Vista slower as XP

[va!n]

"Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking test.
New tests have revealed that Windows XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has
twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1.
[...] Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with
SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the
beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds."

Full story at Cnet: http://tinyurl.com/ywpqju

[DrewPee]

Sounds about sodding right! Vista is trying to be like the Mac OS X, and failing miserably!!!! All they needed to do with XP is tweak it a little more and it was pretty much there (give or take). Instead Micro$oft launch something that breaks every 5 minutes and will need patching to buggery before it gets anywhere near as stable as XP. I use Macs at work and my Mac hasn't crashed since about June!!!!

DrewPee

ps Sorry about the rant and rave!

[Pixel_Outlaw]

I think the OS alone has a huge pull on the system's resources. Just the basic version is a huge memory pimp. That's right it's making your computer a sultry "lady of the evening" a "street-walking Jezebel" a "sultry temptress" a "Woman of Ill-repute" if you would. I can't wait for the 50 gig updates either. I'm beginning to think that the new motto is "memory is cheap upgrade" when they should be coding wisely.

[DrewPee]

@ pixel_outlaw . . .
Yeah forgot about the memory needed as well! that is also a crock! lol!

 

[Jim]

Yeah, you need 2GB of memory to run Vista properly...but 2x faster in XP is not at all true.  I think I've been using Vista for over a year now.  Yes, it desperately needs a service pack.

Jim

[ninogenio]

i used it on my entry level notebook and it ran really well!

the only problem i had with it was that everything had been moved around and i didnt really have the time to learn it.

but im going to install it again soon as it really wasnt that bad for me.

[DaZZaBoY]

I've been using Vista Ultimate for around 3 months now (on 3 PC's) and can honestly say, I haven't dropped back to XP once.

As Jim has mentioned, you're looking at 2GB's worth of RAM to get the best from Vista and a dual core CPU (or fast 64 bitter) is really needed. Vista is a serious resource hog and if you have a modest spec PC, I really wouldn't bother upgrading, it'll be hell for you! 

If you have a decent amount of machine grunt, it's a recommeded OS and the new 'toys' such as the Aeroglas feature, come in more than handy when juggling multiple windows. M$ haven't moved things around too much and everything you are used to such as services, utilities etc, can be easily found with a little bit of searching.

Is def. due a service pack tho. 

[Jim]

The release candidate of Vista SP1 was made available to developers this week.  I'm sorely tempted to try it.  Final release of SP1 is going to be Q1 2008.

Jim

[DaZZaBoY]

Mmm.. tempting. Wonder if SP1 has ironed out the superfetch disk thrashing.

[Jim]

Supposedly...
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/library/005f921e-f706-401e-abb5-eec42ea0a03e1033.mspx?mfr=true

Jim

[taj]

As Jim has mentioned, you're looking at 2GB's worth of RAM to get the best from Vista and a dual core CPU (or fast 64 bitter) is really needed. Vista is a serious resource hog and if you have a modest spec PC, I really wouldn't bother upgrading, it'll be hell for you! 

Its perfectly possible to run XP well in 64MB of RAM, 500 Meg disk and a 300 Mhz CPU. Of course Microsoft wont sell this version of XP to you unless you are a tier 1 corporate customer and then only if you are upgrading from '98. The same will no doubt be true of Vista. And its not even this that gets me. In my opinion there is no market for Vista, XP does everything 99% of us need, there is no technology drive for Vista (security doesn't convince me, its a great marketing lie), no market demand. It just happens to you while you sleep. It gets pushed onto you.

So now they take the lightweight version of XP and start to push it in XO. Under threat of no longer being the worlds dominant operating system, Microsoft will release XP it seems for $3:50 per license and squeeze it down in size again. And it all just confirms that there is no need for bloated, expensive OSes and that Microsoft is screwing us all.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

I wonder how many files and libraries go unused in their OS's. I'b bet dollars to donuts that there is a HUGE amount of data that goes unneeded. Then again people like us consider it twisted fun to make code as small and efficient as possible.

The funny thing is that we dump more and more memory into our new machines and upgrade processors but computation speed does not follow the curve. Vista is just as fast as some of the older systems I don't see it as being much faster than a new copy of Windows 98. Every new OS overshadows the upgrades made to run it. You will never see the full potential of the upgrades you do because the OS has too many redundant or unneeded functions attached. I think it was about 9-13 gigs to just install the damn thing and that was the Basic version.

The requirements for Vista are crazy. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx

All of this nonsense so I can draw some transparent windows onscreen. Wow......

[Jim]

Right, both my home Vista PCs are now running RC1 of SP1, let's see if it makes any noticeable difference...

Jim

[DrewPee]

Jim
You mentioned Q1 2008 - so that could still mean March? lol? Keep us informed on your findings please? Cheers

Drew

[DaZZaBoY]

Yup, resisted the temptation to try it so far. Keep us up to speed Jim.

Out of interest, do you get much disk thrashing with your copy of Vista?

[Jim]

The only disk thrashing I see is when the Indexing service decides it wants to rebuild the search index.  That thing is useless and doesn't back off when you need the cpu/disk speed for something else - it's supposed to run in the background ffs.  I've got 4GB of RAM and a 2GB ReadyBoost swap file though, so not much real paging going on.

Two things are instantly noticeable as being fixed so far:
1. The 'Calculating Time Remaining' bug, where it took 10mins to work out how long it would take to copy 1kb of files then copied them in 1ns is fixed. (YAY!)
2. There is a Microsoft Bluetooth Stack compatible driver for my bluetooth dongle, and now it works properly with everything instead of the custom IVT stack being totally useless.

Jim

[DaZZaBoY]

@Jim:

Yeah, it's highly annoying but we've gotta expect these 'niggles' with a new OS. I've found that activating the resource monitor shuts it up a little quicker when it starts to throw a wobbler but this just maybe a chance thing?

Deactivating Superfetch and various other services doesn't seem to make any difference either.

Glad you found a few noticable fixes in the pre release pack, that time calculation bug gets a little tedious when moving large files over the network.