Vista SP1, XP SP2, Vista RTM Performance Comparison - the Sad Conclusions

Following the releasing to manufacturing of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on February 4, 2008, Microsoft made its own comparison performance. For the operating system responsiveness benchmarking, the Redmond company threw together Vista SP1, Vista RTM and Windows XP SP2 in the same arena. While it was designed as an evolution from Windows XP, Windows Vista RTM failed to impress in terms of added performance, with generalized criticism pointing to the fact that XP was in fact faster and more responsive than its successor. Microsoft subsequently hammered away at Windows Vista RTM, softening all the rough edges and promising even more added performance with the delivery of Service Pack 1. Well, SP1 is here, and drawing the line on the performance comparison between Vista SP1, Vista RTM and XP SP2, delivers a sad conclusion.

Sad but true... After the RTM of Vista, Microsoft commissioned Principled Technologies to perform a comparison involving its latest Windows client and XP SP2. With the advent of Vista SP1, the Redmond company updated the benchmarking results. "Microsoft provided the test systems (Dell XPS 600 (desktop), Dell XPS M170 (notebook), HP a1320y (desktop), HP d4100e (desktop), and Toshiba Tecra M4 (tablet))," revealed Principled Technologies, stating that it was responsible for setting up the systems and developing the procedures, as well as executing all the tests.

"We tested the response time of the test system in two different states. Cold: the state of a system after rebooting or after a program or set of programs has performed enough RAM and disk operations to make the operating system have to reload any test application before it can run that application. To execute these tests, the script rebooted the system, waited 120 seconds, and then began the timed operations. And Warm: the state of a system after it has already run a set of programs, possibly after returning from standby. To execute these tests, the script ran a second time after returning from standby then a third time immediately afterwards," PT stated.

The sad conclusion? Well, with Vista RTM out of the way, Vista SP1 still failed to leave XP SP2 in the dirt. Principled Technologies revealed that Vista SP1 and XP SP3 "performed comparably on most test operations" designed to simulate a home environment. Why that's little flattering for Vista SP1. It took Microsoft over a year to cook Vista SP1, and at approximately four years after XP SP2, it's still delivering the same level of performance, with the differences between the two platforms being generally less than a half second. I do agree that XP SP2 benefits from the added boost of today's technology, but at the same time it doesn't seem that Vista is doing the same thing. Here are the conclusions for Vista SP1 vs. Vista RTM vs. XP SP2 in cold state.

"Vista SP1 was faster than Vista on 87% of the operations in cold state. The differences were small, with Windows Vista SP1 faster by less than 3 seconds on all those operations combined. No difference was greater than half a second. When Vista SP1 was slower, the slowdown was always insignificant (less than a quarter of a second)," PT added. "Vista SP1 was faster on 23 of the 31 operations (just over 74%) in a cold state than Windows XP. Vista SP1 averaged just over 18 seconds faster on those operations combined, and was faster by just under 6 seconds on one task and slower by at most just under half a second."

One area that does indeed indicate improvement is the OS response in Warm state. Vista SP1 was faster than Vista RTM on no less than 87% of the benchmarking operations. No more than 2 seconds, but faster nonetheless. But the same does not apply to its predecessor. In fact, Vista SP1 only managed to outperform XP SP2 39% of the time, with the rest of 61% of operations seeing XP SP2 run faster. Again, sad but true. And the results were not that different on business scenarios.

Cold state - Vista SP1 was faster than Vista on two-thirds of the test operations, and this conclusion is also valid for XP SP2. Vista SP1 was also faster than Vista RTM on Warm state business operations benchmarks, by approximately 83%, but at the same time it is just equal to XP SP2, having outperformed its predecessor by just 54%. The sad conclusion: "Vista SP1 and Windows XP performed comparably on most test operations," according to PT.

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