Performance Shootout: Microsoft’s XP, Vista, and Windows 7

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes at ZDNet did a performance test pitting the different Microsoft operating system against each other. He wanted to see how the different Windows 7 builds would compare to Vista and XP. This unofficial performance competition was done knowing that Microsoft’s latest OS is still in beta, but the author thought it would be a good clue to how Windows 7 is progressing and maybe even how it will eventually fare against the older operating systems. Check out if Windows 7 can beat Vista and XP!

Here are the main details of what was tested:

The experiment tested the following five operating systems:

• Windows XP SP3 32-bit
• Windows Vista SP1 32-bit
• Windows 7 beta 1 build  7000 32-bit
• Windows 7 beta 1 build  7000 64-bit
• Windows 7 build 7048 64-bit

There are 31 real world scenario tests. Here are some examples:

• Installing the operating system
• Booting up and shutting down
• Moving 100MB of JPEG files from one hard drive to another
• Opening a complex Excel document including formula and charts
• And even tests running video games like Call of Duty

Each test was done on two separate desktop systems:

• An AMD Phenom 9700 2.4GHz system fitted with an ATI Radeon 3850 and 4GB of RAM
• An Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 2.2GHz fitted with an NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS and 1GB of RAM

The result of each test is scored with a simple point system:

• 1 point for the fastest OS
• 2 points for second place
• 3 points for third
• 4 for forth
• 5 points for last place

Are you brimming with anticipation to know what he found? Here are the results:

• Windows 7 is, overall, better than both Vista and XP.
• As Windows 7 progresses, it’s getting better (or at least the 64-bit editions are).
• On a higher-spec system, 64-bit is best.
• On a lower-spec system, 32-bit is best.

I think it the analysis itself is super interesting and the results exciting! I can’t wait to see Adrian’s next version done with an actual Windows 7 release candidate.

You can see a full list of 31 tests, charts detailing the results of each test, and more about the experiment on Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’s blog.

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