Tag: benchmark
September 04, 2009 by
Jason
Windows 7 is “outrunning” Windows Vista in more ways than one. Microsoft has labored to ensure that the latest Windows client outpaces its precursor in a variety of scenarios, from startup time, to common usage tasks, and to shutdown, to name just a few. Another aspect in which Windows 7 has Vista beat is upgrade performance. According to Chris Hernandez, from the Windows Deployment team, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 to Windows 7 upgrades are at least 5% faster than Vista SP1 to Vista SP1 upgrades.
In fact, when it set out to do the operating system upgrade measuring contest, Microsoft was looking for at least a 5% threshold for upgrade scenarios involving Vista SP1 to Windows 7 was in comparison to jumps from Vista SP1 to Vista SP1. The Redmond-based company explained that the Windows Upgrade team monitored the Windows 7 upgrade performance during the development process, and that it compared it against its Vista baseline.
“The reason we choose to use a Vista SP1 -> Vista SP1 upgrade instead of Windows XP -> Vista as our baseline was for the following: Windows XP is a vastly different operating system compared to Vista and an upgrade from Windows XP -> Vista would not be a good comparison with Vista -> Windows 7. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
We’ve mentioned hardware information utilities a couple of times in the past, these are programs that tell you about your computer and its setup, but this freeware tool, called HWiNFO32, leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. If it were technically possible to tell you how many nuts and bolts are holding your PC together, it would do so. As it is you’ll just have to be content with every possible scrap of information regarding the hardware connected to your computer that it is possible to extract, from the manufacturer’s code name for your CPU chip, to whether or not your monitor supports an obscure feature called Blank to Black Setup. You can also set a benchmark, so you can track performance and monitor changes, there’s a Sensor page, that tells you all about the temperatures and voltages running around inside your machine, and you can save Reports, which might come in handy one day, if you need to track down a tricky fault.
Posted in Hardware, Software | No Comments »
With many innovations being made to today’s PC’s hardware, laptops and desktops have become much smaller and lighter. But one drawback to that light weight convenience is heat.
Computers today can pack more processing power in a much smaller and denser space, if you don’t keep them cool, you can pretty much guarantee a hardware failure will occur.
Fortunately, there is an easy way to keep tabs on hardware temperature using a free utility called CPUID.
HWMonitor from CPUID software is a hardware monitoring program that reads your PC Systems main health sensors, such as voltages, temperatures and fans speed. I mostly use it on my home PC to keeps tabs just on temperature since I use a laptop. Read More»
Posted in Hardware, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 2 Comments »
The Windows Experience Index Score was introduced in Windows Vista and used to give you a good idea of the capabilities of a computer. You can use a computer’s Experience Index base or sub score to help determine if it’s what you need when purchasing a new computer.
The Experience Index Score rates your computer’s components performance from 1 to 5.9 with 1 being the worst performing and 5.9 being the best. The score’s benchmarks were established when Windows Vista was released.
Base Score Explained
The base score represents the overall performance of your system as a whole, based on the capabilities of different parts of your computer, including RAM, CPU, hard disk, general graphics performance on the desktop, and 3-D graphics capability. Read More»
Posted in Computer, Hardware | 1 Comment »
Is Vista SP1 really the shot in the arm your Vista system needs? We’ve spent many hours strapped to our benchmarking system in a caffeine and pizza fuelled haze to uncover these very interesting results.
We tested Vista:
* as it comes out of the box (RTM — or “release to manufacturing”)
* as it comes out of the box, with all Windows Update patches applied (”RTM patched)
* with the final SP1 service pack applied
Testing Setup
Although Vista SP1 has many documented improvements, we aimed to test a particular scenario which has proved to be a major problem for pre-SP1 users: file copy speed, particularly over a network. Read More»
Posted in Hardware, Windows Vista | 4 Comments »
Is Windows Vista Faster Than XP?
Our Windows Vista coverage began with a hands-on diary by MobilityGuru’s Barry Gerber, followed by an assessment of gameplay under Windows Vistaby graphics presidente Darren Polkowski, as well as a complete feature rundown of Vista. Barry took the new operating system and its look & feel with a grain of salt, while Darren was disappointed because OpenGL support was dropped along the way, meaning that Windows Vista currently offers horrible performance for graphics applications utilizing the Open Graphics Library.
We are sure that mainstream users will appreciate the improved usability of Windows Vista, and the average office/multimedia user will likely never notice the lack of OpenGL. However, a chapter on the overall performance of Windows Vista requires more dedication. In particular, two things require an in-depth analysis: Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista, Windows XP | 2 Comments »
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