Jan 29, 2009 11:49 AM | 3 Comments

The new OS is winning over notoriously skeptical tech bloggers and benchmarking sites. We put together a roundup of some of the results that show why Windows 7 could be faster than Vista.

The boot time and readiness of the OS has been getting the biggest plaudits from bloggers and benchmarkers, especially with its capacity to bring the computer to a functional state very quickly and to operate on less memory than Vista (the latter is largely thanks to the fact that Windows 7 doesn’t allocate video memory for non-visible Windows).

Other benchmark results are mixed, with Windows 7 beating its predecessors in some tests and lagging them in others (of course, it's still in beta, where XP and Vista are both production versions).

Here’s a sampling of some of the best results:

The Firing Squad has a comprehensive test of the gaming and USB performance of Windows 7 vs XP and Vista. It’s hard to draw conclusions from its test result since they’re all over the place: Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 each had their ups and downs, and there was no clear winner overall.

PC Games Hardware tests fewer games, but gives Windows 7 a slight edge in Far Cry 2 and Left 4 Dead. Its other tests were again a mixed bag, with some showing Windows 7 improving on Vista, and others showing it worse.

Infoworld has a fascinating look at multi-core database performance. The short version is that Windows 7 and Windows Vista take better advantage of multi-core systems, but Windows XP actually performs better than they do on fewer cores.

It’s not big on the details, but tests run by a ZDNet blogger give some major props to Windows 7. These tests cover mostly common tasks, like file copying and application starts.

Hot Hardware has benchmarks that give Windows 7 a significant performance advantage over Windows Vista. The gaming performance of the two was roughly equal, but the Futuremark PCMark Vantage overall result for Windows 7 was 20% higher than Windows Vista.

In a sense, it seems to gel with the ZDNet tests – that Windows 7 does well at “mundane” tasks, but doesn’t thrash the competition in gaming.

Of course, if you’re tired of looking at benchmarks and want to try Windows 7 for yourself, you can download it from here until Feb 10.

The good news is that it’s very stable – I’m running it and have yet to have a crash. It’s not that different from Vista overall, and if you’d like to know more about it without having to install it, you can also check out Atomic’s visual Windows 7 Beta Walkthrough.

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PaytonLiu Jan 29, 2009 2:18 PM	An annoying fact is that Intel GMA 900 crash all the time when trying to perform 3D and video playback functions. Windows Update gave me a 2006 version driver which was for Vista. So far, 7 is a non-media OS for old computer users who have the Intel GMA 900 series video cards...
saywot Jan 29, 2009 2:22 PM	Big deal, - this article seems to be comparing oranges to much older oranges. It's just a series of links to other people's tests The same plaudits were heaped upon Vista when it was released to an audience of beta-testers. Then along comes the real world users and they didn't greet Vista with the same enthusaiasm did they ?. If I recall correctly some of the big PC manufacturers were forced to allow customers to 'downgrade' to XP. The article states that Windows 7 is faster but is a bit scant on the hardware these comparisons were made on. Is this OS going to force users to spend extra money on better-performing hardware ? I'd believe these sort of comparisons were vailid if they were compared to other Operating Systems - I think there are alternatives to Microsoft isn't there ?
vjay Jan 29, 2009 4:01 PM	People actually gave Vista positive reviews for more than the pretty graphics? You have to be kidding right. I use XP as my main OS, have used Vista as one before 'downgrading' back to XP on a then new system, and am now beta testing W7 on the exact same laptop that the previously mentioned Vista came preinstalled on and W7 handles a lot better than Vista in a lot of areas from my personal experience, unlike Vista I'd actually be happy to upgrade to W7 when it comes out.