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

[Penguinisto]

BTW as a sidenote I actually really like Ubuntu Unity.

You don't, like, wear argyle golfing pants and a paisley polka-dot tie to work, do you?

I promise I'm not trying to be insulting, but I am curious now... :)

Re:Paid for

[geekoid]

I would not insult Ubuntu Unity's style...if it had one.

Re:Paid for

[cpu6502]

It looks like a step back to Windows 3.1 (which I hated). Instead of the convenience of having all your programs in a nice listing (the start menu), they are hidden in a bewildering mess of program groups & overlapping windows.

Curses.
Back then I avoided the mess that was 3.1 by sticking with my Commodore Amiga until Win98 arrived, but now that option no longer exists.

Re:Paid for

[aztracker1]

In all fairness, some of OSX 10.8's defaults irked me to no end... Just migrated from 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and have to say, the first 3 apps I wanted to install are not "From known developers on the Mac Store" ... then there were a number of apps I use (newest versions *only* on the Mac Store). As a developer, I expect a number of applications to not work well within the new sandbox rules, and to make the default to only allow Mac Store installs is infuriating.

If OSX gets any more big-brother, I'll probably be running Linux on my Macbook... I'm already planning on sticking with Win7 of my desktop for as long as feasible... I don't expect the Metro (Windows-8-like UI) to work at all well with multiple displays without extreme frustration. Win7 was probably my all-time favorite UI, now that's all over.

Re:Paid for

[SDrag0n]

Everybody keeps complaining about the interface. Really it's like it just opens the start menu on bootup. From there you can hang around the desktop all you want. I didn't like it at first but then once I realized that you could hit the start button and stat typing what you wanted, similar to the current start menu, who cares? PLEASE keep bitching about the same thing thinking it'll change. Thanks for your valuable input.

Re:Paid for

[Smauler]

So here is the deal, I get a worse user interface, get to pay more for an operating system that offers virtually no benefit. Man I am so glad I shifting to OSX and Linux around the time Windows 8 was announced and released to devs. This is going to bite them in the ass and IMO with what I am experiencing with OSX and Linux, Microsoft really does suck!

Don't fucking use it then as you obviously have done. Why the hell are you complaining about an OS you're not going to use?

I'm still running Vista, which was slated by just about everyone. It's stable, runs what I want, and I really can't complain about it. Dropping a few services makes performance comparable to 7, and I've got a decent system anyway that doesn't suffer from slowdown because of Vista being a hog. I've had about 6 months uptime on this system, which I use for gaming, work, surfing, etc.

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.

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

[Darinbob]

The biggest trouble I found was lack of documentation. Trying to figure out how to use Metro on your own is not trivial. While one article touted that you really didn't need start menu after all and that you could do the same thing with Metro, it took me a half hour to find a slow way to get up a menu, and another half hour to find a fast way to do this! If you're used to Windows or any other mouse based desktop system you may think that you can use the right mouse button, or maybe bring the mouse to the various sides of the screen, or click left or right on any blank spot on the screen (very few places not covered with "click here to buy stuff" icons).

I was baffled until I found a tiny spot to move the mouse where something happened (all the way to bottom right, size of a hanging chad). Eventually I found the _real_ way this is intended to be used. The Windows Key. You know, that key that most real computer users laughed at when they first found it and have not used it since. Just push it by itself and release and something happens. Sure some Windows experts may have memorized things like Windows+S for start menu or things like that, but most people I know never use it, or consider using it by itself and not as a modifier key. It's an extremely inconvenient key for touch typists as the placement is awkward. I always though it was a bit underused in most Windows versions, compared to the Command key in MacOS. But once you know to push this key all sorts of things can get done with metro, including popping up an amazingly ugly menu full of tiny black boxes. If you want to use Metro effectively you will need to learn a set of keyboard shortcuts!

