The two firms held a special press event Tuesday to showcase the ways in which Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 update takes advantage of new hardware and features for Intel's line of 32nm processors.
Among the hot topics discussed in the presentation were improvements to energy efficiency, encryption speeds and the performance of multi-threaded tasks.
While the companies could give little in the way of actual improvement speeds, both sides contend that Windows 7 users will see significant benefits when paired with Intel's latest processors.
"The day after we shipped Windows Vista our teams were able to start working in a very organized way on Windows 7," said Ruston Panabaker, Microsoft principal program manager.
"We were able to go with Intel through the planning, development and readiness of Windows 7."
Among the benefits gained from the partnership was better utilisation of the hardware for tasks such as encryption and multithreading. Panabaker said that updated hyperthreading features in Windows 7 can provide significant improvements for tasks such as exporting video.
The two companies also hope to combine on better security. Intel principal engineer Baiju Patel said that by using the processor to accelerate the process, disk encryption can be sped up as much as ten-fold, easing the burden of encrypting and decrypting systems.
"The desire here is to make sure that encryption is not a barrier, that performance is not a barrier," said Patel.
While the subject of the meeting was collaboration between Intel and Microsoft, neither company was willing to declare that the effort would make competitors such as AMD and Apple obsolete. Microsoft acknowledged working extensively with Intel's rival, while Intel said that it would be pursuing efforts with all OS vendors interested in using its chips.
The two companies bristled when pressed for benchmark data. Panabaker said that the company was looking to measure real-world performance rather than lab tests.
"What we have learned over time is to focus on the responsiveness of the system for the task the user is doing is more important than a benchmark or raw performance," he said.
"What the end user really wants is a system which delivers the performance in the capacity they use."