Benchmarks: Learn How Windows 7 Stacks Up Against XP and Vista

The rave for Windows 7 has been going for some time and now that Windows 7 has hit the retail stores, it’s time to see how it stacks up against its predecessors Windows XP and Windows Vista.

We all know that Windows Vista had a less than stellar start out the gate, especially when it came to its high demands on the hardware. With the release of Windows 7, Microsoft realized they cannot afford another backlash from the Windows user community, and so they optimized all the major components of the OS.

In short, everything in Windows 7 is faster.

Briefly I will cover some specific benchmarks between the three Windows Operating Systems. The benchmark results were done by zdNet and they used a low-end computer and a high-end computer to determine performance.

Startup & Shutdown Benchmark

When you first startup your computer, the amount of time it takes to come up to the login is a good indication of the speed you will get from the OS. Same goes for the shutdown.

The results: Windows 7 startup and shutdown timings out performed Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Managing Memory & Cache Usage

Microsoft introduced a new technology with Vista called SuperFetch. This feature preloads frequently-used applications into memory and speeds up boot times. This feature in Windows 7 differs significantly from its counterpart Windows Vista.

Windows 7 reveals that even without SuperFetch turned on, it outperforms Windows Vista. This means making due with less resources, lower cache usage and less time tying up the hard drive. Another plus for Windows 7.

Application Performance

zdNet ran tests on Windows 7 integrated applications three times to come to an average performance value and discovered that on the high-end desktop the applications ran twenty percent better and on the mobile system thirty-five percent better.

This doesn’t meant that in every situation Windows 7 will run thirty-five percent better as that will depend on the variety of applications that you use.

Conclusion

From the benchmarks, it seems that Microsoft has succeeded in making Windows 7 outperform Windows Vista and also running faster than Windows XP. Windows 7 should enjoy a much better start out of the gate than did Windows Vista and looks like to meet the  performance requirements of consumers and business users.