Vista Preview on AnandTech

[plinden]

I know we don't need another Vista thread, but AnandTech have done a preview of it here - http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2780

They spent a lot of time comparing it (mostly unfavorably) with Tiger.

Some lowlights:

• It takes up 10GB on the hard drive (although debugging is enabled so that takes up a lot of space).
• It very quickly eats up RAM (again when debugging is off, that is likely to be reduced)
• The Expose clone is badly done (harder to use, artifacts in the angled view making it hard to read the contents of the windows).
• The new security model is a real pain.
• Games performance is much lower than XP.
• General performance is lower but not as bad as for games.
• Vista Basic uses 97% of the CPU just to move a window about on the screen: see http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2780&p=13

In all my years of using Windows, I never realised that moving a window around the screen requires 30+% of the CPU. I just compared to OS X and it's true - I see CPU usage spiking at 30-40% in XP. OS X is barely above 10%.

 

[CANEHDN]

I'm using a 2.8GHz CPU on my XP machine here at work. My CPU usage hit a Max of 19% when moving a window. What bothers me about Xp (I'll have to check OS X later) but I am using 41% memory when idle. That's a lot of mem. usage. That's with 2GB of RAM.

 

[Timepass]

I know we don't need another Vista thread, but AnandTech have done a preview of it here - http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2780

They spent a lot of time comparing it (mostly unfavorably) with Tiger.

Some lowlights:

• It takes up 10GB on the hard drive (although debugging is enabled so that takes up a lot of space).
• It very quickly eats up RAM (again when debugging is off, that is likely to be reduced)
• The Expose clone is badly done (harder to use, artifacts in the angled view making it hard to read the contents of the windows).
• The new security model is a real pain.
• Games performance is much lower than XP.
• General performance is lower but not as bad as for games.
• Vista Basic uses 97% of the CPU just to move a window about on the screen: see http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2780&p=13

In all my years of using Windows, I never realised that moving a window around the screen requires 30+% of the CPU. I just compared to OS X and it's true - I see CPU usage spiking at 30-40% in XP. OS X is barely above 10%.

hate to nit pick but a lot of the things in your list are not valid completes or comments. Reading the artical they them selves stated that perfomace is hurt right now because Vista has not be opimized yet. Also rememeber the games where made for XP and are again opitmamized for XP so that also goign to hurt. most of the benchmark programs are not gear up for vista yet. Nor is vista full optmized.

Also I will like to point out that window movement at 97% only applied if Areo was not turn on. when it was turn on it dropped below XP demand by moving it off to the graphic card.


I expect to see the game numbers and other numbers to increase a lot by the time Vista is released. Remember right now vista is mostly being opimizted.

One thing you have to rememeber about these reviews is they are on a beta program so it safe to assume that things are only going to improve from where they are right now.

 

[theBB]

One thing you have to rememeber about these reviews is they are on a beta program so it safe to assume that things are only going to improve from where they are right now.

I would not expect major improvements. Bug fixes yes, but major improvements, I doubt it.

Whether software is optimized or not, I cannot help but thinking Vista will do what OSX has been doing for a while, but its minimum hardware requirements are so much higher. That does not spell efficient programming to me.

It is amazing how little resources Matlab uses when it is simulting fairly hefty mathematical calculations compared to Outlook. Once our XP CPU usage was at 99% for a sizable time period during an enterprise software upgrade running in the background. Matlab slowed down considerably, but simulations times were still acceptable. However, Outlook would take minutes just to restore from its minimized state. Same story with Excel.

I once had to use a computer with a broken fan. I could use Matlab for hours, but if you started Powerpoint, you had maybe five minutes before the computer shut itself down due to overheating. Microsoft does not respect hardware resources. Very inefficient programming. I wish there was a worthy competitor to force them into shape.

 

[plinden]

Also I will like to point out that window movement at 97% only applied if Areo was not turn on. when it was turn on it dropped below XP demand by moving it off to the graphic card.

I think you misunderstand what this means. Those who have computers that won't run Aero - the very ones who will buy Vista Basic for its reduced hardware requirements - are going to be hit by massive CPU usage doing basic stuff.

And even with 33% CPU usage, that's 3-5 times what moving a window costs in OS X.

As for optimization, time is getting very short for Microsoft to squeeze out more than a few percentage points in performance improvements.

 

[MisterMe]

hate to nit pick but a lot of the things in your list are not valid completes or comments. ...

Read and be wise.