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.
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jkostans - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I bought W7 Pro 64-bit OEM for $140 shipped on newegg. So far I am reasonably happy. The interface takes a lot of getting used to for someone who has been running XP since it's release. I do get some blue screens, but I've narrowed it down to an iffy 64-bit "kX Audio" driver I am using for my ancient SB Audigy.I definately noticed a speed improvement in general use. Everything from navigating folders to opening programs and browsing the internet seems snappier. I am running a decent setup, so maybe W7 can scale better with the additional power of todays machines. (Q6600 @ 3.4GHz, 4GB DDR2 1066 , HD4870, Spinpoint F1 7200rpm drives). I really want to see how a SSD helps performance, but I can't justify the price yet.
chrnochime - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
I'd say if it does scale well, your PC is provides a lot of power for it to work on. It's a quad-core OC'd to 3.4GHz, and that's far from being a slouch.Now to ponder over whether to wipe my HTPC clean just to install W7. No, I don't hope for smooth upgrade, never worked in the past for any Windows before, don't think it'll work for me now.
hydrocarbon - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
"Fine" is a weird term to use for 64-bit XP...SunLord - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
I always wonder about these Windows XP 64bit users seeing as how it has the worst driver support out of all recent Windows version. It also was the last to get WGA support... Funny that.Genx87 - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
People enjoy pain or like to be "different". The driver situation for that OS is hell and isnt going to get better.falc0ne - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
well, dear Xp user we have a short and straight to the point answer for ya: welcome to the 21st century:)it's not that we don't love old machines like Pontiac Firebird but....this doesn't apply to computer hardware or software:)
Martimus - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
Lol. That isn't an argument. In fact, I don't even know what you are trying to convey. That Windows 7 is newer, and thus automatically better? That isn't a very logical conclusion.Widows XP runs most programs fine. Why would anyone want to buy a new operating system, when their old one they already paid for works? I'll buy Windows 7 when I build a new computer, but there is no compelling reason to buy it for any other reason. After reading this article, I feel less compelled to change my operating system than I did before I read it - as there just aren't any compelling features added since XP (to me).
B3an - Monday, November 2, 2009 - link
XP it a decade old, it REALLY should just hurry up and die. It's holding progress back, too many installs still use IE6 which is a massive headache for web developers, and it has more holes than my socks. 7 is massive upgrade from XP, even installing 7 is infinitely easier than XP. This article fails to mention many many features of windows 7, but then it's more about performance numbers.Yes XP "gets the job done", so would windows 98 for many people, but stop confusing that with the OS actually being any good these days.
7 is Microsofts best OS by far, period.
leexgx - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
i guess you did not even bother to read his post....i am guessing he has his PC fully up to date
samspqr - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
it depends on what you are doingI don't doubt this site does its best to get the most perfect measures of general performance, but my measuremens tell a totally different story
if you're doing serious 3D work, using programs like 3dsmax or maya, XP is between 21% and 200% faster than vista or w7:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=307466">http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=307466
http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/in...">http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk...benchmar...
note 1: this is viewport performance; for rendering times, look at anandtech's numbers
note 2: don't even look at specviewperf results, they are meaningless