Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy


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I used sp2 xp on my machine and then installed sp3 and found improved boot time and improved file copy times.

I reinstalled to ensure i wasnt imagining it and it did indeed improve the performance.

Sssh ;) Microsoft spies amongst us don't like to hear this sort of feedback. All hail Vista. Hail Vista.

So I guess the "Runs better.." and "Your working is now faster and.." slogans they always show during the installation aren't real after all? Darn and I thought every Windows was supposed to be better than the previous one.

They have those slogans on XP aswell, remember upgrading from 98 to XP? Which was faster back then? 98 by a mile.

This is one person's test and for me, this test is absolutely absurd. I use Windows Vista SP1 and XP SP2 on my notebook and XP is blazingly faster than Vista (on the exact same machine - which has an Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM (using the x64 version of Vista and the 32-bit version of XP) when it comes to file copying.

I like Vista, don't get me wrong, but file copying is one thing that Vista still does extremely poorly. I'm still recommending people to use XP. That's me, based on my own experience.

XP3 doesn't have any performance fixes... It is a collection of security fixes/hotfixes ect.. If you install sp3 and think it's so much faster, there is other factors causing the speed increase or it's a placebo. They didn't make any file copying changes in sp3.

Huh? XP SP3 is just a collection of security fixes. There are no changes to the OS's functionality or performance. Vista SP1 contains a bunch of performance improvements handled by the Windows development team. No Windows developers worked on XP SP3, it's just a "sustained engineering" project that accumulates the hotfixes created to address specific issues (mainly security, occassionally major bugs hit by corporations).

It makes no difference if you compare XP using SP2 or SP3.

+1 SP3 is irrelevant to this test.

Those who think Vista runs faster, you are forgetting that having 2 GBs more of ram and an os that uses all four cores in a Q6600 does not mean Vista is faster on the software side than an XP whose limit is 3 GBs ram and only uses a single core for os related services.

It is for this very reason, along with the increased demands by the animated UI, that XP is much faster on older systems and possibly a little slower on newer systems.

Those who think Vista runs faster, you are forgetting that having 2 GBs more of ram and an os that uses all four cores in a Q6600 does not mean Vista is faster on the software side than an XP whose limit is 3 GBs ram and only uses a single core for os related services.

It is for this very reason, along with the increased demands by the animated UI, that XP is much faster on older systems and possibly a little slower on newer systems.

Okay, I got lost here. You can run XP on a machine with a dual core or above with 2 GB of RAM or more, and there are hotfixes out there that allow XP to utilize more than one core. I've run both XP and Vista on my machine and Vista is the far snappier one. I just installed Vista Home Basic SP1 on an old computer with an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with 768 MB of RAM, and Vista runs better than XP even on that old machine.

ps .. entire benchmark isn't valid I think ..

- He states himself .. Windows Server 2008 support SMB v2 as does Vista. This provides sometimes up to 4000x file copy performance...

- Depending on configuration .. the server balances the transfer for all clients but also priorities. Certain OSes / clients get higher speeds assigned.

- The latency (ping) test is crap. Doesn't do anything. In Vista the ICMP (ping) protocol get priority over the LAN connector.

- The virtual LAN NIC drivers differ in vista <> xp.

If anything .. this is a SMB v2 demo.

Those who think Vista runs faster, you are forgetting that having 2 GBs more of ram and an os that uses all four cores in a Q6600 does not mean Vista is faster on the software side than an XP whose limit is 3 GBs ram and only uses a single core for os related services.

It is for this very reason, along with the increased demands by the animated UI, that XP is much faster on older systems and possibly a little slower on newer systems.

You can turn off aero. And the argument can be made that since xp does not take full of advantage of some of these things, technically on these machines on the software side vista is faster and more optimized. If you have an older pc I would run xp on it, but there is no reason not to run vista on a new modern machine with a lot of ram and a dual core.

Got a new Core 2 PC. I'm going to try Vista again. Let's see if it makes any difference. :happy:

If it's prebuilt, uninstall the crap that came bundled with it, and let it index the hard drive.

Ok Guys. I'm about to start my Vista Ultimate install soon.

I'm not a jerk by design, I don't want to hate Vista just because it seems to be the popular thing to do. I wasn't overwhelmed with joy with Vista on my older hardware; I wanted to get a new PC for a while. It's here now and I've got a paid OEM of Vista Ultimate with it.

So, it's honesty time now. Let me start by showing this:

post-251981-1210411789.png

I didn't know what to expect after my initial run in with Vista on an older single core PC, that's some years old now.

It's time for me to eat my words, that's some impressive copy speed.

Is it as fast as Windows XP? Yes, it seemed to be. The whole copy process was very quick.

Now I have to restart my PC. A dozen Windows Updates just installed.

Final Word: Vista Ultimate SP1. Doesn't suck, as long as the PC is a Dual Core System with a good amount of RAM (Mine has 4GB ~ 3.25GB Usable). Viva Vista.

You can turn off aero. And the argument can be made that since xp does not take full of advantage of some of these things, technically on these machines on the software side vista is faster and more optimized. If you have an older pc I would run xp on it, but there is no reason not to run vista on a new modern machine with a lot of ram and a dual core.

Due to the nature in which multi processor systems require specific support to take advantage of all the hardware, it's not exactly a comparable situation. Purely for software efficiency, XP is far superior. There is a reason Vista requires more than 1 GB ram while XP can run happily on 512.

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