14 DAY TRIAL // Bad news for Vista users, SP1 or no SP1. Microsoft is currently cooking Service Pack 1 as a panacea to Windows Vista. Among the official promises from the Redmond company regarding Windows Vista Service Pack 1 are the delivery of an improved user experience via quality enhancements focused in three key areas: security, reliability and performance. SP1 is set up to soften all of Vista's rough edges, giving the operating system a fresh start. But according to xpnet, there is little to no evolution at all in terms of performance between the RTM version of Vista and the platform with SP1 RC0 deployed. The testing involved the RC0 (v.658) build of Service Pack 1 for Vista, and stripped down RTM copies of the operating system, as well as versions of the platform with updates installed.
"During OfficeBench testing we noted a statistically insignificant delta (~2%) in favor of the SP1-patched configuration. CPU Saturation, Memory Pressure and I/O Contention factors were all comparable, as were process specific metrics - including the Thread Utilization and Thread Growth Potential Indices. The multitasking scenario was also comparable, with the ADO and MAPI Stress workloads showing a delta of less than 1% in favor of the SP1-patched configuration. As with the OfficeBench test scenario, system and process metrics for CPU, Memory and I/O were all nearly identical between the two configurations", xpnet revealed.
Well, in all fairness, Microsoft has not yet wrapped up Vista SP1. In fact, the Redmond company is still far from doing so. A fresh build of SP1 was dropped to approximately 15,000 testers, but not the full RC, just a preview of the release candidate instead. The fact of the matter is that with Vista SP1 still in development it is a tad too early to draw the line on the service pack. Vista SP1 is currently planned for the first quarter of 2008, with indications pointing to December as the possible availability date for Vista SP1 RC.
"After extensive testing of both RTM and SP1-patched versions of Windows Vista, it seems clear that the hoped-for performance fixes that Microsoft has been hinting at never materialized. Vista + SP1 is no faster than Vista from the RTM image. Bottom Line: If you've been disappointed with the performance of Windows Vista to date, get used to it. SP1 is simply not the panacea that many predicted. In the end, it's Vista's architecture - not a lack of tuning or bug fixes - that makes it perform so poorly on systems that were "barn-burners" under Windows XP," xpnet added.
