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Quake 4 behaves in a more predictable manner than F.E.A.R. With Quake 4, we're seeing very small variations between runs - the only exception seems to be first run loads with a RAID 0 array. Even then, the variations are generally smaller than what we saw earlier with F.E.A.R (around 10 percent). As expected, Vista is slower than XP  - about 5 seconds with a single drive. However, it's actually 1 second faster on average with a RAID 0 array (2 seconds faster or lower due to variations between runs). There's very little variations with consecutive loads, and here Vista is about 1 second slower than XP. That 1 second may come from variations between runs, but we don't think so - variations between runs are very low in this test. It doesn't really matter anyway, since you wouldn't notice that kind of a difference in real life.

Now, what can be the cause of slower performance in Vista? Look closely - if we compare those first run results, Vista storage performance with both single and RAID 0 arrays is similar to Windows XP with a RAID 0 array? Now, if transfer rates is the influencing factor here, the RAID 0 array should've been faster. Obviously, that is not the case. The only explanation is processor overhead or CPU utilization during storage operations - that certainly will explain the performance difference between a single drive setup and a RAID 0 array in Windows XP.

First Run Load



Consecutive Load



Ah, that is enlightening. Quake 4 RAM usage stays pretty much constant with consecutive loads. The amount of RAM usage with consecutive loads is not that much different from first run loads. So, it looks like there's still plenty of RAM for Vista, Quake 4 and SuperFetch. If there's not enough memory, it's very likely Windows will try to swap some of the data into its page file - a bad thing since we actually want all data in the much faster RAM. Notice that the amount of free RAM is higher than what we saw earlier with F.E.A.R. This is likely the ideal scenario for doing I/O test related to hard drive in Vista - free as much RAM as possible. However, first run level loads in Quake 4 is really a measure of processor overhead rather than transfer rates.

We do think the results are valid enough to explain why Vista is generally slower than XP when it comes to hard drive performance. These results seem to indicate processor loads to be the culprit. However, we need a second test to confirm this. Let's see the Serious Sam II results.

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