Is Vista really slower than XP?

[DaDude]

Many people say that Vista is a RAM hogger and that it's much slower than XP. I tend to disagree. My new computer that I bought a few months ago really flies. It only has a Core 2 Duo processor and 2 GB of RAM and that thing is extremely fast. I can even do a virus scan and surf the internet at the same time without any lag. On my older XP computer, a virus scan would slow down the computer tremendously. Not to mention that Vista seems to boot up much faster as well. I just type on my password and poof! The computer is up and running in no time. My friend bought a new computer that's just as powerful as mine and he reformatted it and installed XP. His computer seems to be MUCH slower than mine. Boot up time is slower and there is noticeable lag when multi-tasking.

So tell me, why do people claim that Vista is slower? From my experience, it seems to be much faster.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

i find people say it's slower b/c of 2 factors: 1. theyre upgrading to vista on their older computers and 2. a lot of this stems from before SP1 was released.

face it, i could have installed vista on my old Pentium D machine and would have complained. however, i have a modern core 2 machine and vista was great. people also tend to forget that this same complain happened when XP came out. "98 is so much faster than XP! 98 doesnt use as much ram either!"

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Many people say that Vista is a RAM hogger and that it's much slower than XP.

A lot of people have no idea what they are talking about.

[devHead]

Your friend is not too smart. If you have a decently fast CPU (especially Dual-core) and enough memory, Vista is definitely the better way to go. People complain about Vista I think primarily because it's viewed as the cool thing to do. A good friend of mine ordered a new computer from Dell and instead of Vista he had them put XP on it. Why? Because another friend of his, who doesn't have Vista and had never even tried it said it was junk and bloatware and all the other FUD that typically is spread by those who don't know any better. Unfortunately many people believe the negative talk.

Congratulations! You have a good, fast computer, and you're running the right OS on it too! If only everyone could be as fair-minded. I don't even have dual-core, but with 2 GB of RAM, and AMD Athlon64 1.8Ghz processor, Vista x64 runs like a dream.

[Soldiers33]

i actually think vista is much faster aswell. everything just seems to work fast and loadin times hav decreased

[Setnom]

I found that Vista runs some things faster than XP, and other things slower than XP.

For example, working with various windows, like on multitasking, Vista is faster. But playing games, is slower.

Vista also boots up and shutsdown faster, starts some programs faster (like Office or Dreamweaver CS3). But in XP I sense that XP opens a video file (an apple trailer or an mkv file) faster, on MPC or in KMPlayer.

Bottom line is: if you have a new computer, go VISTA ftw. If you don't, stick with XP.

[Julius Caro]

on older PCs vista sucks! but on newer pcs vista is the way to go. sure, xp can achieve almost the same functionality for much less, but have in mind that modern versions of popular programs are making use of that extra juice on todays (and 2-years-ago-days) computers.

[ViperAFK]

If you have a dual core with 2 gigs of ram or more vista will not be slower than xp.

[splicer707]

I tend to think what's more important in Vista is the number of cores.

IMO Vista is written to work best on Core2Duo or better processors.

[markwolfe Veteran]

On my first Vista purchase, meeting the Microsoft published requirements, Vista was surprisingly slow.

It is a Compaq with 512MB RAM and Vista Home Basic. I am pretty comfortable that XP would run faster on that machine, because Vista is dog slow!

On my wife's Vista laptop, purchased with 2GB RAM, Vista runs just fine. Not sure how it would compare to XP, but I don't think there would be a noticeable difference at all. And the security in Vista is (finally!) where it needs to be, and miles above XP. (Y)

Does Vista have a much greater footprint (resource usage requirements) than XP? Without a doubt.

Does Ubuntu 8.04 have a greater footprint than 4.10? Certainly. Would 8.10 run slower on very low end hardware? Almost as certain.

And, quite frankly, anyone that claims that Vista is "all around faster" than XP is lying. It is better and faster in some configurations. But in others, it will be slower (and still better, in my opinion, due to a better security model).

[Archstroke]

One thing that I've noticed is that Vista uses ram for background processes while your computer is idle or doing low intensity tasks. When you need the ram, though, it allocates it to the program that you need it for. I think that people are used to XP where you can have a computer with 3 gigs of ram and idle with only 200-300 megs in use.

[simsie]

I heard Vista was optimised for Quad. Also it has loads of improvements like multithreading explorer so if one window dies the whole thing doesn't freeze up.

I found Vista can feel slower, although that's probably because Windows fade in rather than *flash* appear. But that's something that can be overlooked.

As with all things it all comes down to the hardware you use and the software you're running.

