Generational Windows Multicore Performance Tests

snydeq writes "Windows XP, Windows Vista, and (soon) Windows 7 all support SMP out of the box, but as InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy notes, 'experience has shown that multiprocessing across discrete CPUs is not the same thing as multiprocessing across integrated cores within the same CPU.' As such, Kennedy set out to stress the multiprocessing capabilities of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 in dual-core and quad-core performance tests. The comprehensive, multiprocess workload tests were undertaken to document scalability, execution efficiency, and raw performance of workloads. 'What I found may surprise you,' Kennedy writes. 'Not only does Microsoft have a firm grasp of multicore tuning, but its scalability story promises to keep getting better with time. In other words, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are poised to reap ever greater performance benefits as Intel and AMD extend the number of cores in future editions of their processors.'"

Comments

So what?

[fpophoto]

Are we supposed to be surprised that the leading OS vendor, who's had deep, intertwined relationships for decades with hardware makers is exploiting that hardware properly?

Honest question: where's the news here?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The news is that nobody can say anything non-critical of Microsoft without being accused of advertising or astroturfing.

Oh wait, this is Slashdot. Nevermind.

118% slower

[TheMeuge]

Roughly 118 percent slower than XP on dual-core

Some great mathematics in this review... it also appears as if Vista isn't just not solving the problems presented to it, but also adds new ones to increase its own workload.

Fascinating...

And Windows XP is still faster

[ameline]

And XP is still faster than vista or 7, even on 4 cores... And he speculates that it would be faster on 8 (although he didn't measure that)

Scalability doesn't matter if you're still slower in absolute terms on systems that are available commercially at a reasonable price. (going past 8 cores these days is a very large price jump per core)

Interesting

[quo_vadis]

It is interesting that WinXP is still better in terms of performance than either. The article suggests that Win7 and Vista would be better on systems that hypothetically had 16+ cores.

But nowadays, especially in tech savvy crowds like on /., the most popular thing to do is run VMs with virtual instances of Windows, which reduces all the hassles associated with dealing with win cruft. Got a worm? restore machine. Drivers made system unstable? restore machine. The vms are typically only given 1-2 cores, the exact use case where WinXP does way better than its successors.

So even if we move to a world with 16+ core processors, if Win7 cannot do better than a 10 year old OS, in common scenarios, how can that be called progress?

Re:Interesting

[blankinthefill]

Try running Win 98 on Vista's minimum hardware. Hell, lets go whole hog here. Try running Win 3.1 on Vista's minimum hardware. (Okay, you might have to do a lot of work to get it running, but I'm just trying to make a point). I guarantee you that both 98 and 3.1 will run faster than XP on that hardware. By a lot. If it surprises you that vista and xp run slower on the same hardware than xp, then either you're not thinking things through, or you're not very bright. As stated, they are far newer. This means they have a much higher assumed baseline of technology that they can run against, which means that they have far more assumed resources to play with. So yeah, on the same system, Vista runs slower than XP. No surprise (at all, as far as I'm concerned). Honestly, all this speed stuff is pretty pointless. The question with OSes is never really about the fastest, or we would all still be using DOS. The question with OSes is are the fast ENOUGH. This is very subjective, but it basically boils down to: will they run what we want them to run in an acceptably small amount of time. On its original release, Vista did not. However, right now Vista is certainly running fast enough for me, and I expect Win 7 will to. But you're ALWAYS going to take a performance hit moving to an OS that utilizes new technology, and I don't care what OS you use.

The Money Quote

[d3ac0n]

Basically, this article states the obvious: Windows XP 64 is just plain faster than Vista 64 or Win7 64. By a factor of 20-40%. But to understand why, you need to read the MONEY quote. Here it is:

In the end, it all comes down to the complexity of the execution path. With its simpler legacy kernel devoid of DRM hooks and other performance-sapping baggage, Windows XP provides a cleaner code path for the workloads to navigate as they execute. This, in turn, translates into better overall performance with lower consumption of CPU cycles.

It's the DRM baby. You strip that out of the Kernel, and Vista and Win7 will EASILY outpace XP with their more advanced and flexible SMP capability. Until Microsoft understands that people DO NOT WANT DRM and removes it from their newer OSes, these new OSes will continue to suffer from performance problems, and thusly, acceptance and sales problems.

Come on Microsoft. Apple has figured it out, DRM is a sales loser. Do you really want to keep wasting time on a loser technology in the midst of a global recession? You blew it with Vista, but you still have a chance with Win7. Offer people a DRM-Free kernel and Win7 will FLY off the shelves.

 

Re:The Money Quote

[quo_vadis]

I have never been a "windows fanboi"( In fact this is being posted from a linux computer) and I am no defender of Microsoft's business practices. However without doing code analysis, it is impossible to say that this slowdown is because of DRM. Nowhere in the article does it suggest that they were able to do a profile analysis of the kernel codes and compare what modules on the path were causing the delays. So while it is theoretically possible(and likely) that the source of the delay was DRM related, one cannot be sure. If you possess knowledge otherwise, please feel free to cite it and correct me.

