Windows Vista System Performance Reports

[Elias]

Nice article.

In my own opinion, I think Vista Ultimate runs better than my old XP Professional did. But that may be because I recently installed it, and I've used XP Professional for 1 year or so.

I think (I may be very wrong) a clean install of XP Professional doesn't have a lot of services running like Vista Ultimate does. So do you think Vista Ultimate would be better if you disabled all the services and XP Professional's services? XP Professional was only a tad bit better than Vista ultimate.

 

[Unregistered]

Great report Robert.

I'm running Vista myself at the moment and day in and day out I have to take critics from people that say vista sucks so hard that it can suck a golfball through a gardenhose.

I found the statistics very interesting, as someone has mentioned Vista uses more services (which of course can be turned off), we are talking about a lot more.

It would be interesting to see the real statistics if you turned off every service in both OS' and use proper Nvidia drivers. I also noticed that one or two programs you used for benchmarking isn't really supported in Windows Vista - it might run but maybe it need a bit changing in it's code to be optimized for Windows Vista?

As I've said, I'm running Vista and I find the game performance much better from it's predecessor(s). After all, game performance doesn't generally mean worse if a few benchmarks here and there didn't go so well versus the older OS.

I hope you do another test in the future Rob, with services turned off and non beta drivers .

 

[Unregistered]

Vista and Outlook

It seems as though if you're buying a new laptop from any of the major suppliers (Dell, HP, Lenovo) in the "Home or Home Office" category you pretty much have to get Vista. I just got a Dell M1210 with 2GB RAM a Core 2 Duo and it runs at 2ghz. So far I like Vista (Business) except that it has really seemed to kill Outlook. My mail take a lot longer to download and it seems as though some messages never make it (I get them on my Blackberry). I don't know what's going on but I can't keep restarting this machine every time Outlook freezes. There are some other quirks but the Outlook thing is just driving me crazy - it's a show stopper!

Any ideas?

(I'm running office 2003 professional - I do have 2007, but I've been afraid to upgrade - I was thinking that the gods would be tempted if I upgraded to Vista and Office 2007 at the same time!)

 

[Rob Williams]

It's Vista ;-)

I don't use Outlook so I can't very well test out the same issue (I am a Linux user) but that's strange. If you want to back up your stuff, I'd upgrade to 2007. I am not sure about Outlook specifically, but I have come to enjoy Excel and Word quite a bit... I couldn't go back to the older versions. They are good enough to make me get off my main PC to go use them ;-)

I hope you do another test in the future Rob, with services turned off and non beta drivers .

I will be doing more tests, but realize I was benching as a normal person would. Anyone who installs Vista is unlikely to go through their services one by one. In that regard, I was comparing a fresh install of XP to a fresh install of Vista, simply put. There's no real excuse.. if Vista installs a slew of extra services, then that's how it is. If I turn off all the extra Vista-specific services... how "Vista" is it?

 

[Unregistered]

Thanks - I think I'll cross my fingers and upgrade!!

 

[Rob Williams]

Let me know how you make out

 

[Unregistered]

Windows Vista on a DELL with AMD = horrible performance and a terrible experience for casual users. I bought this system right off the DELL web page. My father-in-law has managed to have the system die on 2 different occassions with "NO OPERATING SYSTEM" messages after a system lockup. Great improvement Microsoft. Not everyone is a PC geek. How is the average Joe supposed to run Vista when the O/S can't even protect itself from something simple like installing the Google toolbar. Windows Vista belongs in the junk yard. And as is noted above - don't try to use AMD technology with 1 GB of RAM - it doesn't work. And f you have to hunt down technet articles to turn off a bunch of bells and whistles, then someone needs to pull their engineering heads out of their butts. What were they thinking...I guess you get big enough you don't care about the average Joe anymore...

 

[Unregistered]

I disagree with you

I'm running an FX-60, 8800 GTS, 2 gigs of Corsair ram.

I play Counter Strike Source and get 36 fps.

My old set up was Athlon 64 3200+ OC'd @ 2.3Ghz, 7950 GX2, and 2 gigs of Corsair ram.

Counter Strike Source AT HIGHER Graphic settings 289 fps.

Not that those 200 fps were necessary but Vista is a resource whore.

 

[Unregistered]

8800 w/ Vista Ult.
7950 GX2 w/ XP Pro SP2

 

[AbulletAway]

Sorry for bumpin an older post but I just read your article while searching for info on how to get Sony Vegas 7 to install on Vista.

After purchasing a new pc for the sole purpose of editing HD video I found that pc came with Vista. I tried to install Sony Vegas 7 on it. It wouldn't install. Sony wouldn't help when I wrote them. Microsoft wouldn't help when I wrote them. I took the pc in to the shop to have the tech either install a new copy of XP Pro on it or get the software to run on Vista. I had read that some people have been able to do it.

