I'll stick with Windows XP / Ubuntu until Microsoft remove DRM. DRM is the greatest mistake of Microsoft because it is designed against user, not for user. Remove DRM and I and my employees will be happy with vistas eye-candies even at cost of 20-30% system overhead.

read the article comments.
testing methodology is suspect.
only 32-bit was tested, no 64-bit results...

I would say given the way it was measured, you could conclude that Windows XP is more efficient, by requiring less clock cycles. But if Windows 7 spread the clock cycles more evenly across multiple cores, it could accomplish more work in less time. Therefore it would still be possible for Windows 7 to be faster.

I dont like the comparison. for a few reasons. 1. Xp is not beta and has the second service packs for it and the second win 7 is beta and probably still has a fare amount of optimizing to be done. we can do this comparison in a few year with win 7 has time to mature and be refined. Xp would be faster if the installed Sp3 on there but that still doesnt help the comparison. my 0.02

I'm not sure how I feel about trying to use Desktop Operating systems to do Server related tasks. Worse, his quad core system was a laptop. It would be best if we could keep the FUD on fudzilla.

Doesn't take a genius or benchmarks to figure this one out. What moron at Microsoft figured that 0% cpu utlization is a BAD thing? That's the whole premise of Vista, that any unused CPU is bad; hence, all the tons of startups and services that run in the background. I optimize my machine with the least amount of startups, services, drivers, etc. just so my games run silky smooth.

"Fastest" is a BS way of describing what is really going on here.

Vista uses up lots of RAM to optimize desktop computing. Naturally, there are a lot more instructions to be executed in Vista than XP.

In layman's terms; Runner A who completes the mile in 8 minutes is NOT faster than Runner B who completes a marathon in 20 minutes!

From the processor's point of view, it finishes all of its instructions sooner in XP, but that isn't the point!

Disabling startup programs and services is nothing new to Vista. That is always the case for XP as well.

CPU cycles, which is what the author is comparing, grab instructions from main memory, something that Vista is programmed to use a lot of. It's not unused CPU they are trying to use, it is unused main memory.

Anyways, I find it hilarious how random blog/article writers on the Internet seem to think they have found all the answers, that Microsoft's OS programming team seem to have completely missed.

+1 Well said! Also note they used 4GB on the Deal core (E6700) and 8GB on the quad. That cries unfair to me. See: http://weblog.infoworld.com/labnot [...] _mult.html

I have Windows 7 running in a VM with 500ram... i was shocked how fast it is, even online vids are snappy. I plan to install 7 as a second OS and give it a run now.

**Vista has always run fine for me but my machines are always a little quicker then average Joe.

use a server OS for your server workload. If you're going to test consumer operating systems, use a consumer test. I think the most important test for many consumers is reliability and resistance to viruses. Any speed differences between XP and Vista are generally minor. In my opinion, its a worthwhile trade-off.

Read between the lines, the author is implying that DRM schema is sapping CPU cycles. Either you or your programs notice this performance wise, or they do not.

I notice and I avoid. NBC has the ability to shut Vista off and *did*. Does NBC have the ability to shut Windows 7 off as well? NBC can't shut Windows XP off.

Read for yourself:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/po [...] tinks.html

You must be using a limited set of benchmarks because video rendering is quite a bit faster with 64 Bit Vista because it is able utilize MUCH more ram compared to the 2-4GB Max. in XP.

I'd personally like to see an article on this which is NOT server based, and also on a fair playing ground. Maybe using one of the $1250 system builds to do so with. Something consumers can relate with.

If you read the InfoWorld article, the author is praising both Vista and 7.

Yes, XP is basic, lean, and fast. The key take-away from this is future scalability.

DRM pisses the consumer off and no one really wins

How about this idea:

Windows 8 = XP pro 64-bit with "new feature service pack" ???

Perhaps they can just evolve XP and make us pay 1/3 the price for their service packs? Perhaps a new one every year...

Then we could decide if we need the new features...

All the silly new visual candy can be added as add-on for people who care for them...

ms needs to cut all the stupid features and make windows7 blazing fast

fast = people will like your OS

slow = people will not like your OS

when i click on something, it should pop up right away, even on a modest computer

InfoWorld? Why didn't toms hardware do this and provide their own benchmark results?