Re:The Money Quote

[rossjudson]

This is yet another one of those times when I wish Slashdot wasn't so ridiculously hostile to Microsoft. What we need here is some informed, possibly even official commentary from someone in the know at MS. Exactly why is a workload slower on Vista? Where's that time going? Right now something like 60-70% of corporate workloads still run on Windows OS, so gaining an understanding of exactly why is important.

When the difference is on the order of 20-40% (if the article is to be believed), we're looking at some level of system-call "tax" under Vista, or we're looking at a different _capability set_. If the workload on Vista is in a secured environment, and the same workload runs faster on XP in an unsecured environment, we're talking apples and oranges.

It could be the case the even for workloads running as root equivalents in Vista execution times are worse...but we don't really know from what's quoted in this article, and there isn't any response from MS.

I think Vista is a pretty important upgrade for most users. Even if its security mechanisms are intrusive, at least they're _there_, and that's a step in the right direction.

Re:The Money Quote

[setagllib]

Unlike Windows, if you install a very lean Linux distribution, even one with up-to-date package versions, it will be absurdly fast as you'd expect from modern hardware. Just because Ubuntu is being burdened doesn't mean the FOSS landscape itself is.

The algorithms and data structures in almost all open source applications have either stayed the same over the years, or gotten better, with the notable exception of some programs like GCC which have used the increase in system resources to advance compiled code optimisation rather than compile-time performance.

This whole "of course newer is slower" thing is just Microsoft brain damage. Apple is another company which regularly improves performance and scalability in its software products, even with DRM problems similar to Vista.

Did you know that by now hundreds/thousands of Windows *system* *calls* have built-in backwards compatibility checks to support programs whose source code is not available for maintenance? You're paying a performance penalty every time you make a system call, with no option to turn it off, just because someone somewhere might want to play The Sims. Open source solves this problem by fixing the program, rather than hacking every layer of the OS to support old bugs. You can't spell "backwards compatibility" without "backward".

Better than Vista, still worse than XP

[Animats]

First, go to the real story, bypassing an intermediate blog and two interstitial ads.

Second, the article says the performance of the newer OSs is worse than XP. "In fact, during extensive multiprocess benchmark testing, Windows 7 essentially mirrored Vista in almost every scenario. Database tasks? Roughly 118 percent slower than XP on dual-core (Vista was 92 percent slower) and 19 percent slower than XP on quad-core (identical to Vista). Workflow? A respectable 38 percent slower than XP on dual-core (Vista was 98 percent slower) and 59 percent slower on quad-core (Vista was 66 percent slower)."

Third, there are no tables or graphs anywhere in these articles, and very few numbers. As a benchmarking article, this is awful.

More great mathematics

[Lonewolf666]

From page 2 of TFA:

In terms of raw application throughput, Windows XP clearly is still king of the hill. However, despite its current edge on dual-core and quad-core systems, Microsoft's 8-year-old OS is beginning to show its age. For example, when you contrast the dual- and quad-core transaction times for the ADO (database) and MAPI (workflow) workloads, you see that scalability -- in terms of a percentage improvement from dual-core to quad-core -- is capped at 265 percent for the database tasks and 32 percent for the messaging workflow tasks. While excellent by legacy Windows NT standards, these improvements pale next to the 571 percent boost witnessed for the same SQL-driven database workload under Windows 7, or the 58 percent improvement for the MAPI message store workflow task under Windows Vista.

(emphasis mine)
So we are supposed to believe that the database test on Windows 7 runs 571 percent faster on a quad-core compared to a dual core?
That would be a factor of 6.71, or in terms of performance per core, a factor of 3.355. In other words, the quad core would do 3.355 times more work per core than the dual core. That sounds not very believable, considering similar tests the German C't magazine has done in the past (for Linux and Windows 2000). In those tests, both OS scaled at best linear with the number of CPUs, so the "performance boost" from going from dual to quad core was at best 100% (in most tests more like 80%).

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what Randall C. Kennedy wanted to say. Here it would have helped if he posted his raw data and test configuration, as most reputable testers do. But as he only posted a few end results, I can only say that his numbers seem bogus. I rated the Infoworld article with 1 of 5 points.

What about multi-function?

[CannonballHead]

Nobody is going to argue that if you run one single application (a database something), a "small" OS will work better. There are Linux versions that are specifically geared towards doing that sort of thing, right? Ubuntu is probably slower at something than [insert other dist].

The real question is, though... what about normal usage? Unfortunately, that's hard to measure... but how does Vista/Windows 7 affect normal user productivity and speed as opposed to simple benchmarks designed to test out efficiency at doing ONE thing?

If Vista and Windows 7 were designed to have a lot of background processes to help the user do this or that, then why not test that, too? XP wasn't designed that way, apparently, while Windows Vista/7 are more designed that way. So give it a level playing field and test what it was designed to do.

I don't have an answer of whether or not Vista/Win7 are slower or faster when doing other things (like, say, searching for a file because you can't remember where you put it, running multiple applications, using something DRM enabled, or whatever), but it'd be interesting to try to test it rather than a generic "XP runs a single application faster than Vista because Vista has more stuff running in the background." It'd be interesting to try to physically load the system with lots of applications and see which is better then.