That's the weird thing. How is anyone going to know based on their past experience to push this key as the primary means of UI interaction? On my android phone that came with zero documentation at least I saw three buttons at the bottom I could tap with my finger and eventually things would happen. Even the Nokia Lumia with the same basic look as Windows 8 comes with some buttons to push. But a windows user would naturally assume they need to click stuff with a mouse, and there's nothing to click except the default applications (not even real applications, they're more like smart URLs such as a "travel" icon with photo of eiffel tower, most of which no professional will ever use).

In the past people with visions were sometimes called mystics, sometimes called possessed, and sometimes locked up for their own safety. Today though people with visions are put in charge of product design.

Re:Paid for

[Darinbob]

There is no "start button" to "hit" from what I saw. Instead there is a Windows key on your keyboard and you can hit that and release, if you know to try that. If you try to use just the mouse you will get nowhere for a long time. If you just start typing you won't get anywhere either. If you accidentally clicked one of those big square buttons and now you want to get back to where you were you will be in for a lot of frustration.

Everyone who says it's obvious only says that because they have learned the trick of how to get Metro to do something. People who are relying upon their past experience with Windows, MacOS, X Windows, Amiga, SunOS, etc, will not know what to do. Even people who say "aha!" and try to use it like a touch screen will be a bit lost as they try to flick things back and forth or use gestures. But you really don't get anywhere until you learn where that small spot on the screen is to click your mouse to get a menu, or realize to use the Windows key to open a menu. Things that are obvious only in hindsight are not obvious.

Re:Paid for

[Darinbob]

This will be the new Ubuntu Unity marketting pitch: "At least it's not Metro".

Re:Paid for

[jader3rd]

More importantly, how are tablet uses going to press the Windows key when they don't have a keyboard?

All Windows 8 tablets are required to have a physical Windows button.

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?

Re:Paid for

[dave420]

Calm down, scared old man. You can still use your mouse, but if you can type, and are not scared by this paradigm, you can find anything you want by pressing the Windows key, then typing, then pressing enter. It's so much faster than any menu, including the Start menu.

But I'm sure you're correct and all the intelligent people who made it are incorrect.

Re:Paid for

[metalmonkey]

What I'm dreading the most is remote desktop (or other remote access).
1. sometimes the windows key is not forwarded to the remote machine - brings up the local start menu. If I'm using windows 8 then my whole desktop gets cleared out for the metro search. If the remote machine is running windows 8 I'll have to figure out another way to bring up the start menu search equivilant.
2. if it is a slow connection, clearing and re-drawing the entire desktop area every time I need to open another app twice - once to bring up metro and again to go back to the application I just started.
Yuck...

Re:Paid for

[Bedouin X]

I'm confused about #3. The Win8 Start screen displays way more apps than the Win7 Start menu. If anything, the Win8 screen greatly increases the chances of the app you want being right there and not requiring a click of All Programs so I don't see how it is any less efficient. From what I have seen, the only advantage the Start menu has over the Start screen is easier location of recently installed applications.

Though I have to also say that in Win7 (and XP and Vista) I start programs either from a taskbar shortcut or by using Window-R to bring up the "Run" dialog which is analagous to the Quake console. Fortunately I can do the same thing in Win8.

Re:Paid for

[jellomizer]

Because the next set of PC's will have more tablet features in them. For Most People. You buy a computer and you keep your OS version for the life of the computer. If it came with Windows 7, the PC was designed to run Windows 7... You stay on Windows 7 until you want a new computer.

Now after Windows 8 comes out, you will fine more and more PC's with multi-touch screens. (I myself have a Lenovo 220t, with Windows 8 RTM on it, and the interface is really nice and I like it better then Windows 7), because windows 8 supports it it means more PC manufactures will use it. Thus Microsoft tying to make multi-touch better.

This Windows 8 Touch Screen seems like the same debate 20 years ago, when PC's started to ship with a Mouse as a common device. It started out as a toy, with only a few applications that used it. While Apple had the mouse common, the PC was mostly still Keyboard, CPU, Monitor. Then when Windows 3.1, Most PC's started to come with a mouse standard, as well the applications for Windows started to use the mouse more. There were a ton of people who hated it, and we still get the debate today. However it is a case of Software that Drives the hardware. So when you next Laptop/Tablet/PC it will probably be reconfigured to be used as a touch device.