The tech calls me a few hours later and says he's got the software installed. I get the pc home import my first HD file all 1.8 gigs of it. The clip stalls out when importing. Pretty much every large file does. Yet, I have no problems with this same file on my much older pc with a gig less ram. ( 2 gigs on my old one and 3 on the new one.)

So, what did you do to get Sony Vegas 7 to install on Vista and function properly?

Thanks...

 

[Rob Williams]

I never took the time to figure it out, because I dislike using Vista. This article was one of the last times I actually "used" it for any real purpose. Sorry I can't help there.

 

[Greg King]

I found this around the 'net. You can read it all here...
<o></o>

Sony Vegas 7.0 Vegas+DVD

Sony Vegas hasn't been patched for Vista yet and some features don't function. The media manager, for example, relies on MSDE (SQL 2000 Lite) and MSDE no longer runs in Vista. Losing the Vegas media manager is not very debilitating, and in fact, the new features in the Vista file browser make it preferable to the media manager.

The trimmer panel no longer functioned. I was still able to trim in the track view, but the trimmer has tools for slicing up footage in an efficient manner. As a workaround, I pulled my b-roll footage into a new Vegas project, cut it up in there, and then used Edit / Copy and then Edit / Past to move the clips between the b-roll project and the other projects in the production. Not as easy as using the trimmer, but better than having to drag around 20 minutes of B-roll in the same place as a 4 minute segment.

Another function that didn't work was capture. In XP Vegas can capture HD Mpeg2 streams and standard DV streams without trouble. In Vista, I couldn't load the XP-only JVC GR-HD1 drivers so MPEG2 was out of the question, and for some reason the standard DV capture would just terminate as soon as it started in Vegas. In the end I had to resort to the VT[4] to do my b-roll tape capture. The studio capture was already done direct to disk using the VT[4], so it wasn't much of a hassle. I did test Vista's Movie Maker. It captures DV just fine but you can't control what codec is used and it's a pretty limited tool as well. So, there are options in Vista but you might want to keep an XP box around if you need to rip video from your tapes.

Sony Vegas’s performance and stability under Vista was just great. For the music video I did a 10 layer composite at one point with motion and optical blur and I thought that if anything threw a wrench, this would. It trundled along (pretty fast because of the quad cores) and I was good to go. This is what you would hope for from your old XP NLE and it remained true in the shiny new Vista one. So while some auxiliary features were missing, the core functions of Vegas are still there.

I don't know if that will help you but a quick look around at Sony turned up nothing. I hope this helps. If I find anything else out about this, I will post it back here. Good luck.

 

[Merlin]

Vista Ultimate OEM

The system I just finished runs Vista Ultimate

AMD AM2
Asus M2N32 SLI
Corsair 2 gig twin matched pair
8600 GT 256 mb

I got the OEM version and the task manager reports less ram use than I had thought.
I was lead to believe that Vista was RAM hungry and so far I haven't seen that.
Right now with Vista there are 45 processes running, CPU usage is 2% to 5 % and Virtual mem at 38%
All I am using is IE7 @ this time.

Technology marches onward with new operating systems
I started on a Commodor63 back in 1986 with a Hayes modem, connected to the internet in 1989 with a Hayes 800 baude modem.
Not must to surf around to back then.
Then I updated to a used PC with Win 3.1, there were a few programs to run in living color. That was around late 1992 and win 3.1 had the first file manager.
Then I forked out1600.00 for a system that would last forever, Win 95 was the OS to run with all those neat progs. That was around 1996 back then.
It had a HUGE 1.6 gig hard drive that would never would be filled ( I thought then )

What I am saying is that we progress through the operating systems of the time, We want the latest and greatest.
As in all new OS's there are many tweaks to start off and people shun anything new that they can't afford at the time.
Now we have Vista and a new age of tera bite hard drives, eSATA connections that move faster that CPU's that were sold just 5 years ago. We have BlueRay drives that store 25 gigs and HD panels that give true-to-life images, We can actuall see sweat pouring off out sports heros, or count the hairs on people's head.
A New age of Bigger, Better, Faster and More.
So put your toe in the water and join the movers and shakers of the PC dimension.

I find no problems using Vista as yet, I play HalfLife2 Deathmatch online, I work with graphics in Photoshop CS3 and I update websites usually once a month.

By the way Vista has a great speech recognition built into the system that I am using in posting this.

So have fun kids

Merlin ( Artist name )
Deckard ( player name )

 

[Merlin]

Vista Resource monitor

The Task manager in vista gives you quite a bit of info, very extensive

A snapshot: