I’m reading this post on PC World about why Vista Service Pack Doesn’t Speed OS.
Devil Mountain ran its DMS Clarity Studio framework on a laptop Barth described as a “barn burner” — dual-core processor, dedicated graphics, and either 1GB or 2GB of memory — to compare performance of the SP1 release candidate that Microsoft Corp. released last week with the RTM version that hit general distribution last January. The Vista RTM was not updated with any of the bug fixes, patches or performance packs that Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update since the operating system’s debut.
“One gigabyte, 2GB [of memory], it didn’t make a difference,” said Barth. “SP1 was never more than 1% or 2% faster.”
The difference between Vista RTM and SP1 on Devil Mountain’s Microsoft Office-based test script was “statistically insignificant,” Barth said, while a multitasking test panel produced results for SP1 less than 1% faster than RTM.
“Our goal wasn’t to bash Vista,” said Barth. “We’ve been doing this for a while, we know how to do it, and we tried to be as clinical as possible. But SP1 is not going to be a panacea for any performance problems users have with Vista. If you’ve been disappointed with the performance of Windows Vista, you’re not going to be any happier with SP1.”
The bottom line: It’s Vista’s architecture and feature set — Barth cited Volume Shadow Copy, Vista’s snapshot service, as an example — not a lack of fine-tuning or bug fixes that makes it perform poorly on PCs that run Windows XP blazingly fast.
Personally, I love using Windows Vista and with all the tweaks I’ve put in My Vista it seems to be performing pretty good for me and but I was disappointed to read news about the Vista SP1 not doing anything to increase the speed. Well, it’s because Vista is a hot seat that everyone is trying to debunk it, and may seem that it’s a joke. Depends on how you use Vista for, If you use Vista to look for errors on it then you would actually dedicate you time to find errors for it. But If you take time to aprreciate it, then you would actually see that Vista is a good OS.
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Dwayne Charrington 01.26.08 at 3:57 am
I myself am disappointed with SP 1. Perhaps Microsoft themselves still don’t know how to fix the speed issues with Vista just yet? Going on what SP 1 delivered for Vista I think it’s safe to say that we will be expecting a SP 2 very early or perhaps a hot fix that helps speed up Vista.
I like Windows Vista, but the issues surrounding the file transfer speeds especially just get under my nose. I’ve seriously considered going back to Windows XP, but much like what happened to XP when it first came out I’m going to ride Vista out and see what happens.
- Dwayne Charrington
CPU_PUNK 05.22.08 at 6:50 pm
Alright what i don’t get is why some would think that performance would improve with SP1 for Vista. From all the years of working with all Windows OS over the years one thing has remained constant any SP release for any MS OS will require more RAM. As to speeding up Vista I don’t think it possible due to the security built into the OS for the file system. Vista is a resource hog if you want a preformance boost turn off the eye candy. XP had the same issue as soon as you turn off the eye candy there was a big performance boost. Faster boot times and more RAM was freed up for other applications.