Worse for Games

[bobbutts]

Windows 7 won by a small margin on the 3d and gaming benchmarks.

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?

No Chrome on W7

[QuantumBeep]

The sly omission of Chrome on Windows 7 from the browser benchmark is face-meltingly biased.

Re:No Chrome on W7

[Chuck Chunder]

I don't see how it indicates "bias". It does indicate an inability to produce a relatvely meaningful benchmark (as in one that allows comparison).

Similarly the "Windows logo to desktop" seems like a strange benchmark as the benchmark result would be improved by simply showing the Windows logo later. Why wouldn't you just compare the time from power on to desktop (which is presumably what people actually care about)?

Re:No Chrome on W7

[espiesp]

(I admit I didn't read the article, or even the summary)

Except, when comparing two identical machines like they should have done, there should be zero differences except for the OS. So, from the first push of the button to the desktop is a good metric.

But, what I think is an even better metric, is from push of the button to USABLE desktop. I noticed that Win7 seemed faster to boot than XP on an equal machine, but I think Win7 may just in fact be faster to get you to a desktop, and it keeps loading things in the background. The first 30-60 seconds after you get to the desktop, things are sluggish anyway. Might have been my imagination, or I remember XP through my rose colored glasses...

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:No real difference

[MachineShedFred]

It boots 2 seconds faster, and then you spend 20 seconds asking what the fuck is this shit when you don't get a Start menu, and you can't figure out where your stuff is.

What a great tradeoff.

Re:No real difference

[pinkeen]

I just played with it for a while and it feels way much more snappier and responsive. The application start perceivably faster. That is the thing that nobody benchmarks, but it could be benchmarked with a clever approach.

That's why everybody says MacOS is so fast - because it *feels* snappier not because 10GB files copies faster. That's what the developers should strive for, not a win in some synthetic "how long does it take to do X" benchmarks.

BTW In my definition responsiveness, loosely, is the time between taking an action and receiving feedback.

DISCLAIMER: I am a hardcore linux user and occasional window 7 user.

Benchmarks don't really tell the story...

[dhavleak]

• Steep learning curve (nothing to 'learn' obviously -- it's just a new interface -- but it's very different from Windows 7 and definitely takes some getting used to)
• Tangibly faster startup / shutdown / resume etc.
• Tangibly faster switching between apps / windows etc.
• Unfinished in terms of adopting to the new UI paradigms. Several places where you end up back in the old way of doing things, or going back to the control panel to look for settings. It's clearly still there as a catch-all.
• Some awkwardness in terms of managing processes. Clearly, it's designed for you to not think about that stuff. But windows users of old aren't used to that and want to know how to exit an app. You can kill apps quite easily, but it's part of the so-called learning curve.

Well done, but job not finished.

Re:Window 8

[dhavleak]

You can run any number of apps you want, simultaneously.

Might as well be a BSOD.

[wild_quinine]

I don't consider myself a luddite. I usually have an open mind about change. I don't mind if the start menu changes. Heck, I don't need a start menu. I don't feel like there's something missing in Mac OS X when I use the Dock, Spotlight and Finder together to get where I need to be.

*But* the 'Metro' launcher is an abomination. Having something fill my entire screen with glaring colours and toybox tiles when I am looking to launch an application is the exact opposite of the discreet, unintrusive interface that I'm looking for on a workstation desktop.

What did users complain about with Vista? UAC. They hated that every five minutes all your colours went grey, and you couldn't continue without clicking yes on a box in the middle of the screen. But UAC did that because, love it or hate it, there was a reason for it to demand your attention and draw you out of whatever you were doing.

The 'Metro' launcher has no such reason. It completely breaks my flow of thought every time it swallows my desktop. It breaks the illusion that I am working on a constant surface. It is a jarring alteration to the consistency of the desktop experience. It causes the eye and the mind to pause, to catch, and to wonder what the fuck is going on. It might as well be a BSOD for the effect it has on my concentration.

