Benchmarking Windows 7: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger?

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Real-World Benchmark Analysis

Before moving on to synthetics, let's take a closer look at what our real-world application benchmarks have revealed.

Games appear to have a negligible preference for Windows 7, while productivity applications prefer Windows Vista. The average for encoding applications is thrown off—way off—by a problem in TMPGEnc, leading to a combined performance difference of nearly 4% favoring Vista.

What would these results look like if we eliminated the “partially-broken” TMPGEnc test?

With TMPGEnc out of the equation, the encoding difference drops to 0.41% with a combined average difference of 0.57% favoring Vista.

But none of these applications reveal anything about load times. For that we have two synthetics, PCMark and SYSmark.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
151 Comments Comment from the forums
  • SpadeM
    The article doesn't say much but I personaly would have preferred if you chose a 5850 or 5870 as the graphics card. Since you said
    Modern hardware and software deserve each other, so we used some of our latest parts to gauge the performance difference of each operating system.

    Who knows,maybe it would have made a difference in the numbers, in power consumption.
    Reply
  • themadmanazn
    Doesn't seem to be a huge difference from a performance point of view, but if it isn't as in your face as Vista, still a win =P
    Reply
  • rivalneighbour
    Thank you T.Soderstrom for this writeup.
    Reply
  • jj463rd
    One of my local television news Komo had a forum and some discussions about Windows 7 over Windows Vista.There were quite a few people who complained about running Vista on their PC.However most of the complainers (and there were a lot of them) had PC's with specifications that just barely met Vista's requirements.
    These people had outdated and obsolete hardware (probably owned lame OEM name brand PC's)no wonder that they had problems.Anyway thanks for the benchmarking of 7 vs Vista.The conclusion is rather interesting especially about a game running SMOOTHER and the feel of 7 being 7% to 10% faster than Vista.I like smoother gameplay.
    Reply
  • Would have been nice to see Windows XP included as well. Just to know how much difference there really is in terms of performance between all 3 O/s's. From the above tests, there seems little reason to move to Win7 from Vista based on performance alone....
    Reply
  • Rock_n_Rolla
    What matters most is that Windows 7 gives way to what many are really
    after, A reliable and efficient Operating System as a replacement to their
    Windows XP, which millions and millions of people are still using.
    From the DX11 and Shader 5 hype, To Win XP mode to Fast Bootup to
    Increased FPS n gaming to strong security features... Well, Its up to
    them which versions is which. :)
    Reply
  • razor512
    waste of an article especially since they said "While most Tom’s Hardware readers initially resisted the switch from Windows XP"

    should have benchmarked it against windows xp (fresh install)

    while windows 7 is faster in some areas compared to windows vista, but it has lag spikes which causes CPU intensive tasks which lowers CPU benchmark results.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    Razor512waste of an article especially since they said "While most Tom’s Hardware readers initially resisted the switch from Windows XP"should have benchmarked it against windows xp (fresh install)while windows 7 is faster in some areas compared to windows vista, but it has lag spikes which causes CPU intensive tasks which lowers CPU benchmark results.
    The article also explains that XP x64 or Windows 7 x86 weren't options. What, you wanted 32-bit XP compared to 64-bit Vista and 7?
    Reply
  • buwish
    I think that as more apps are written specifically for W7, we'll see a vast improvement over these benchmarks. Just have to give it a bit of time.
    Reply
  • megabuster
    Why are we still testing W7 vs Vista SP1 when SP2 has been released for a while now?
    Reply