Win 7 RTM vs. Vista and XP full-featured test

Windows Vista can't win a good reputation, and many people complain that its hardware requirements are too high, Vista appeared in the fall of 2006, PC and notebook Not as powerful as today's, but even with the current hardware, people who use the Vista system will immediately feel that this is a software to pull the "handcuffs" operating system. Microsoft can no longer lose its reputation on Windows 7, so try to optimize every major part of the operating system. From boot to login, every part of Windows 7 is much faster.

Microsoft has now completed Windows 7 and has released the RTM version, version number 7600.1685. Our colleagues at ZDNet Germany (ZDNet Germany) used this version to test Windows 7 and Vista and xp on different platforms.

Power On and Off

An operating system boot time is not the most important performance - after all, we usually only boot once a day, but this It is the first indicator to show the speed of the operating system, and the shutdown is also.

All available updates have been installed before starting the test. In order to maximize the performance of the hard drive, the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) mode in the BIOS is turned on.

In our high-end computer using the PM800 series Samsung SSD, Windows 7 took 12 seconds to enter the desktop, xp takes 14.1 seconds, and Vista is 14.5 seconds.

However, experienced Windows users will know that displaying the desktop and starting the entire operating system is a different matter, so we made a second measurement, let the timer be enabled when the IE 8 and Bing search homepages are turned on. Stop, so you know what time it takes to boot from the Internet application.

At this point, Windows 7 works very fast. After the desktop appears, it only takes 2.5 seconds to display Bing's home page. Windows7 takes 14.5 seconds from boot to display Bing, and Vista spends 18.5 seconds. , xp is 23.7 seconds.

Windows 7 is also faster than the previous two generations of Windows, only takes 4.5 seconds, Vista takes 7 seconds, and xp is 6.5 seconds.

In the lower end of the computer, it takes more time. In the computer with 1.6GHz Intel Atom N330 processor and a traditional hard disk, it takes 44 seconds to open Windows7, and then connect to the network. Seconds, if you need Vista for 57 seconds, xp is 55 seconds. When shutting down, xp is the fastest, it takes 8.1 seconds, Windows7 is 9.1 seconds, and Vista is 10.3 seconds.

Overall, shut down and boot should be the most efficient of Windows 7 without considering the hardware specifications of the computer, but updating and installing the application may change these results.

Memory Management and Access

Microsoft introduces a new technology called SuperFetch on Vista For quick access to applications and faster boot times. This technology pre-downloads frequently used applications into memory and can be opened faster when needed.

For traditional magnetic hard drives, this technology may be reasonable, but if it is a large number of solid-state hard drives that store data, it is best to turn off SuperFetch. The SSD is faster than the magnetic hard drive, so there is no difference in SuperFetch.

Microsoft said in May that Windows 7 will cancel SuperFetch on computers that use SSDs, and other features such as Defrag and ReadyBoost will not be used under Windows 7. But in fact, in the RTM version (7600.16385) only Defrag will be canceled in the SSD, SuperFetch and ReadyBoost will still work as usual.

SuperFetch in Windows 7 is different from Vista in terms of operation mode or access. In Vista, program access starts when the operating system starts, as shown in the chart below. After 3 minutes, more than 1GB of memory has been occupied. In Windows 7, SuperFetch is started 5 minutes after the operating system starts. After 10 minutes, only 600MB of memory is occupied, which is also 10 minutes. After that, Vista's SuperFetch has taken up more than 1.5GB of memory.

Even if SuperFetch is turned off, Windows 7 uses less memory for access, and the operating system-related functions only take up 333MB. When Vista shuts off SuperFetch, it still needs 519MB.

SuperFetch has a positive impact on overall performance in Windows 7 systems. Windows 7 obviously uses less resources to perform this function, so the memory used during caching Significantly less than Vista, SuperFetch is also slow to open, so that the hard drive will not be tied immediately after the operating system is opened, which means that you do not have to wait when the operating system monopolizes hardware resources for access.