Kill the DRM for God´s sake! The DRM crap is useless and only slows the system down at the expense of the user, who is forced to invest in more expensive hardware in order to do the same things as before. I will not use an OS that works agains the users interests. If you are not playing games, there is no reason at all to use Windows. Windows XP is my final Windows. I've now move to Ubuntu and use a dual boot for the times there's need for using old Windows programs. But that need have been surprisingly low. Next time I make a full Ubuntu installation, I'll skip the dual boot. For games? The Xbox is doing fine! There will probably be more Linux games as well in the future. But I don't care, since I don't play games on PC.

As long ago pointed out in the analysis of vi$tha DRM costs (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt), these tests underline more of the huge impact made by the crippling of windoze with DRM by m$, to appease MPAA, RIAA & co.
Even if xpire wasn't well optimized for SMP, it still blows vi$hta, and is't SE = $even, out of the water.
It would have been much more interesting to know how many of these CPU cycles were used to do actual work in the application, and respectively used in system calls in the kernel - then the overhead of the DRM in the "improved" eye-candy crap "OS" would be much more evident.

This isn't even a logical test to run on a desktop / home use CPU & OS. Honestly, who here is running a database transaction server here? This test belongs in Xeon and Opteron land and be testing Server 2000, 2003 and 2008.

With the current generation of quad core CPUs, especially when overclocked well past 3GHz, you have to question whether you will ever notice the speed difference. Is 1.47s really that much different than 1.51s? Will you care? I doubt you will, so just pick whatever OS you prefer; the performance is similar. I find Vista to be more functional, XP just looks and works in a very ... antique way. I find it depressing that in 2009 people are still championing an OS made in 2001.

pppppppppppfffffffffffffffffffftttttttttttttt ill take my vista x64 with my quad and 8gb over that dinosaur operating system any day, its not as if any new microsoft OS is lighter then the last release - people bitch about every release they make, get over it and get a new rig to handle a NEW operating system, Athlon 64's and Pentium D's belong in the bin with xp.

Please and I mean this in the most sincere way, stop smoking crack!

Athlon 64's still pack a punch. Aned they run vista pretty damn well.

Hell mine ran FEAR2 on win7 only with a 7800GT and 2GB of RAM.

pfft apache_lives, you keep your 64bit vista, and i'll keep my much faster, more secure and all round better made 64bit debian.
While i only have a dual core, with 2gb of ram, i bet mine goes a hell of a lot faster than your quad core 8gb machine.

yeah you could certainly surf the web and run open office faster with a linux build, but if you actually plan on producing content linux is just about useless... Unless of course you are building your own custom media applications. Linux sucks unless you like running benchmarks or doing simple stuff where all that power is useless to begin with. Stop throwing Linux up as an alternative to windows desktop (because it is not).

Firstly, NBC doesn't not have the power to turn Vista off. The DRM in Vista Media Center was at fault here. All it did was stop people from watching a certain TV show.

Secondly, I wouldn't believe anything (especially test results) that comes out of Infoworld, which it appears is where the author of this article got his info from.

Just to set the record straight, as a member of the Windows7 Beta testing community I can tell you that initial impressions of the Beta are NOT overwhelmingly positive. I know that they will fix everything eventually, but this Beta is very rough, as evidenced by the vast number of valid complaints/problems posted on the Win7 forum. For example, I had to format under Vista before I could even do a clean install. MANY others could not get it to install at all.
Now, granted, Beta evaluation is not intended for noobs, but at least they could get the installation programming right before they released it to the public.
This is not really a slam, as I have a great respect for the expertise required to create a new OS, but let's not mislead people either. The vast majority of people shouldn't be required to have advanced technical skills to install and run a public release OS in any stage of development.
As of right now, Win7 Beta is still too green to evaluate fairly.

Translation: XP has less bloatware, so it runs faster.

I'm wondering: are we talking about WinXP or WinXP x64? Does anyone ever include x64 in their testing?
I have been running x64 for a long time and I find it much faster and more stable than WinXP. Moreover, x64 will allow the use of up to 32GB of RAM.

roflmao mikejj when i want to play a game i go to the game store and buy a game - it will work on my PC because i have windows - your OS is not the same class, and if it was on 90+% of the worlds computers we would be in trouble - there no Microsoft.

Windows XP and XP x64 both feel the same past 2gb of ram - i throw 8gb at it and it still feels like XP and 2gb - sad and old.

Vista is aggressive with caching and learns how i use the thing and reacts to it, i dont have to install drivers, i dont have to worry about updates, it just works, and especially with media centre.