Windows 7 Performance Guide
by Ryan Smith and Gary Key on October 26, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Networking
For our networking tests we utilize a Promise SmartStor NS4600 NAS unit equipped with two WD Caviar Black 640GB drives in RAID 1 operation. We are using our standard large folder and perform a copy from the NAS and then back to the NAS. The Promise NAS unit is connected to each test platform via a NetGear Gigabit Ethernet switch. We left all settings at their defaults on both the motherboard and Promise NAS unit. Our goal was to maximize the performance of the NAS unit to verify our network throughput capabilities in each operating system.
In our download test, Win7 is blazing fast with a 25% advantage over XP and 34% over Vista, making this result particularly notable since network file copy performance has always been a bit of a laggard on Vista. The results are very close in our upload test with Win7 and Vista basically tied and 16% ahead of XP.
USB / FireWire Performance
Our USB transfer speed tests are conducted with an USB 2.0/FireWire based Lacie external hard drive unit featuring a 1TB 7200rpm Samsung F1 drive. In the SSD to External test, we transfer a 3.82GB folder containing 2735 files of various sizes from our Kingston 80GB SSD to the Lacie drive. In the next two file tests, we use the same 3.82GB folder to transfer from our WD VRaptor 300GB hard drive to the external Lacie drive utilizing the USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394a interface.
Win7 and XP perform similarly in our USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394a tests with both finishing ahead of Vista.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
207 Comments
View All Comments
solipsism - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Nice review!Anand Effect
— For every mention of Apple and their products the number of people who complain in the comments about Apple, their products and AnandTech’s occasional focus on said products doubles exponentially.
Taft12 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Not a bad theory, but the "doubles exponentially" part needs some peer review from mathematicians in the crowd (when they stop laughing)Toadster - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I was very impressed with my upgrade - 65 minutes from start to end!Spivonious - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Not bad, but clean install took under 25 minutes on my E6600 machine.Griswold - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
The magic word is migration. A clean install with nothing else is certainly fast. The installation didnt even take 25 minutes here. The hours to make everything the way I needed it to be afterwards without upgrading from vista, thats what counts. :)mcnabney - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
4.5 hours for an upgrade on a fast hard disk that held ~300GB of apps and data.Butchered the drivers. Made a complete mess of the codecs. I would recomend the clean install since you will likely spend less time re-installing Apps than repairing the damage.
9nails - Saturday, November 7, 2009 - link
I wanted to upgrade from Vista 64-Bit Ultimate to Win 7 Ultimate, but it turns out that MS was handing out 32-bit versions. So no upgrade path from 64 to 32 bit. I did a clean install instead.So far, my only complaint is about the provided wall paper selection. I couldn't find anything that I truly liked. Other than that, Windows 7 is awesome! Solid, fast, and full of good stuff.
bearnet2001 - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Well I'm still on XP 64, not sure if I'll upgrade. Next build I suppose, but I'm not paying out $200 or so just to upgrade a comp with an already fine OS.IdBuRnS - Saturday, October 31, 2009 - link
Why do you need a $200 version? Oh...you don't.just4U - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I just don't understand why holdouts on XP like to argue how good it is in comparison to Vista... which it obviously is NOT. It seems they fail to realize that ALL OF US used it for a very long time (as operating systems go) So it's not like we don't have some basis of comparison to go on here.That being said, people upgrade when they either have to or want to. I am fine with that. If your still finding XP useful then shoot who am I to argue.