Windows XP vs Windows 7 – Benchmarks

1/14
2009

Windows XP vs Windows 7 – Benchmarks

Now that Windows 7 is widely available for testing, the obvious question is how does it stack up against XP? The short answer – hold on to XP? And a chance to win a prize.

NOTE: This article is targeted to our readers who have older PCs that function perfectly well but are a few generations behind current gear and curious about upgrading to a new OS.

To be fair, this is a beta version of Windows 7, so things could be better by the official launch date. However, considering that Windows 7 appears to be Vista II, these results may not be far off the mark. These benchmarks are about as “apples to apples” as I could make it. Here’s what I did:

I ran some benchmarks using the same PC but on different hard drives, one a 30 GB WD with 2 GB cache and the other an IBM 120 GB with 8 GB cache. The XP was loaded with programs and Windows 7 a clean install on the WD HD. I used Passmark’s Performance Test 6.1 for the benchmarks with XP yielding a combined score of 315.3 and Windows 7 209.1. These were the best scores of three runs, with the others showing similar marks.

Needless to say I look at these results and figure the different hard drives MUST have something to do with the difference. So I wipe the 30 GB HD clean and do a fresh install of Windows XP Pro with SP 2. The only programs I loaded were AVG 8 antivirus and Passmark’s Performance Test 6.1. I ran the benchmarks three times. Then I wiped the drive again and did a fresh install of Windows 7, loading the same programs and running the benchmarks again three times.

The PC I used was not a girly machine – not as current as some might like, but not lacking for horsepower:

Abit I7 motherboard
Intel Prescott running at 3.0 GHz
2 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 7600
WD Caviar 30 GB HD

By all accounts, this PC is well suited to run Windows 7. The following are the best results from the three benchmark runs:

Windows XP vs Windows 7 Benchmarks

Test

Windows XP

Windows 7

CPU

484.3

319.7

2 D

289.4

85.2

MEM

449.4

259.9

DISK

118.2

110.2

377.2

323.6

3 D

291.4

228.1

TOTAL SCORE

344.3

223.6

The 2D results show the largest difference between the two, but consistently among all the benchmarks I ran, Windows 7 underperformed XP in every category. The closest was for the HD, which is reasonable considering the same HD was used each time.

However, I have been using Windows 7 to get a feel for it and the benchmark difference does not seem to reflect my experience with Windows 7 – I can’t perceive something like a 50% difference between the two. So as a quick test, I ran four Photoshop 7 filters timing them using the same image on an XP Pro machine loaded with stuff (not the clean XP install) and on the Windows 7 clean install; this admittedly rough test gave a 1-2 second advantage to XP.

So I’m a bit perplexed as to what exactly this benchmark tells us – Passmark’s Performance Test 6.1 is Windows Vista capable, so Windows 7 should run OK.

So how about a helping hand here – anyone can get Windows 7 free during the next two weeks, so grab a copy, run your own tests and drop me a line on what you find. I’ll make this a contest and select someone at random for a prize.

I should also add that some features in Windows 7 I like a lot – more on this later after I play with it some more.

Buy Windows 7 Now at Newegg