Windows 7 vs XP vs Vista in Performance

Even Windows 7 is awarded with the word "impressive" by the masses, it is still difficult for Windows users to decide whether to upgrade their Windows Vista/XP to Windows 7 or not. After all, hardware configuration plays a great part in the performance of Windows 7 with all those double-edged splendid features.

Take an example, for those who have old or fairly basic hardware configuration, Windows XP stands out with its relatively low system requirements: this operating system can theoretically run smoothly with only 64 MB of RAM, and thus make plenty of room for other applications running. But for those who have high-end configuration, then Windows Vista and Windows 7 come into their own. They fit better for multi-core CPUs, and Windows 7 in particular adopts a slew of tweaks to make the best of the latest hardware.

Well, you may find yourself in such a dilemma, neither in this end, nor in that. How to find the best OS among Windows 7, XP and Vista for your PC? Read our first part of Windows 7 review - Windows 7 vs XP vs Vista in performance, and the comparison in security and reliability is coming soon.

In order to find more reliable and practical results, we decided to perform a series of tests (including boot and shutdown times, and other benchmark tests) on two average-configured PC which are similar to the hardware configuration of most PC users.

We did a clean install for each OS (all professional editions, 32-bit versions). Then we installed several programs that most of you may use during your ordinary life, for testing PC without programs installed wouldn’t tell much about the real-world performance. Each test has been performed three times and the average results are calculated and displayed in a table for your convenience.

Test System:

Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 500GB of hard drive, and ATI Radeon HD4550 graphics card.

Installed Programs:

Including Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate, Windows Live Essentials like Messenger, Mail, Movie Maker, Photo Gallery), Wondershare Registry Optimizer, Free Spyware Removal and other little apps compatible with these three OSs.

Test Results:

Except the last three benchmark tests, specific time of other test results are not displayed, instead we show you the rank, the lower, the better.

	XP	Vista	Windows 7
Install OS	3	2	1
Start up	2	3	1
Shut down	3	2	1
Open 10 page PDF	2	3	1
Open 120 page PDF	3	2	1
Move 100MB files	3	2	1
Move 2GB files	2	3	1
Network transfer 100MB files	3	2	1
Network transfer 2GB files	3	2	1
Video rendering	3	1	2
Install Office 2007	3	1	2
SunSpider (the lower, the better)	3170	2647	1828
Geekbench (the higher, the better)	1241	1248	1260
PCMark 05 (the higher, the better)	1868	1731	1827

If we’d perform the tests on a more basic PC (may be with only 1GB of RAM), then Windows XP should fare better than it did here. But for a fairly modern PC, Windows 7 gives you the best experience and performance around.

Here there is no feature comparison, but we still know those fantastic features included in Windows 7, then what stands out is that with those fabulous new features, Windows 7 also has really better performance than XP and Vista. People may say that Windows 7 is just what Vista should have been, but, anyway, it is just what PC users want from Microsoft.