Introduction

Microsoft’s latest Operating System (OS) for PCs, Windows Vista, has not been received warmly by PC owners. Announced on July 22 2005, it was released on January 30, 2007 worldwide. This was 5 years after Microsoft’s previous OS, Windows XP, was released. Vista was seen as a bloated, resource-hungry OS with numerous hardware incompatibilities and borked drivers which was slower than XP. Since then, there has been a wave upon wave of updates and fixes by Microsoft trying to make Vista popular and better than any OS it has released before.

Microsoft released Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Vista on February 4, 2008. This contained Hardware Ecosystem Support and Enhancements, Application Compatibility Improvements, Reliability Improvements, Performance and Power Consumption Improvements, Security Improvements and Support for New Technologies and Standards. This was a big step for Vista, as now Vista looked like the OS that Microsoft intended it to be.

Microsoft plans on releasing Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Vista. The first beta of this new Service Pack was made available to everyone through a Customer Preview Program (CPP) from December 4, 2008. You can download this beta from here depending on your version of Windows. Note that Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 will share a single service pack binary.

I  have been using Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition for the last 8 months after upgrading from XP. I am fully satisfied with this OS. I like the look and feel so much, that I can never think of going back to Windows XP as my main operating system for everyday use. Naturally when Microsoft made this beta available, curiosity took the better of me and I decided to investigate to see if the performance could be even better.

Some of the notable changes in Vista SP2 include:

• The Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless, which contains support for Bluetooth v2.1. Bluetooth v2.1 is the most recent specification for Bluetooth wireless technology and Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration.
• Improved performance for Wi-Fi connection after resuming from sleep mode.
• New capabilities to Direct X Graphic display reliability. The graphics experience has been greatly improved for users, such as gamers, running applications that require a lot of graphics processing.
• Updates to the RSS feeds sidebar with improved performance and responsiveness.
• Improved audio and video performance for streaming high definition content.
• Ability to record data to Blu-Ray media.
• Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches (currently available for SP1 systems as a standalone update)

Complete information about SP2 can be here

Windows Vista SP1 was a clean installation. No updates were installed.

Windows Vista SP2 beta was installed after installing Vista SP1. No further updates were installed.

Disk Performance

HD Tune Pro 3.10

Read Test

Windows Vista SP1

Windows Vista SP2 Beta

Write Test

Windows Vista SP1

Windows Vista SP2 Beta

In this benchmark, both of the OSes are pretty much even.

Lets move on to our next benchmark.

 

HD Tune Pro File Benchmark

This file benchmark measures the performance for reading and writing files to the selected hard disk partition with different block sizes ranging from 0.5 KB to 8192 KB (x-axis). The length of the test files can be set. For accurate results a large size is recommended. If the file length is too small, the hard disk may be able to cache the entire file. In that case the cache speed will be measured instead of the hard disk throughput.

Windows Vista SP1

Windows Vista SP2 Beta

Here is where Vista SP2 Beta shows performance improvements. The read and write speeds of the file are higher than Vista SP1 in most of the  block sizes. The read and write speeds for 16KB blocks is increased by about 25MB/s on Vista SP2 Beta.

Lets move on to our next benchmark.

 

 

ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34

Windows Vista SP1

Windows Vista SP2 Beta

As in the last benchmark, this benchmark also shows an increase in the disk performance with Vista SP2 Beta.

 

Copying Tests

All the tests were done 3 times and results were averaged and rounded off to nearest whole number.

The percent increases in performance is shown in the graphs as percent.

Increases in synthetic benchmarks is one thing, but increase in real world performance is what matters most. To see if there were any increases in real world performance, we formed our own custom test. The idea behind these tests is to emulate a real world usage, where the user is likely to notice an increase in performance and in the everyday tasks that a user does.

Test 1– We copied a folder of 8096 Wallpapers from one SATA hard drive to another SATA drive and measured the time it took with a stop watch.

This test shows a minor increase in copying performance, which can be considered within the margin of error. It is nothing to get too excited about here.

