Is Windows 7 Faster Or Just Smarter?

Barence writes "The Windows 7 unveiling garnered largely positive coverage, with many hands-on testers praising it for being faster than Vista. But is it actually? To find out, this blogger ran a suite of benchmarks to see just how much quicker Windows 7 really is — and the results weren't quite what he expected. 'The actual performance gap between Vista and Windows 7 is ... nada. Absolutely nothing. Our Office benchmarks and video encoding tests complete in precisely the same time regardless of which OS is installed. [...] It's tempting to see this as a bit of a con. They've sped up the front end so it feels like you're getting more done, but in terms of real productivity it's no better than Vista."

Comments

Trick Question

[eldavojohn]

Is Windows 7 Faster Or Just Smarter?

I don't like either of those options, how about "just more of the same Microsoft software?"

I understand the article points out that they went with simply a "more responsive interface" paradigm (Web 2.0/AJAX, anyone?) and probably didn't really fix any serious problems. But at the same time this headline reeks of either marketing or hilarious lawyer type questions. Examples:

• "Yes or no, has Steve Balmer stopped beating his wife?"
• "Is Linux Just Awesome or Totally Awesome?"
• "If I were to tell you the fact that Windows 7 developers dine on human flesh at their desks to start each day anew, how would you react?"
• "How can you afford not to use Linux?"
• "Is Internet Explorer 7 slower or just less secure?"

Re:Trick Question

[techno-vampire]

Do flying chairs count?

Does anybody else remember when the greatest thing in Windows was After Dark, with it's screensaver of flying toasters? what we really need now is a repeat of that, but with chairs instead.

Productivity

[Anonymous Coward]

The productivity would actually increase if the front end speed increased since it would allow the user to interact faster etc. The other tests such as encoding etc are really CPU and application dependent and not very much OS dependent, so it's not really a fair test.

Re:Productivity

[gnick]

Exactly what I was thinking - For most Windows users, the user is a major bottle-neck. By simply responding more quickly to them and allowing them some time to react (even if the system isn't fully ready to react to their next input), you can certainly improve performance. While there are a lot of users that do care about encoding time and Office benchmarks, most users just want IE and Outlook to let them start typing quickly so that they can forward on the latest news regarding Bill Gates paying people for testing their new e-mail system or letting their voice be heard by voting on "Am I Hot or Not?"

Re:Productivity

[Firehed]

This is very true, but a slow UI is what most people will complain about. If someone fires up handbrake, sees two passes of h264 encoding with 30min+ remaining per pass (and that's what I see on my 8-core/10GB system, so most people will be looking at 2-4x that), they'll put that down to it being a slow application. If they go to click a menu item in Handbrake and there's a perceptible delay, they'll blame the OS.

Is either bit of blame entirely fair or correctly placed? Nope. But that won't stop 99% of computer users.

Smarter not harder

[Narpak]

To quote the pointy haired boss "Work smarter not harder".

Personally I'll stick with Homer Simpson's motto: "If something is hard to do, then it is not worth doing." Which is my rule regarding installing new Microsoft Operating Systems.

Just to throw out one more gem; "If it isn't broken it doesn't have enough features yet." Which seems to be Microsoft's golden rule.

Bad benchmarks for productivity.

[zippthorne]

Video encoding is a terrible metric for "productivity" since it's something the computer can do on it's on while you go get tea. It's pretty much CPU and memory bound. The underlying OS shouldn't be doing anything but getting out of the way.

But UI "tricks" are an improvement. If find it easier to start your video encoder, or can do other resource-light things while the video encoder is running at a small cost to the actual encoding speed, then you're making better use of your meat co-processor. Which really is a "productivity" gain.

Re:Bad benchmarks for productivity.

[jonbryce]

In which case, as long as it can do it in real time, you haven't got any problems. Making it faster isn't going to help because the bottleneck is the outside world.

Okay, but that's still important

[Chris Burke]

I really wouldn't expect significantly different scores for something like an office suite or media encoding. Once the OS gives the process all the memory and CPU time it needs, that's basically it. Maybe for games where there could be significant differences in the DirectX flow, but not in general.

But as the article notes, throughput isn't everything. The "up front" speed and how long it takes for a button push to result in action is equally important if not more so. The responsiveness of applications is something an OS can have a significant impact on, and is probably the most important thing for making the computer -feel- fast, and thus giving a better user experience. Hell I've long considered responsiveness to be justification enough for dual-core processors even when a user isn't multi-tasking or running multi-threading apps. So if it's a good enough reason to get a whole second core, it's a good enough reason for an OS upgrade.

It does sound kinda cagey that they're making this one of the main reasons to get 7, rather than improving Vista. But whatever, it's all academic to me.

Worse than that.

[khasim]

They don't define "faster" to include the response time of the interface.

But most users DO include the interface response time in their opinion of which is "faster".

I think Microsoft made a big mistake with the "fade in" menus. Just turning them off gives the user the impression that you've made their machine "faster". Even though email works at the same speed as before. As does Word. As do their games.

Re:Worse than that.

[MBGMorden]

But most users DO include the interface response time in their opinion of which is "faster"

Indeed, and that's a pet peeve I have with Linux. I use Linux - a lot. Heavily on servers at work (but generally CLI only there), and then at home I have a Linux Mint desktop that I use in addition to my Mac and Windows systems.

I love the concept of OSS, and for someone who when they were growing up saw a compiler as something that cost hundreds of dollars, the whole concept of having such a nice development environment is just amazing.