Application Performance: PCMark Vantage

PCMark Vantage tests the performance of the operating system by performing a standard check on applications integrated into Vista and Windows 7. The usage is divided into several projects, and the default PCMark Suite can be synchronized with daily computer usage. The following are the various test items:

Memory: There are four test methods to test the speed of Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker when processing photos or videos.

TV & Movie: Play and convert HD video in four different tests.

Game: Test the performance of the display card and estimate how long it takes to download the compressed game data.

Music: Convert WAV music files to MP3 and WMA Lossless formats and add music files to Media Player.

Communication: Testing includes web page reading, CNG AES CBC encryption, Windows Mail Search and audio transcoding.

Productivity Tools: Tests include text editing, search in Windows Contacts, boot process analysis, web page reading.

Hard Disk: Test the performance of the hard disk with Windows Defender, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Media Center and Windows Media Player, and measure the speed of the hard disk to open the operating system or program.

We used a 64-bit version, a preset value, and performed three tests. The average value presented here is the average.

The chart below shows that the applications on the Windows 7 platform work better than Vista, and the notebook (single-core Acer Timeline 3810T notebook) is more obvious than the high-end desktop (Core i7 table). In the notebook, the performance of the application in Windows 7 increased by an average of 35%, and on the high-end desktop, the average performance increased by 20%.

Music-related apps benefit the most, with a 64% performance improvement, and individual tests show that the transition from WAV to WMA Lossless format is three times faster.

It is unwise to make an average of 20% performance improvement for each application under Windows 7 system. Please remember that PCMark Vantage only tests applications integrated into Windows--Windows 7 How much performance is good for Vista depends on the combination of programs you use.

Other tests such as Everest, 7-zip, 3DMark Vantage, Cinebench and Paint.Net show that Windows 7 is no faster than Vista. However, the performance improvement of Windows applications is an important advancement.

Windows 7 is faster than Vista and faster than xp, although it has limited memory and older graphics cards. In terms of computers, xp is still a more suitable operating system.

Subjectively changing from Vista to Windows7 is like putting a car's handcuffs out. There are several reasons for the significant improvement in performance: the speed of turning the operating system on and off is faster than xp and Vista. Parallel computing is better, operating system and driver component downloads are faster, and enterprise users are happy to find that logging in to a domain is faster.

Microsoft has also completely revised the function of SuperFetch, making it ready to turn on after booting. Anyone who changes from Vista to Windows7 will notice that the activity of the hard disk is less after booting, because it is operated on Windows7. SuperFetch has reduced the time it takes to download the program to memory, which means that the time to wait for the system to enter the available state after booting is reduced.

Benefiting from the improvement of the graphics card driver Windows 7 uses less cache. Regardless of how many windows are opened, the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) will still occupy memory. The display card will take up memory when the computer downloads additional windows, but in Windows 7, this occupancy is half that of Vista.

Windows 7 also introduces Direct2D, which further speeds up 2D image reading, but the standard WDDM 1.1 driver must be installed first. The graphics processor using ATI and Nvidia chips is no worse, because there is already a driver, but these drivers can not be used in older Intel graphics chips.

With the right graphics hardware, users can take advantage of the powerful drawing capabilities of the GPU (Compute Shader) with the built-in Windows 7 DirectX 11 interface, which is especially useful for vendors who offer video encoding tools, although currently There are no third party products to support this new specification.

Microsoft has successfully provided an operating system that consumers and business users may be satisfied with through Windows 7. Initial indications are that Windows 7 will attract more users than Vista, and we will use three computers for testing. Among them, only the low-end Intel Atom computer is not really suitable for Windows 7.

But even a single-core processor such as the 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo is enough to make Windows 7 work smoothly. High-end computers with quad-core processors can also benefit from Windows 7, because many of the features of Windows 7 can really take advantage of the computing power of multi-core chips.