Now with time, I accept that the 'where did all my stuff go?' feeling will dissipate. The interruption will become familiar and not shocking. We'll get used to it. But I fundamentally refuse to accept that a glaring fullscreen, interuption is a step forward in UI. Stick it on a tablet by all means. But it is simply not suited to genuine cognitive multitasking.

Re:Might as well be a BSOD.

[Smauler]

What did users complain about with Vista? UAC. They hated that every five minutes all your colours went grey, and you couldn't continue without clicking yes on a box in the middle of the screen.

That never happened. It happened when installing drivers, programs, everything, because it should happen. Perhaps people got a bad impression early on because that's when they were installing the programs.

UAC is fine. It only throws up when you're trying to something you should need administration privileges to do. Which happens about once a week for me.

Re:Where is that first post

[skipkent]

That's it /. has come so low... I'll never come back!

Re:Real use of the OS

[Scowler]

Have you actually tried to use Metro? It's very responsive and looks gorgeous, at least from the demo apps Microsoft has created. IE in Metro mode is an improvement over IE in Desktop mode. And, if you don't like it, Desktop mode is a click away, and you are safe back in Win7 style UI environment.

Weird benchmarks

[flimflammer]

Something feels wrong about comparing Windows 7 /w Office 2010 and Windows 8 /w Office 2013. Will Office 2013 not be available for Windows 7 or something? Why would you compare two different Office products in two different operating systems? Seems like an unreliable metric if you're trying to compare the performance between operating systems and not different versions of Office.

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

Windows 8 is for post-PC world

[Scowler]

Is it worth upgrading from Win7 for a standard desktop or standard laptop? For most users, probably not. Windows 8 is designed for hybrid tablets, Kinect-style PC-interfacing, unusual monitor configurations, etc. It's for "non-standard" computing, generally. If benchmarking were updated to capture "usability" in many different computing environments, this is where Win8 would leap ahead of its predecessor.

Re:Windows 8 is for post-PC world

[LodCrappo]

There is no post-PC world. There is just the same PC dominated world we've had for the last 20 years, and some tablets. It mostly works fine.

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?

How about really stressing it?

[fa2k]

The OS is supposed to manage the available resources. It's easy when you just run one thing at a time.. I want to know how Windows 8 performs when you have 3 number crunching jobs, each requiring 2 GB running at low priority, a different process which loads 6 GB of data into RAM, a steady stream of IO from each process, interactive use, and maybe some music or video too. Throw in a VM too, to really push it. Does it still manage to be responsive and interactive?

My Win 7 laptop with 4 GB RAM becomes unpleasant to use when I start a VM which uses 2 GB. My Linux box has 16 GB and it handled the above scenario pretty well, but adding another instance of the 6 GB fitting job caused it to crash! (I was swapping to something that wasn't meant to be used as swap, so my fault). Admittedly, testing OSes under stress isn't easy to do reproducibly, but I think a subjective opinion would be really interesting....

Re:Where is that first post

[DAldredge]

He has a 4 digit UID so don't trust a damn thing he says.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[Smauler]

Vista was the ME of NT (ie, bloody awful). 7 is a fairly decent platform. By that I mean, I haven't had a kernel crash in over a year of using it on a daily basis, and that is saying something.

Did you ever use Vista? It got horrendously bad press because it was dog slow on crap machines. It should never have been installed on them.

I'm still using it, and have had over 6 months uptime. 7 might be better, but Vista was only catastrophic because it was run on low end hardware and had every possible service enabled as default. That's Microsoft's fault, completely, but Vista isn't the turd you make it out to be.

ME on the other hand, I agree with.

Their Conclusions

[TranquilVoid]

Since the summary is a teaser;

* Generally the same performance as Windows 7, sometimes marginally faster
* Faster startup and shutdown
* Games and web browsing the same (IE10 no better than IE9)
* Multimedia slightly faster (x264 encoding/decoding)

I'm sure corporate group policy will take care of the faster startup and shutdown times :)

Re:Window 8

[exomondo]

Then tell us, how do you disable Metro and return to the regular start menu?