Test 2 – Our second copying test involves the same wallpaper folder from one SATA hard drive to external hard drive through a firewire connection.

WOW, this test shows a 20% improvement. Vista SP2 Beta is faster by 18 seconds at copying to a firewire drive.

Test 3 – Our third test is a measure of copying and compression performance. In this test, the same wallpaper folder was compressed with 7-Zip 4.62 and the 7z file was made on the other SATA drive.

This test also shows an increase in performance with Vista SP2 Beta, as the previous tests have shown. Vista SP2 Beta is faster by 30 seconds at copying and compressing at the same time. It looks like compression performance has improved. We will verify this by Winrar’s Benchark later in this review.

 

Boot Up

This test measures the time in seconds required for the system to boot up. The time was recorded with a stopwatch from the point power button is pressed to the time when the desktop first appears. This test was done 3 times and results were averaged and rounded off to nearest whole number.

Vista SP2 Beta ends up about 3 seconds slower here. Lets hope Microsoft makes the finished SP2 boot faster than SP1 as one thing that everybody hates, is having to sit there looking at the screen go through the boot up.

 

PCMark 05 1.2.0

PCMark is a series of computer benchmark tools developed by Futuremark. The tools are designed to test the performance of the user’s CPU and read/write speeds of RAM and hard drives.

This benchmark performs a set of tests and gives a score called PCMarks at the end. The Basic version was used for this test.

Windows Vista SP2 Beta shows a minor decrease in performance here.

CustomPC Benchmarks 2007

These benchmarks use widely available open-source applications to carry out the tasks that most of us perform on a regular basis. There are three tests, each of which measure different aspects of a PC’s performance. These tests are NOT synthetic benchmarks, but instead they use real world scenarios to test the performance.

The tests are:

GIMP Image Editing

H.264 Video Encoding

Multitasking

This test doesn’t show much difference between the two OSes. Vista SP2 beta leads in Image Editing and Video Encoding, but loses in multitasking test. Overall Vista SP2 Beta is slower by 6 points.

 

 

Audio Encoding

For our Audio encoding tests we used the Gladiator Soundtrack (Awesome movie btw!) . We converted the audio tracks to wav files on our hard drive and did the encoding tests with that. There were 17 wav files, with a total size of 622MB.

The encoding was carried out with Foobar music player v 0.9.6. Foobar was chosen for this purpose because this software can use all the available CPU cores in the system to do the conversion. It does this by converting each song file on an available core. Thus all the four cores were used on our Q9450 each time we did the conversion. The theory behind this is that if the CPU is loaded is 100% during each conversion on each OS, it reduces the error that may be induced due to fluctuation in load by software that is not multi-threaded.

Here’s how the taskbar CPU usage looks like while the encoding takes place. Note the 100% usage.

MP3 Conversion

We employed the services of the most popular mp3 encoder, LAME. LAME v 3.98.2 was used for this test. The time was measured by the encoding timer on the Foobar conversion window.

The encoder seetings were V0 Best Quality ( ~ 245Kbps). Fast Mode (-vbr -new) was used.

Both the OSes end up having the same encoding time.

AAC Conversion

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at many bit rates. iTunes AAC is the most popular usage of this format.

For this test we used the freely available Nero AAC encoder v 1.3.3.0. The settings for this encoder were VBR Q1.00 Best Quality (~400Kbps).

Vista SP2 Beta is faster by 11% in this test. Another victory for Vista SP2 Beta.

 

 

Lets move on to some 3D synthetic benchmarks.

3DMARK 06 v1.1.0 Basic

Vista SP2 Beta leads in this test with over 100 3DMark points more than Vista SP1.

3DMARK Vantage

Vista SP2 Beta again leads in this test, but not by much.

 

 

Lets explore some real world gaming results.

Lets face it, if anybody wants to know if Vista SP2 Beta is worth it, they will look at this game.

Crysis series is the most beautiful set of games to grace the PC screens to date and they can bring the highest end of PCs to their knees.