Edit: ^ That's a point. Don't worry if you don't have much free RAM in Vista. Free RAM is wasted RAM afterall. ;)

[Setnom]

I found Vista can feel slower, although that's probably because Windows fade in rather than *flash* appear. But that's something that can be overlooked.

I agree. Vista's AERO window animations maybe quick (when enabled), but are indeed time-consuming against the instant ones on XP. To the "untrained" eye, that point will seem slower on Vista than on XP.

[betasp]

Vista (pre SP1) is slower, period. You can compensate for it with a faster machine but if you compare the OS's on the same machine, Vista pre-SP1 is slower. With SP1, the speeds are more comparable, though XP still tends to be faster. I am not saying which is better to use, the question was about speed and XP is faster than Vista.

Here is an article...

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Vista-SP1-X...ons-79769.shtml

http://4sysops.com/archives/vista-sp1-vs-w...py-performance/

http://www.betanews.com/article/XP_SP3_out...sion/1196208954

http://www.pcworld.com/article/142952/micr..._vista_sp1.html

[markwolfe Veteran]

I agree. Vista's AERO window animations maybe quick (when enabled), but are indeed time-consuming against the instant ones on XP. To the "untrained" eye, that point will seem slower on Vista than on XP.

Can you use the windows as they fade/zoom in and out? Are the animations still interactive?

Might I put forward the position that if the OS is putting an animation in that prevents user interaction, then (even if the computer is running blazingly fast!) that it is slowing down user interaction.

[Hungarian Salami]

Vista x64 flies on my machine.

[t_r_nelson]

I've been runnng XP - 32bit on a new Q6600 system. I built it pre-Vista SP1.

I am still concerned with things like my X-Fi card. How are the drivers and such for x64 Vista?

[The2]

Vista x64 flies on my machine.

I have Vista on my laptop from day one and it's fast.

Today I installed Vista x64 on my desktop computer. And it's dead slow. HDD is constantly doing something when I'm running other apps (and I disabled indexing and boost) Starting Visual Studio takes 10 times more than XP. And I have 2.2 core2duo with 2gb ram.

So it depends on the computer?

[stevember]

I have Vista on my laptop from day one and it's fast.

Today I installed Vista x64 on my desktop computer. And it's dead slow. HDD is constantly doing something when I'm running other apps (and I disabled indexing and boost) Starting Visual Studio takes 10 times more than XP. And I have 2.2 core2duo with 2gb ram.

So it depends on the computer?

You need to give it at least week to bed in, at first it reorganizes files, indexes hard drive, learns how you work.

See Vista speeds up over time, not like XP, which loves a format, Vista does not benefit from clearing.

[bjoswald]

It's slower and games don't look as good (on my machine).

[darkmanx21]

Faster than XP plus it doesn't slow down. My machine has been rock solid for over a year now..with XP it would have been a re-format every 6 months.

I think it's faster, but then again it's machine dependent.

[TigerFX]

Can you use the windows as they fade/zoom in and out? Are the animations still interactive?

Might I put forward the position that if the OS is putting an animation in that prevents user interaction, then (even if the computer is running blazingly fast!) that it is slowing down user interaction.

It comes up so fast you can't really get your mouse in position to drag it anywhere. But I hit letters on the keyboard to quickly choose options (Alt+F4 to close, followed by 'n' to discard changes), and you don't need to wait for the animations to fly through those keystrokes.

[stevember]

It's slower and games don't look as good (on my machine).

What you running it on? CPU, GPU etc...

[hawker1986]

Its nice to see some people standing up for our new OS, personally I really like vista, its more secure than XP and I think in general its more user friendly too. As for it being quicker than XP, these days on a modern PC they are more or less similar from my experience. But when your talking out dated hardware of course XP is going to be faster, it was made for that hardware whereas Vista requires more power, thats just moving with the times, as someone eluded to earlier, you want something faster than XP go and install windows 98. Also its true that vista uses more RAM than XP but as things stand if thats the problem go and buy some more, its not very expensive.

Anyway thats my opinion, in the PC world you have to move with the times, Vista is a good OS.

Hawker

[Setnom]

Can you use the windows as they fade/zoom in and out? Are the animations still interactive?

Might I put forward the position that if the OS is putting an animation in that prevents user interaction, then (even if the computer is running blazingly fast!) that it is slowing down user interaction.

That's an interesting question and a valid position. I can see why it would be considered slowing down user interaction.

The windows fade so fast for me that I don't really have time to even try. Does someone know how long those animations last? One-tenth of a second, perhaps?

On the short-term, that's a really small "delay", but on the long run, yes, it might slow down the user interaction. Animating (minimizing, restoring, closing, opening) 1000 windows, when considering 1/10 of a second for each one, that sums up about 1.67 minutes of interaction the user could be utilizing for other things. Not much time at all, but still time.