Tech-Hounds.com

Performance

Since the focus of this article is software, more appropriately the difference between Vista and XP, we didn't think a low level performance test such as HDTach or IOMeter will do us any good. They focus on hardware as with other low level synthetic benchmarks. So, we will have to rely on our usual game level load test to see I/O performance differences between Vista and XP.

Our test setup
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 socket LGA-775 (running at 7 x 400 MHz)
4 x 512 MB A-DATA Vitesta 5-5-5-18 PC6400 DDR2-SDRAM
Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro 256 MB graphics card
Gigabyte P965-DS3P Intel P965 motherboard
2 x Hitachi Deskstar 250 GB Serial ATA 16 MB buffer 7200 rpm hard drives
LiteOn 1673S DVD-RW
FSP Epsilon 800 watts ATX/BTX power supply

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed
Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit with all the latest updates.
ATI Catalyst 7.8 reference driver
Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility 8.3.0.1011
Realtek Semiconductor High Definition Audio System Software Ver:R1.72
DirectX 9.0c
all respected games used for benchmarks have been updated to their latest, final builds.

These results are load times in miliseconds, so lower is better.

The results:

These results are very interesting. With first time loads, there are very little variances between runs. So, at least this test seems valid enough for the moment. There's no doubt, that Vista is slower than XP - particularly with a single drive setup. The gap is smaller with RAID 0 arrays, but Vista is still slower than XP by about 1 second. Processor overhead is less likely a factor here - in the past we've seen results that show better performance with RAID 0 arrays compared to single drives - just like what we're seeing here from both operating systems. F.E.A.R first run level loads is a good benchmark sensitive to hard drive transfer rates, not processor overhead.

The consecutive load results are a little bit difficult to explain. Although overall we can see Vista is slower, there's too big of a variation between runs to be absolutely sure - they fall somewhere between 10 and 25 percent. That's just too high than just normal variations between runs.What's causing this behavior? Let's look at Task Manager shots to see what's happening.

First Run Load



Consecutive Load



Because we restarted the system after each run for first time loads, Windows starts 'fresh' every time. This means Windows has more 'free' RAM to work with, hence the lower variations between runs. Now, look at the Task Manager shot with consecutive loads. You'll see RAM usage is higher with consecutive loads. It also tends to grow with each successive loads. Notice how F.E.A.R needs to 'reload' data from the hard drive to RAM - the dips in the graph. These factors are likely the cause we're seeing such high variations between runs - lots of data transfers  between RAM and the hard drive. Could it be F.E.A.R is 'leaking' memory? We don't think so. We do not see such high variations with XP between runs, so the problem lies elsewhere. The only suspect left is the operating system and / or drivers, and of course, SuperFetch. 

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