Windows 7 & 8 comparison.

I have to wonder where I have setup wrongly. I am not concerning speeds here, only comparison time . This is a quite average machine, as you can see. I have Windows 7 ultimate. and windows 8 consumer (installed last) on the same computer and HD, in a dual boot environment. To the best of my ability, both are customised to the same extent.
Prefetch has been allowed to "settle in". I had to make Windows 7 as the default boot, to avoid the reboot function
on Windows 8, into Windows 7. This would have added about 11 seconds the windows 7 boot time, otherwise.
The problem is that I cannot deny the flood of reports that Windows 8 is faster. Many of these reports claim
outstanding figures. Where are they coming from? In Windows 8, everything was started from the Metro interface.

Windows 7 Windows 8
Start-up (Bios
to useable desktop/Metro
inc Internet connection). 43 secs 41.5 secs
--
Open IE to Google 1.2 secs 1.1 secs

Open IE to webpage 4.4 secs 4.2 secs

Open LIve Mail (No Mail to
collect, inc Live login) 5.2 secs 5.4 secs

Paint 1.0 secs 1.2 secs

Control Panel .2 secs .4 secs


I am not claiming these as authorative benchmarking .- just my own tests, out of curiosity.

FWIW Dave, on the machine in my specs, Win8 feels about the same speed as Win7, perhaps only slightly faster.

Games on 8 play about 5% better than on 7, by my own feelings and not scientific. (Every single driver the same on both for me.)

But on a very very old laptop - it handled 7 well enough to use. 8 was too slow.

So different machines doing different things with different results.

Hiya Dave,

There are a lot of factors in what people are reporting e.g.

1. Boot.

Hybrid boot on 8 is quick - but you only get that after a shutdown - not if you restart.

Boot time is not very important to me anyway.

2. In day to day use, there is no noticeable difference in speed for me between 7 and 8.

3. All o/s will vary in performance depending on the system they are on - some may be using systems that are particularly suited to 8.

4. I strongly suspect many are comparing their existing ( i.e. old with the inevitable slow downs that come with time ) 7 installs against a brand new fresh install of 8.

No surprise the fresh install feels a little snappier.

5. There is also the psychological aspect. I suspect many just imagine it is quicker - very common, I would think.

Hi there
Boot time to me isn't that important either -- but SHUTDOWN is a UNIVERSE faster in W8 -- and I'm running roughly the same sort of applications on W8 and W7.

Shutdown is almost instantaneous on W8 -- could be as much as 45secs on W7 or even longer sometimes.

The W7 installation is reasonably new (clean install) so there isn't the problem of "gradual degradation" etc when running an OS.

Shutdown in W8 works almost at once whether on a decent laptop with an I5 processor and 8GB RAM or a small netbook.

(Of course if you really want to be perverse you could add the extra time in W8 you need to get to the charms screen to shut the system down whereas in W7 you do it from the task bar. --However that is really in the realms of idiotic statistics.


Ad SSD's to the mix and the difference is even more marked. (SSD's on both W7 and W8).

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks guys. I guess those three posts are enough to make me happy. - Nothing wrong on my side. maybe, just a little - horses for courses. But who knows, there could be some very noticeable improvements before rtm. I forgot the shutdown time. Yes. very fast. I have got one or two of the known tricks for a fast shutdown in windows 7, but 8 does it without the tricks! Again, not too important. I usually shutdown and push off to somewhere else - lol.

Dave, If Win 7 works for you then you probably do not have a compelling reason to purchase Win 8 CP. I do not know if I will or not. I am playing in Win 8 CP exclusively for now. I do like IE 10 very much, but I have to believe eventually this will be available for Win 7. Perhaps I'm wrong, I hope not. I also do not see a great speed increase with Win 8 CP. I do like the way it signs on to my Live ID when I start the OS. That's cool. Win 8 CP seems to work better in my network than my Win 7 Ultimate. I'm pulling my hair out over that one. But are these good enough reasons to buy another OS. I guess I will have to see what the cost will be first to decide.

To get a realistic comparison, one would have to compare Win8 CP with the Win7 Beta. The latter was very fast too. But once the sytem is fully loaded, it naturally will slow down.

I run my current big Win7 system and a Win8 CP (in vBox) with not much on it from an SSD and I cannot really see much difference. The only difference is in reboot time. But that is because Win8 is in Virtual Box and when it reboots, Win7 Superfetch will load it from the cache which is more or less instant.

I've noticed that Win 8 starts up and shuts down much faster on my machine, and it plays games better. But everyone's computer is unique. The benchmark tests are usually done by technical experts (at least the ones that get into magazines are) and they USUALLY show that Win 8 is faster, but only on their test machines.

W8 may end up faster but it is not there yet. Startup and shutdown times are not relevant to me.

In gpu testing there is still a lot of work to do. Benchmarks are really no where near W7 yet, I am using the 300.10 driver.

In hard drive testing the difference is much closer. When I first loaded up W8 I was able to optimize either my single M4 or my R0 array of either Intel 520's or two M4's. That feature is no longer working, have no idea why yet.

Overall I just do not see many difference's between W7 and W8, take away metro ui and then you have nothing more than W7 SP2 imho.