They are coming shortly. We went back and purchased 8 retail boards to do additional testing on the Foxconn socket compared to the Lotes/Tyco Amp. I have finished that testing and guess what, no changes on air or water, plus it appears the revised Foxconn socket is certainly working better, not perfect, but much better.