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Does Windows 7 Boost Performance?

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Windows 7 being the cover story this time, we have decided to benchmark it

against three Linux and two Windows operating systems. These include Fedora 11,

Ubuntu 9.04, Open SuSE 11.2, Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Ultimate,

and Windows 7 Ultimate RTM. We considered both 32-bit and 64 bit versions of the

Operating Systems. We tested them on an AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor based

machine with 4GB of DDR-3 RAMand a 80GB SSD hard-drive. The biggest challenge

for us was arranging for a benchmark which could run on both x86 and x64

architecture, and at the same time can run on all OSes including different

variants of Windows and Linux. We finally zeroed in on a benchmark called

Geekbench from Primate Labs. This is one of the very few benchmarks that can run

on any OS and any architecture including Windows, Linux and Mac. You can even

download and use the x86 version of Geekbench for free from http://www.primatelabs.ca

/geekbench/.

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While analyzing the performance of different operating systems with Geekbench,

we also checked other aspects of the OSes, such as boot-up and shutdown time,

installation and time taken for copying a 100MB file from the HDD to USB, HDD to

HDD and USB to HDD. The results we got were very interesting.

Here you can easily make out that the performance of

Windows 7 and Vista are best when compared with other operating systems.

Plus a 64-bit version of Windows 7/Vista gives around 10% more performance.

64-bit or 32-bit OS



This is an old question, but very much valid even today. People hardly think

of going for a a 64-bit OS if their RAM is not more than 4GB. However, all

desktop processors today as we know except Atom are 64-bit and support 32-bit

applications. This makes for a big question -should we really go for a 64-bit OS

which also requires more space than its counterpart on your hard-drive. We would

say yes, as our test shows, at least.

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In our test bed, each and every OS showed certain amount of performance

difference ranging from a mere 1% to as much as 12% to 13%. And if you're going

to install Windows Vista or Windows 7, a 64-bit variant is of course better, as

both OSes gave around 12 to 13 percent performance benefit with their 64-bit

variant. But in both cases, the additional toll on the storage was around 40%.

Both the OSes took around 4GBs extra while installing their 64-bit variant.

However, given the capacity of today's HDDs, this 4GB shouldn't be a constraint

for selecting a 64-bit OS.

Windows Vs Linux



The duel seems to be ever enduring. However, in our test bed, Windows did

better in terms of sheer performance than Linux. The performance of Windows

Vista and Windows 7 was around 10% better than that of OpenSuSE and was around

40% better than Fedora and Ubuntu. This is indeed a substantial difference. But

yes, if you are on a HDD space diet, then Linux makes more sense as it takes up

around one third the space of its counterpart, and additionally gives you so

many applications including Office Suite, lots of games, image manipulation

software, etc along with the OS.

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If, money is not the only deciding factor, then you have good amount of

storage space to spare, and you are not a diehard fan of FOSS, then Windows 7

and Windows Vista do make a lot of sense over the free Linux variants.

Win 7 Vs Win Vista



We came across in our test an unexpected fight between the two, while we

figured out that the performance of Windows 7 and Windows Vista is actually at

par. Windows Vista rather outshone Windows 7 by a couple of percentage points.

This is pretty obvious as both Windows 7 and Vista use the same kernel.

Microsoft didn't develop a new kernel for Windows 7, rather they have refined

the Windows Vista kernel to use in Win 7. However, Windows 7 took less than half

the time when compared with Windows vista.

So, the deciding factor to choose between the two should not be only

performance but other enhancements that we see in Windows 7. You will read about

those enhancements throughout this story.

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The Old machine test



While Vista and Windows 7 performed almost same or for that matter, Vista

was slightly better, we decided to try this test on an old P 4 machine. While

Windows 7 performed good on Atom based machines, we thought it would also

outperform Windows Vista on an old machine like P 4. We arranged an old P 4 box

with 1GB RAM first tried installing Windows Vista on it. The installation was

successful and took around within 27 minutes. Then we tried running the same

Geekbench benchmark on it, but this time on 32-bit as P 4 has a 32-bit

architecture only, we got an overall score of 497.

We then installed Windows 7 on the same box. The installation took around 26

minutes, which is time as taken by Windows Vista. We then ran Geekbench on it

and this time, we got an overall score of 566 which is 10% higher. The overall

use experience was also good as the mouse hover and over effect worked pretty

well on the same system. One very interesting thing we noticed was that on the

same machine a fresh install of Windows Vista at an ideal state consumed around

335MB of RAM from a pool of 1GB where as Windows 7 used only 285MB RAM, giving

some free space for applications to run smoothly.

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