He said Metro Apps aren't mandatory (as in you can run any non-Metro desktop apps you want), that doesn't have anything to do with the start screen.

Re:Stupid summary

[shutdown -p now]

Boots much faster than Win7, otherwise so similar that you won't notice outside benchmarks.

Re:Window 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Two steps, 1) Click the desktop app, 2) Install Vistart, a 3rd party start menu replacement. I am not trolling, I am being serious. I can stay in desktop mode for weeks. After you wake up your computer from hibernation, type in your password, it returns you right to where you left off, in desktop mode. Default file associations might go to metro apps, but you can change those too. OK Vistart won't let me right click on anything in the start menu, but that isn't a huge deal. I don't know why that guy called me a troll. I've been using windows 8 on my home laptop for months. I am in desktop mode 99% of the time. As far as the ugly theme in desktop mode goes, no big deal. Someone will come out with a nice themeing program or hack for it at some point. I've been saying this for months. I've been using windows 8 since before they even had Metro in the leaked builds. I've had lots of time to notice the nice features.

Seriously, use windows 8 with Vistart. It's a free program. You may miss a few advanced features of the Windows 7 start menu, but you will like all the positive changes of Windows 8 more than the negative ones. Here is just one example. Windows 8 does not interrupt your presentation to remind you to reboot your computer to install an update. It gives you days worth of warning before it nags like that. Another example, if you are copying a bunch of files and one can't copy, you can just hit skip, and it will continue with everything else. You can also pause fie copying. Plus, Windows 8 doesn't have that nasty explorer refreshing bug that Windows 7 has. I haven't tested this, but I bet it doesn't have the nasty failed backups if you use a custom library bug that Windows 7 has. What is Windows 7 biggest missing feature? Native ISO mounting? Windows 8 has that. I've reinstalled Windows 8 several times over the past year, 2 or three leaked builds, then three official betas, then the RTM. I never had to install Daemon Tools or Security Essentials as part of that process, because those features are baked right in.

Plus, Internet Explorer 10 is nice. It is standards compliant. I am developing a website and targeting Chrome/Safari as the recommended browsers, but I would like it to work in IE10. It mostly works in IE9, but that required a lot of work, some features will never work in IE9. My modern HTML5/CSS3 website using canvas and FileReader API works just as well in IE10 as Chrome.

If you only mess around with Metro for a couple hours, how do you expect to notice all the changes under the hood? I have been using Windows 8 for months. Actually, I have been using Windows 8 for over a year now. I am still discovering nice new features. I've been using since you had to hack Metro into it, because it came disabled in all beta builds before developer preview.

Come on moderators, give me a few points so people can read this. Windows 8 in desktop mode with Vistart is a very nice experience. You can't review an OS in a weekend, I've been using it for a year and a half or so.

Re:Window 8

[epyT-R]

1. If a product comes out of the gate needing a hack to bring in critical but missing functionality, there's something seriously wrong. Vistart is a nice tactical fix, but it doesn't change the fact that the only reason microsoft removed the start menu was to force people to interact with metro. This was done for marketing reasons. It's in users' best interests not to support this behavior with their money.

2. presentation interruption/file copy bugs/iso mounting etc. all of these are simple additions that could come with a service pack or hotfix. These are all trivial bits of code, combined.

3. metro is designed for tablets with touch screens. Ergonomically, a desktop touch screen is a horrid concept rife with fingerprints and long delay context switches between keyboard and screen. It's worse than switching from keyboard to mouse. Metro is horrid for mouse users.

4. IE10 may be better than the previous versions, but it's still a shitty browser.

5. Learning a new environment that's truly better than the predecessor shouldn't take a year and a half.. It should be minutes, maybe an hour. The problem here is that metro is not better than the traditional windows layout for desktops.

Re:Polish a turd, it's still a turd.

[dave420]

Are you talking about Vista *before* the slew of performance patches which changed everything, or after?