XP v. Vista

**clocker** · 12-24-2007, 01:07 PM

From a hardware perspective.

Given that I apparently have no life, hence LOTS of spare time, I decided to
perform some head to head comparison tests.

Conditions identical, hardware identical, latest/greatest drivers for each OS.
XP Pro SP2.
Vista Ultimate SP1.
Both OS are fully patched/updated.

Hardware consists of:
-AMD s939 3800+ dual core
-1GB (2 x 512 MB) Patriot DDR (2,3,2,5 @1T)
-2 x 250GB Seagate SATAII in RAID0
-nVidia 6800 GT
-Creative Soundblaster X-fi
-Asus A8N SLI Deluxe
System overclocked to 2.35GHZ.

Ran all tests three times on each OS and averaged the results.

Everest memory benchmarks....

Pro:................................................Vista:

read- 6147 ......................................6080
write- 2635......................................2220
latency- 46.4....................................48.7

Pro gets the nod here, especially in the write category.

PC Pitstop
( Chosen because it's a fast, easy system comparison test not because it's especially good...)

Pro:............................................. Vista:

CPU- 1520......................................1430 ( -5.6%)
RAM- 902........................................901 ( even)
Video-322 ......................................149 ( -54%)
HDD- 264 .......................................192 ( -28%)

TOTAL- 3058..................................2722
(scores for internet performance and deductions for crap they consider detrimental were the same for both OS)

Pro wins again with Vista disturbingly worse in the video area and also HDD utilization.

Not sure what conclusions to draw from this but a couple of things seem a pretty
safe bet...
- Vista not only requires a higher hardware spec but makes worse use of the
hardware it has.
- Video performance is the most glaring discrepancy, so it's safe to assume that
gaming would suffer horribly...must be the drivers, I suspect.

I have no idea why the hard drive I/O scores in Vista are as bad as they are,
you'd think they would have that figured out by now.

Too bad I've become quite enamored of a couple of Vista's undeniable perks...the
GUI is great and the way the Sleep/Hibernate works is ace.
Unfortunately, I'm thinking these aren't enough to justify the losses,
especially with my (comparatively) weak hardware specs.

If I get ambitious (i.e.,even more bored), I might compare the 32 v 64 bit versions of
Pro and see what happens.
Maybe even get Ubuntu in there if I can figure out how...

Just thought I'd share.

**Broken** · 12-24-2007, 04:20 PM

These results are all over the Internet, Xp simply performs better than Vista. M$ knows and justifies this by saying that no newer version of Windows has ever performed better than it predecessor in benchmarks. In exchange, each new version of Windows has instead been more stable and secure.

Vista was delayed several times before release, it was rushed out the door at the end - still full of bugs. This became apparent after I ran it for about a month. Although one by one the bugs weren't enough to stop running Vista. But, compounded I was banging my head against the wall. The entire time, I felt like I was running glitchy beta software. I would have been really pissed off if I had paid $300 for it, luckily M$ is literally giving away Vista for free over the net if you look hard enough. They even paid the shipping, lol.

Windows 7 will be out in 2010, or there about.
Vista, from what I understand, will be the last M$ OS that will offer 32-bit. They will also be moving on to a new kind of OS, not focused on maintaining backward compatibility, but instead performance. If this is so it really is a head scratcher why Vista was ever released. Xp is still a very good OS and even according to M$ will always perform superiorly to Vista. Why would they let themselves suffer such a black eye at the end of a generation of software. Did they just have so much money invested that it would have been too painful to walk away?

Anyways, I don't see a need to upgrade to Vista... ever. It's a dead end. It only has an expected three year lifespan, one of which has passed.

**Detale** · 12-24-2007, 08:22 PM

I get the "I should try it again" bug and decide to do a re-install and figure let me give Vista another shot, the longest I kept it thus far was a week and I couldn't take it anymore. Thanks for the specs to go with my "Vista just sucks" speech. I guess Vista will become the Windows2K it'll just linger around for a while until 7 comes out, meanwhile M$ just keeps pumping it out on new machines to make even more money.

**S!X** · 12-24-2007, 08:28 PM

Originally Posted by Detale

I get the "I should try it again" bug and decide to do a re-install and figure let me give Vista another shot, the longest I kept it thus far was a week and I couldn't take it anymore. Thanks for the specs to go with my "Vista just sucks" speech. I guess Vista will become the Windows2K it'll just linger around for a while until 7 comes out, meanwhile M$ just keeps pumping it out on new machines to make even more money.

I for one really like vista, been using it for a month or so now. The only thing that really annoys me is the ram usage. It seems so slow with 1GB so I have no choice to get another gig or switch back to xp (which I really don't wanna do). Other then that vista is nice.