Windows 8 RTM Benchmarked

jjslash writes "Microsoft's PR machine has been hard at work over the past few months, trying to explain the numerous improvements Windows 8 has received on the backend. But are there real tangible performance differences compared to Windows 7? TechSpot has grabbed the RTM version of Windows 8, measuring and testing the performance of various aspects of the operating system including: boot up and shutdown times, file copying, encoding, browsing, gaming and some synthetic benchmarks." Lots of other sites are running reviews including: Infoworld, CNET, Computerworld, and Gizmodo, with very mixed opinions.

Comments

Paid for

[ozmanjusri]

Lots of other sites are running reviews including: Infoworld, CNET, Computerworld, and Gizmodo, with very mixed opinions.

You mean they're mixing the real opinions with the bought ones?

Re:Paid for

[Zaelath]

It's putting lipstick on a pig anyway. It would have to be orders of magnitude better "under the hood" to put up with driving something that fugly.

Re:Paid for

[darkmeridian]

Yeah, anyone who disagrees with you is a sycophant or astroturfer. You speak the unimpeachable Truth and all others are Damned. Please spare me this BS. I don't disagree with you, necessarily, but I hate the demonization of those who disagree with you. Dissent is healthy.

Re:Paid for

[Penguinisto]

I didn't mention "anyone", or intimate that disagreement meant anything in the way of sycophancy or astroturfing, so I suspect your strawman may need a bit more stuffing. ;)

Re:Paid for

[epyT-R]

1. Defending something repeatedly without a solid argument doesn't make a good case for it either. Take your own advice.

2. Starting a program should not be a full screen modal interruption on a modern machine. this is fine for tablets....or ms-dos, but not workstations. This trend of forcing users to get used to 'full screen only' again is part of that current dumb-it-down 'undevelopment' race to the bottom. It must stop.

3. The whole point of a gui is avoid having to type repetitive, simple commands. If their design actually takes longer than typing it out, like the playskool menu does, they've failed. The search box is an admission of failure. Just give me a console a-la quake; hit tilde and down comes a prompt ready to go...or leave the start menu alone. It works fine. The windows 7 start menu search is also stupid for the same reasons.

Re:Paid for

[epyT-R]

Why the hell are you complaining about an OS you're not going to use?

because he's joining a conversation about it on the internet to voice his opinion?

If you don't want to use the software, why are you moaning about it? I'm not going to use it, either - there's no reason for me to upgrade at the moment.

so you complain about him complaining about an os he's not going to use, but yet you feel the need to post about his post when you also are not planning on using it?

No real difference

[linebackn]

So after reading through the entire article (wait, was I supposed to do that?) the bottom line is that there is no significant difference that any regular user would care about.

I don't think shaving a second or two off of boot time is going to impress people when they see the user interface is "all different" now.

Re:Window 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone assume Metro Apps are mandatory? Metro is only mandatory for the ARM version. The 64bit version I use on my laptop can run Desktop Mode, and it works great, much improved over Windows 7. Other than a Metro looking lock screen and wireless network connect screen, you could hardly tell the difference by looking.

Some features i actually want

[Espectr0]

I hate the new metro interface, but i like some features like: easy restore (refresh and reset), windows to go, virtualization, shorter boot times and newer windows display driver model. Let's see how it does

Re:Real use of the OS

[dreamchaser]

I shouldn't feed trolls but I'll bite. I've used Metro. It *is* a steaming pile of crap. This is coming from someone who is relatively OS agnostic. I use Win 7 and love it. I use various flavors of *nix and love them for various reasons as well. I have on OS X box, it's pretty cool. I'm not too fond of my iPad (it's mostly a lab device anways for me) but I love my Asus Transformer Prime. I use many OSes.

Windows 8 is OK on a tablet device. On a desktop it is a steaming pile of turd. There is absolutely no compelling reason for any Win 7 user on a machine with a keyboard and mouse to 'upgrade' to it.

Re:Real use of the OS

[Scowler]

How was I trolling, exactly? I'm not the one using the word "abortion" or the phrase "steaming pile of crap". I agree with you that this is not a compelling upgrade for the keyboard/mouse crowd, but then again, Metro wasn't really designed for that, was it?

Re:Worse for Games

[Hadlock]

The new version of windows always sucks for games until nvidia and ati get around to tweaking things. Give it 6-8 months for everything to catch up. If you plan on installing Win8 on day one and expecting everything to work as good as, or better than the 36 month old Win7 ecosystem, you're insane.

Re:Worse for Games

[thegarbz]

Why is this necessarily the case?

The driver's job is to talk to the hardware.
The API's job is it talk to the driver.

Windows 8 uses Direct X 11 as the API, same as Windows 7.
The driver is the same the hardware is the same, there's been no major change in the driver systems in Windows 8 which has been documented (unlike the move to Vista).

Given this why am I not right to expect Windows 8 to perform identically to Windows 7 from day one?