Windows 7 vs Windows 8 Real Time Test with Adobe Photoshop

I've been having performance issues between the Windows 7 side of my dual boot system and the Win8 side. And Windows 7 consistently out performs Windows 8.

In Nova Bench for example I have a dozen or more Win8 (Pro) tests in the 600-700 range, I can tweak the results a bit by adjusting the multiplier for my CPU or using the "extreme" setting in ASUS's Ai Suite for OCing. But the difference is clear, Nova Benchmarks for this same hardware running in Win7 (Home Premium) are about 50% better with scores consistently in the 900-1080 range. 1080 is my high water mark. Win8's best score is 823, with many scores in the 650 range.

Then I decided to get real.

I set up my real world test. I sometimes take a series of photo's and then use Adobe Element's Panoramic feature to stitch the images into one wide panorama. The images are all large megapixels to begin with (e.g. about 40M each) and the resulting panorama can be well in excess of 150M so we are talking big pictures.

I tested the system with the hardware BIOS settings the same and went to ASUS's Ai Suite to check to make sure the settings were the same for Win8 and Win7. I also checked in on AMD's Vision Control Center to ensure that all of the settings there were the same. Same hardware, same settings.

The tests - one used four images, the other six. These were the same images, drawn from the same hard drive. The images were not on the same hard drive as the OS or the program.

Each of my OS's is on their own SSD, so there may be a slight variation between the two SSD's but I don't think that can account for the differences I saw. In both cases Elements is also on the SSD in hopes of getting the maximum benefit of running off of an SSD.

The results;

Four images: Windows 7 took 2 minutes 25 seconds from start to finish. Windows 8; four minutes, 44 seconds.

Six images: Windows 7 - 3 minutes 50 seconds, Windows 8 - 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

Wow, I was not prepared for the time difference. I had been using Windows 8 more than Windows 7 just because it's newer and I wanted to get used to using it. But now I'm not so sure.

Any thoughts on Windows 8's performance here?

I will have to think up some other real life tests for these two systems.

For the curious here is one of the images, we had a Family Fun Day at the sledding hill sponsored by local social agency.

Thanks a lot for sharing your experiences, Windows 8 is a new Operating System, eventually it will be fine tunned with windows updates, but for now you are correct, Win7 is still faster.

Are the sizes of the images comparable.

SSDs can matter a lot.
Are these SSDs both recent ones? Or are they far apart?
SSDs generations apart can have a huge difference.
And yes, they tuned Windows 8 to "feel" faster than Windows 7, that may have lash backs in other applications.

whs said:

Are the sizes of the images comparable.

Click to expand...

Identical set of images.

al4nw31 said:

SSDs can matter a lot.
Are these SSDs both recent ones? Or are they far apart?
SSDs generations apart can have a huge difference.
And yes, they tuned Windows 8 to "feel" faster than Windows 7, that may have lash backs in other applications.

Click to expand...

Well the Win7 is on a Intel 330 180 GB SSD, while the Win8 is on a 120 GB Kingston HyperX SSD. I bought them both new this fall so I don't think they are generations apart, but the SSD's are not identical. The thing they have in common is that the day I bought them they were on sale.

I did some research, and it seems as though both SSDs have comparable performance to one another.
You should wait until they release a version that officially is built for Windows 8 before making performance comparisons.
There shouldn't be a large performance gap once that happens. It's too early to make large judgements.
But for now, Elements probably does work better on 7.

Slightly of-topic but have you ever tried this: Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE). I use it quite a bit and find it a very good program.

al4nw31 said:

I did some research, and it seems as though both SSDs have comparable performance to one another.
You should wait until they release a version that officially is built for Windows 8 before making performance comparisons.
There shouldn't be a large performance gap once that happens. It's too early to make large judgements.
But for now, Elements probably does work better on 7.

Click to expand...

Thanks for comparing the SSD's I really didn't do much research beyond being told SSD is a really good upgrade in terms of bang for the buck. The second one was bought on impulse when I was deciding to go to a dual boot, I figured dual boot, dual SSD.

As for Elements 10, that edition is so 2012. The 2013 Elements 11 is out but I'm not ready to shell out another $100 just to stay current, I looked at the improvements and didn't see anything that really appealed to me. Still a 32 bit app that can only use 4GB of memory. When Adobe moves Elements to 64 bit then maybe I'll bite.

Ray8 said:

Slightly of-topic but have you ever tried this: Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE). I use it quite a bit and find it a very good program.

Click to expand...

WOW!!

I loaded ICE and got my timer out to see how long it takes. Used the same six images as I did in Elements. In Win8 I waited six minutes for Adobe to produce the image, using ICE I had that same image in 10 seconds!!! I did notice that this is a 64 bit program and used 12 GB of my 32 GB of RAM, Adobe will only use 4 GB so that has to be the biggest difference. Now I don't know if there are any quality differences, Adobe outputs to an Adobe file format that I then have to convert to JPG and I know the JPG file is a fraction of the size of the Adobe file and there may be some other differences, but if I just want a JPG in the end anyway this is definitely the way to go. Thanks for the link.

If you check out some of the settings, you can export to a number of formats and it has an excellent function for adjusting the panorama for camera motion ie, how you panned.

al4nw31 said:

I did some research, and it seems as though both SSDs have comparable performance to one another.
You should wait until they release a version that officially is built for Windows 8 before making performance comparisons.
There shouldn't be a large performance gap once that happens. It's too early to make large judgements.
But for now, Elements probably does work better on 7.

Click to expand...

Not sure if you mean wait for an ssd made for w8, if so it will be a long wait.

An ssd is a sata drive, nothing more, nothing less. There certainly will not be one made for w8 specifically.

@DooRules, I think the reference to waiting for a Win8 version meant wait for a Win8 Adobe Elements, which I would hope will be a 64 bit program, and not a Win8 SSD.