Crysis Warhead, developed by Crytek, is an expansion to the original Crysis. Crysis Warhead follows Sergeant Michael “Psycho” Sykes, a Non-Playable Character (NPC) from the original Crysis, as he faces his own trials and challenges on the other side of the island during the time period of the first game.

Framebuffer Crysis Warhead Benchmark tool was used for the purpose of this test. “Ambush” timedemo was selected from this tool. This timedemo represents real-world gameplay as the player runs through the night across a falling aircraft, walks through water, and throws grenades blowing up a hut. This timedemo also features some burning huts. As the timedemo ends, the player passes through some foliage as the night changes to day.

Tests were run at 1280×1024 resolution with 2x Anti-Aliasing(AA) enabled at Enthusiast DX10 (DX10 E), Gamer DX10 (DX10 G), Enthusiast DX9 (DX9 E), Gamer DX9 (DX9 G) settings.

This was the strangest benchmark. FPS did not even budge in some tests between the two OSes. It was like watching a mirror image of performance on Vista SP1.

Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare was one of the most successful games of 2007. It was the top-selling game worldwide for 2007, selling over seven million copies by January 2008. It uses a proprietary game engine that includes features such as true world-dynamic lightning, HDR lighting effects, dynamics shadows, and depth of field. It features a fictional story set in the near-future. The most well received part of the game is its multiplayer modes, where you earn experience points for kills and completing certain tasks online. These experience points unlock certain abilities and new and more powerful guns which can tip the balance in your favor in online matches.

For testing this game, we recorded a timedemo on the “Creek” map while playing online. The demo was played back at normal speed with the demo command from the console and the results were recorded by FRAPS.

All settings were at their maximum; 1280×1024 resolution was used with 4xAA and max AF from in-game. The FPS Cap was removed for this test and all the latest patches were applied.

Vista SP2 beta wins hands-down here. Its faster by 18% and 14% in minimum and average FPS, which are the most important.

Company of Heroes is a real-time strategy game (RTS) developed by Relic Entertainment. Company of Heroes is set during World War II where the player commands two U.S. military units during the Battle of Normandy and the Allied capture of France. It makes use of the “Essence Engine”, developed in-house by Relic. This engine makes use of special graphical effects, including high dynamic range lighting, dynamic lighting & shadows, advanced shader effects and normal mapping. Company of Heroes also utilizes the Havok physics engine. This game features beautiful graphics which can be quite taxing on graphic cards.

The in-game performance benchmark was used for this test and the results are taken from the results reported by this benchmark at the end. All the latest patches were applied.

Vista SP2 Beta shows a 2% increase in performance – not much but none the less, a step in the right direction.

Unreal Tournament series have been one of the most popular multiplayer games on PCO. Unreal Tournament 3 is the fourth game in the Unreal Tournament series and the eighth Unreal game.

The benchmarking was done with the help of HardwareOC Unreal Tournament 3 Benchmark v1.3 on the Corruption Map.

All settings were at maximum. 16AF was used. Resolution was 1280×1024. The latest patch was applied.

Another game where Vista SP2 Beta shows considerable gains in performance.

Conclusion

Let me start of by saying, Microsoft is doing everything it can to improve the image of Windows Vista. The recent “Mojave Experiment” is an example of that. But there is no point in advertising a product, if it fails to perform, is there?  Microsoft has to improve performance of Vista and exploit the hidden potential in this OS. Only then can Microsoft improve the image of Vista. With SP2, Microsoft looks to be doing exactly that. Mind you, this is only the beta of SP2 and already we are seeing some considerable gains over Vista SP1. We can’t wait to see what the finished product looks like and what it brings to the table.

Lets recap the tests with the winning OS being represented in red.

Judging from the above table, you can see that Vista SP2 Beta comes out on top more often. This is great news for Vista and Microsoft. All those who are thinking of skipping Vista altogether in favor of Windows 7 should at least give Vista a try. Lets hope the finished product brings even more gains to the table.

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-Karan

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