Robert McLaws ran a performance test with the refresh of Vista SP1 RC which I blogged about yesterday. He compared the performance with a patched Vista RTM using PCMark Vantage. This benchmarking program leverages specific Windows features such as Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Media Player, etc.). McLaws ran this benchmark on systems with Vista x86 and Vista x64. The results are quite interesting.
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On the 64-bit machine, he measured a 15% performance increase and on the 32-bit computer 11%. Considering that there have already been a couple of patches that are supposed to improve performance, this is not too bad. He mentioned the machines (Dell XPs 410 / Samsung Q1 Ultra), but doesn't say anything about their hardware equipment. I am pretty sure that you won't see the same improvements on every PC. However, I think it could be a proof that Vista SP1 performs a little better than Vista RTM.
At the peril of being accused again as a Vista fan boy, I have to say that I had no performance issues with Vista so far. Of course, I am running it only on hardware that is powerful enough. That is, all my Vista machines have at least 2GB RAM. Only when I test it under VMware Workstation, do I work with 1GB which is enough if you only run a tool or 2 simultaneously.
McLaws also seems to have information that Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 will go to RTM tomorrow. Peder linked to an article over at Bink.nu mentioned the same release date (Jan. 16). It was already published 11 days ago. I am still a bit skeptic, but it would certainly be great if Microsoft releases these two products earlier than planned.
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Update: McLaws just removed the article. Was it because he mentioned the release dates?
good one
From what I’ve seen, SP-1 is making a massive difference on my Sony Vaio SZ4 XWN/C (which is preinstalled with Vista Business and dog slow despite a more than adequate specification).
I really did hope that SP1 would increase performance. My system runs 10-15% faster under XP than Vista (even with the 1st beta SP1 release). The hardware is more than adequate, Quad core, 4GB, 512MB video card. Vista just does *something else*
Disk i/o is a real issue too. I’ve measured XP at 200% faster on unarchiving operations (lots of little files).
The days are long gone where the system should take that kind of performance hit for a new OS. Each release of your favorite linux gets better, each release of OSX gets faster….
If the hardware is adequate and Vista still seems to be too slow, then it is usually Vista’s indexing service that slows down the system. I recommend turning it off.