Windows 7 build 6956 performance test

[Fulmar]

Found this on Slashdot

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3182

Posted by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes @ 7:08 am
My Hardware 2.0 mailbag is brimming with Windows 7 related questions. The main question on everyone’s lips is the obvious one - How does Windows 7 stack up against Vista?

    Important note: Before I go any further I feel I need to make a point, and make it clear. The build I’m testing of Windows 7 (build 6956) is a pre-beta build, and as a rule pre-beta builds aren’t known for their performance. That said, the performance of this build should give us a clue as to how the OS is coming along.

This test will pitch Windows 7 build 6956 32-bit against Windows Vista RTM 32-bit and Windows Vista SP1 32-bit.

~~~
~~~~
~~~

Conclusion

What we have here is one set of data points for one particular system, but I think that the results are very promising. The fact that Windows 7 comes out top in three out of four of these tests at this early stage is very promising indeed. The boot time and PCMark Vantage results are particularly good.

I remember benchmarking an early pre-beta of Vista and it was awful compared to XP at the time. At this stage I can only assume that the RTM release of Windows 7 will offer more performance than this build, and will at the RTM stage be better than Vista. This is great for those who are concerned about the OS soaking up too much system resources.

Bonus - 2500th post!

[Getback]

That is great to hear Fulmar! Thanks for the info.

[Denholm]

I'm just hoping Microsoft doesn't continue to walk down the path of, "Big Brother."

[drdeathx]

See Rule #11

[Skuzzy]

Windows 7 is Vista with a new paint job, so it stands to reason it will be more stable in the early stages.

The current beta release, however, has been lambasted for being a bigger turd than Vista is.  It is a grab bag of controversy.  Opinions flying in every direction from the cuurent crop of testers.  Microsoft wants everyone to beleive it is smaller and faster and they have gone to great lengths to build special versions of the OS to show it will run on machines that the released versions of Vista will not.

Except, none of the beta releases of Windows 7 has been able to duplicate what the Microsoft marketing machine has claimed it could do.

I would not get my hopes up, as it does not appear Microsoft has listened to anyone, and Windows 7 is just an attempt to change the name of Vista hoping to shake the bad reputation Vista has earned.

But, it is not a released product yet, so I am willing to wait and see.  I am just highly skeptical Microsoft will do anything that is good for the computer user, given who is leading the Microsoft machine at the moment.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

The current beta release, however, has been lambasted for being a bigger turd than Vista is.  It is a grab bag of controversy.  Opinions flying in every direction from the cuurent crop of testers.  Microsoft wants everyone to beleive it is smaller and faster and they have gone to great lengths to build special versions of the OS to show it will run on machines that the released versions of Vista will not.

Current W7 kernel has the same version number and filesizes as Vista SP1. So they're selling Mojave SP1.

[republic]

I just hope they go sensible and release Windows 7 as 64bit only.  There's no point in having the 3gb memory limitation on a OS that, in my opinion, needs 4gb to run smoothly.

[Kev367th]

I just hope they go sensible and release Windows 7 as 64bit only.  There's no point in having the 3gb memory limitation on a OS that, in my opinion, needs 4gb to run smoothly.

Doesn't have to be 64 bit to support more memory.

The 3.5Gb (ish) memory limit with current versions of Windows is an arbitrary limit decided on by Microsoft and implemented in Windows, not a hardware limitation of 32 bit.

[Getback]

Who is leading Microsoft and what is their background? Just looking for some insight.

[republic]

32bit operating systems cannot address memory above 3.25GB, there's simply no more address space left.  Not just Windows, Linux/OSX etc.

What you might be thinking of is the limitation on the maximum amount of memory addressed to a program, which is a windows issue fixed with a hotfix.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

With PAE even 32-bit OS can handle much more than 4Gb total memory. Problem is that virtually no device driver has been coded to do the same. So PAE is crippled in Windows to save it from random instability.