First Windows Vista benchmark result

[David (PassMark)]

We have been doing some initial benchmark testing on Windows Vista using PerformanceTest V6.

While the results are very preliminary we have found that Vista seems to be about 20% slower than XP. This seems to be mainly due to the 2D graphic tests and more surprisingly the memory tests.

It is no surprise the 2D graphic tests are slower with all the extra eye candy in Vista. But at the moment we don't have a good explanation as to why the memory speed might be effected.

On the plus side the 3D results were slightly better. Maybe due to the new version of DirectX in Vista.

The CD test failed to run on Vista. We need to investigate this.

So anyone getting Vista will need better hardware to get the same performance (in particular a better graphics card).

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David

[Windsurf48]

I'm getting scores about 20 percent lower, too, and scores on everything I've been able to test are lower. Vista also takes more than twice as long to boot as Windows XP Pro on the same machine.

Some of the results are handicapped by the Nvidia drivers I'm using, which don't include the control panel and setting adjustments. The 88.61 Vista Nvidia drivers with the new control panel cause Vista to crash, but the Beta 9x.xx versions for Windows XP do the same thing on my PC.

I got the same error installing Performance Test, but not when I reran the install.

My memory scores were similar, 613 for Vista and 629 for Windows XP. 2D Graphics dropped from 873 to 328, and 3D Graphics dropped from 1245 to 669.

[David (PassMark)]

There is a known problem with installing the PerformanceTest software on Vista Beta 2. The problem is really in Vista and not our code. So we are hoping it will be fixed by MS for the next Vista release.

I have just been reading about all the extra security stuff in Vista. Some of this is related to memory allocation and protection. This might explain some of the performance drop for memory allocation and access. There would seem to be more overhead in Vista.

Update: The problem was in the beta release only and is now OK in the final release.

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David

[Windsurf48]

Adware found 66 tracking cookies on my Vista install, although it never finds any on my XP installations. It turns out that the new Vista security doesn't block the cookies, but it does prevent me from deleting them. I haven't tried logging on to the administrator account, but the Administrators group doesn't have authoriziation to delete cookies or authority to grant authorization to delete cookies. I'm trying to figure out how this is an improvement on XP security.

The presence of the tracking cookies might have affected my Passmark scores. I'll have to try disabling the onboard LAN before my next test run.

[David (PassMark)]

Cookies are fairly harmless. From a performance point of view anyway. Maybe not so harmless from a privacy point of view, but that is another story.

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David