That said, while actually going from point A to point B probably isn't any slower, the interface just makes the system feel draggy. All the little pauses and and graphical oddities when moving a window around just take their toll, but the actual OS is fine (as obvious when I try to do something like say, compress video or something, where the Linux system holds it's own quite nicely).

Hopefully Wayland will take off and help in that regard. Mac OS X has shown what a slick, responsive UI can do for a Unix-like backend. It just sucks that it's tied down to only a subset of available hardware.

Re:Worse than that.

[Firehed]

Can't be too surprised about that - most people are much more concerned about the apparent UI responsiveness than whether they'll shave a few seconds off of a video encode. And given that most people see Vista as very slow and unresponsive, Microsoft would do well to change that perception unless they want to be known for the TWO biggest software disasters in the 21st century.

Re:Worse than that.

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

Realistically though, how could a change in operating system really affect the speed of video encoding, unless the process scheduler is absolutely abysmal (which I'd think it wouldn't be by this point). Since the tasks listed aren't part of vista. As someone who isn't flabbergasted by the concept that a CPU can't crunch numbers faster than itself, this isn't particularly interesting. It just shows that the Windows team is actually optimizing the important parts of the system they have control over.

Re:Worse than that.

[chazd1]

Having worked in marketing and well as puely technical roles it is clear as a bell what is going on here.

When new product uptake isn't up to projections the marketing dept. has a few options. One of the options in its arsenal is to "relaunch". Windows 7 is clearly a "relaunch" of Vista. With all the development time and Money put into Vista don't think for a second that they can develop yet another code base in a fraction of the time. It is the same product with a different name.

Relaunches are used when there is a perceived problem in the marketplace and the engineering dept.says the product is sound.

Productivity originates from the users perceptions

[SuperKendall]

I'm no fan of Windows. But improving UI responsiveness, does greatly improve user throughput when using a system - partly because the user can do what they need to do more quickly, but also because there are fewer jarring moments where you are brought out of the process of creation to have to wait on the computer to finish something. These small interruptions can add up to a big loss of focus over a day.

Faster interface = improved productivity

[Sockatume]

I dunno about most of you, but I do consider a nippier interface to be an improvement in productivity. For the vast majority of Windows users, the thing they want to see improved is those moments lost "when they click a button and nothing seems to happen", as the article author puts it. That is time that has been taken from me. If I get those moments back, and the performance of the trivial CPU tasks involved in actually reading and writing files are kept the same, then yes, my productivity has improved.

A Con!

[CopaceticOpus]

So let me get this straight: Windows 7 is only faster than Vista. It doesn't manage to also make third party programs written for Vista magically faster as well.

If it feels faster, you're getting more done

[bugnuts]

They've sped up the front end so it feels like you're getting more done, but in terms of real productivity it's no better than Vista

I take exception to this. Obviously, if the video encoding tests were written well, there will be little speedup. But if a window environment "feels" faster, you actually DO get more done. There is less frustration in waiting, and you can generally multi-task much easier.

There was recently a discussion of a faster X server. Frankly, I get plenty done on the old "slow" X server, but if one feels faster, it will actually eliminate a lot of brainpower consumed by waiting on a context switch.

There was recently a discussion on a faster Linux boot-up, which preloaded your configuration as you're typing your password, and had lots of other fast features... But that doesn't actually speed up Linux, in terms of encoding video. It just makes it "feel" faster.

I like OSS, but I see lots of bad tags being made. Unfair comparisons are simply unfair comparisons. You can't hail a nice feature in one OS, and discount exactly the same feature on a different OS. Without being hypocritical, anyway.

Optimizing the UI is perfectly legtimate exercise

[davide marney]

Of course a snappy UI is a huge deal. Users spend a lot of time navigating before they actually run anything. And, keeping the UI snappy even when the CPU is under heavy load is an especially important user experience requirement.

There's nothing illegitimate or sneaky about optimizing the hardware to better serve the user.

I am NOT the kind of guy...

[alexborges]

That would cut MS any kind of slack. I hate their ugly guts (and boy, all guts are ugly, but theirs...: just imagine winnt's kernel code).

That being said, if the thing is faster in the iface, its a faster experience and that is that.

Those are seconds saved.

Its just stupid to hit them for doing something better, especially if you see what they are coming from: i mean, it cant be that hard to make something feel better than, for christ sakes, VISTA.

Re:Perhaps this alpha releases uses Vistas kernel?

[postbigbang]

The lipstick on a pig aphorism comes to mind.

W7 is the Vista that Vista could have been. But that may be damning with faint praise.

The sheer obesity of Vista could easily have been improved upon. Somewhere, there is a coder army taking instructions from an idiot. They need to find that idiot and fire that person. Even Gates was better at direction.

The front end is what's wrong with Vista anyway

[IdahoEv]

If they've sped up the front end consistently, then I would be very happy.

My primary complaint with Vista is how long UI operations take. Opening windows, dragging them around, launching applications etc. all seem to take place in something approximating geologic time.

Once I have a high-performance app open (say a game), the game itself runs pretty quickly. It's the getting there that's a problem.

Reviews of Windows 7 are biased

[IGnatius T Foobar]

The reason Windows 7 is getting good reviews is because Microsoft is bribing reviewers with free high-end laptops. If a software company handed you a $2,000 computer, wouldn't you have a few nice things to say about the operating system preloaded on it?

Re:Mp3 Locking?

[Opportunist]

So ... the Better than Average Edition is the basic edition, right?

It's like the popcorn sizes in the movies. Now they're called large, extra large and super size. Funny enough, they're just the same size the old small, medium and large sizes. Only the price changed.