Looking at Vista's I/O Performance
Nearly 10 months after its released, Windows Vista's adoption rate is still pretty low, particularly compared to Windows XP. Of course, XP has quite of a lead over Vista - it's been the default choice for many users for several years now. As for the reason, well, it's actually nothing we didn't expect from Microsoft and their products. Keeping in tradition to other previous versions of Windows, Vista needs quite a hefty system to be able to run smoothly. You'll definitely NEED at least 1 GB of RAM and a DirectX 9 graphics card to enjoy what Vista has to offer. At least - if you really want to get your work done in Vista smoothly, prepare to get at least 2 GB of RAM and a dual core processor - it's that power hungry. With that kind of a machine, Windows XP is blazing fast - no wonder users prefer to stick to Windows XP..Even the promise and (unfulfilled) potential of DirectX 10 is not sufficient to sway the crowd. Ten months after the release of Vista and you can count the number of DirectX 10 titles on one hand - Company of Heroes, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition and Bioshock. Granted, Crysis is just a few weeks away and let's not forget the latest installment of Unreal Tournament. However, as many reviews and previews have shown, don't expect blazing fast performance from the available, first generation DirectX 10 hardware. Driver problems didn't made things any easier. Just look at the first six months of Vista release. GeForce 8800 graphics card owners are probably the hardest hit. There are also other problems as well - one is related to hard drive / storage and the other network performance.
Here;s an interesting tidbit from Adrian Kingsley-Hughes' blog, regarding the network performance problem.
I have received a response to the Vista network performance issue from Microsoft. Here are some points of interest:"
- We have been looking into this problem and are working on a doc that will go into the technical details of what we have found.
- Please note that some of what we are seeing is expected behavior, and some of it is not. In certain circumstances Windows Vista will trade off network performance in order to improve multimedia playback. This is by design.
- The connection between media playback and networking is not immediately obvious. But as you know, the drivers involved in both activities run at extremely high priority. As a result, the network driver can cause media playback to degrade. This shows up to the user as things like popping and crackling during audio playback. Users generally hate this, hence the trade off.
- In most cases the user does not notice the impact of this as the decrease in network performance is slight. Of course some users, especially ones on Gigabit based networks, are seeing a much greater decrease than is expected and that is clearly a problem that we need to address.
- Two other things to note. First, we have not seen any cases where a users internet performance would be degraded, in our tests this issue only shows up with local network operations.
- Second, this trade-off scheme only kicks in on the receive side. Transmit is not affected.
Vista's I/O Problems
Microsoft posted several updates and fixes - one of which is related to I/) storage performance. This issue have been plaguing the fledgling operating system for quite a while now. Earliest reports of such problems were from users using Windows Vista RC1 (yes, it's that long). Microsoft finally released an update addressing this problem at September 11, 2007.Windows Vista Performance and Reliability Update (938979)
"This update resolves issues that may affect some Windows Vista-based computers. These issues have been reported by customers who are using the Error Reporting service or Microsoft Customer Support Services."
- You experience a long delay when you try to exit the Photos screen saver.
- A memory leak occurs when you use the Windows Energy screen saver.
- If User Account Control is disabled on the computer, you cannot install a network printer successfully. This problem occurs if the network printer is hosted by a Windows XP-based or a Windows Server 2003-based computer.
- When you write data to an AVI file by using the AVIStreamWrite function, the file header of the AVI file is corrupted.
- When you copy or move a large file, the "estimated time remaining" takes a long time to be calculated and displayed.
- After you resume the computer from hibernation, it takes a long time to display the logon screen.
- When you synchronize an offline file to a server, the offline file is corrupted.
- If you edit an image file that uses the RAW image format, data loss occurs in the image file. This problem occurs if the RAW image is from any of the following digital SLR camera models:
-
- Canon EOS 1D
- Canon EOS 1DS
- For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base 932988 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932988/) Files from a Canon EOD 1D or 1DS camera may be corrupted after you use Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Live Photo Gallery, or Windows Explorer to edit the file metadata in Windows Vista or in Windows XP Service Pack 2
- After you resume the computer from hibernation, the computer loses its default gateway address
- Poor memory management performance occurs.
Possible issues with Windows Vista* and Intel® RAID
The following issues may occur on Windows Vista* with a supported Intel® RAID Controller hub:
- Inability to install Windows Vista (i.e. system halts during installation)
- Performance degradation
- Timeout errors reported by iastor or iastor(v) in Microsoft Event Viewer*
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