Test Windows Vista - part 2

If there is one question that is burning on the lips of all of you, it is surely to know what is the performance of Windows Vista really like, especially compared to the leader of Windows for the moment, Windows XP.

To be able answer this question, we have performed a number of benchmark tests on the same machine, once with Windows Vista build 5270 and once with Windows XP SP2.

The test machine was the following:

• Pentium EE 3.2 GHz processor
• 2 GB of 3200 DDR Ram
• ATI X800 pro graphics card
• Gigabyte 8KNXPRO-Ultra64 motherboard

Note: Confirming the recent declarations from Microsoft, it seems that this beta version already supports ATi and Nvidia video cards, especially their drivers, a lot better then the previous beta versions. Also, even though our ATI X800 is now automatically recognized by Vista, this isn’t that case for our GeForce 6800….But between now and the release of Vista this problem will be resolved, and all video cards will have Vista compatible drivers.

To comeback to the benchmarks, I must admit that we encountered some difficulties…despite all the goodwill we could employ to the system. The problem is Vista doesn’t seem (yet) very receptive to the installation of this type of software on it. In some cases the software refused to install, whereas in other cases it would install but lock up before the tests were completed.

Here is our list, not overly exhaustive, of our "tests":

• Cinebench 2003: the applications freezes when trying to execute
• Business Winstone 2004: Random lock ups
• Call of Duty 2: Refuses to install
• …

In short, it is undoubtedly still a little early to draw up a performance assessment of Vista.

Just for information, the 3DMark 2005 test did actually work, here are the results:

    
Windows XP SP2 configuration                   Windows Vista Configuration    



    
Windows XP SP2 Score : 4474                       Windows Vista Score : 4402  



    
Windows XP SP2 Détails                                Windows Vista Détails   

As you can see, Vista is hardly much slower when compared to Windows XP, 2% in fact. We can say that the performances are pretty much identical.

In conclusion, for a version that is still a beta, a long way from being finished and even further then being optimized, these first results are quite encouraging with similar performances to an XP system using an identical configuration.

We will come back to these tests once a more up to date version of Vista is available, without a doubt in the next few weeks / months.