Windows 7 and Performance

[Marik]

Microsoft has dedicated a whole entire team to System Performance for Windows 7. Microsoft seems to acknowledged flaws in performance in Windows Vista and has made it a key area to fix in Windows 7. Overall system performance is aimed to be improved from the first second you turn on your PC to the time you turn it off Microsoft wants it to be fast and responsive.

Microsoft acknowledges the difference in hardware configurations and its role on performance.

Because systems and configurations differ, boot times can vary significantly. This is verified by many lab results, but can also be seen in independent analysis, such as that conducted by Ed Bott. Sample data from Ed’s population of systems found that only 35% of boots took less than 30 seconds to give control to the user. Though Ed’s data is from a small population, his data is nicely in line with what we’re observing. Windows Vista SP1 data (below) also indicates that roughly 35% of systems boot in 30 seconds or less, 75% of systems boot in 50 seconds or less. The Vista SP1 data is real world telemetry data. It comes to us from the very large number of systems (millions) where users have chosen to send anonymous data to Microsoft via the Customer Experience Improvement Program.

Most people will know how long it may take to boot into Windows it can be quick or it can be long enough to get a cup of coffee and sit back down to catch the login screen.

From our perspective, too few systems consistently boot fast enough and we have to do much better. Obviously the systems that are greater than 60 seconds have something we need to dramatically improve—whether these are devices, networking, or software issues. As you can see there are some systems experiencing very long boot times. One of the things we see in the PC space is this variability of performance—variability arises from the variety of choices, and also the variety of quality of components of any given PC experience. There are also some system maintenance tasks that can contribute to long boot times. If a user opts to install a large software update, the actual updating of the system may occur during the next boot. Our metrics will capture these and unfortunately they can take minutes to complete. Regardless of the cause, a big part of the work we need to do as members of the PC ecosystem is address long boot times.

Microsoft also acknowledges the great "Simple UI vs Eye candy UI" debate

We get many requests to make the base user interface “more fun” with animations and graphics (“like those found on competing products”) while at the same time some say “get rid of graphics and go back to Windows 2000”. Windows is enormously flexible and provides many ways to tune the experience.

Also the so called "registry tweaks" that have been floating around have been talked about and busted

For instance, we’ve found the vast majority of “registry tweak” recommendations to be bogus. Here’s one of my favorites. If you perform a Live search for “Enable Superfetch on XP”, you’ll get a large set of results. I can assure you, on Windows XP there is no Superfetch functionality and no value in setting the registry key noted on these sites. As with that myth, there are many recommendations pertaining to CPU scheduling, memory management and other configuration changes that aren’t helpful to system performance.

Source: Engineerng Windows 7

[Anteus]

Thanks for the good reading and quotes!

[zer0buRn]

Thanks Marik, great info... Let's hope Win7 doesn't turn out to be another Vista... Let's go team /break!

[Anteus]

It just can be bad! What are one going to do then?

[Marik]

Thanks Marik, great info... Let's hope Win7 doesn't turn out to be another Vista... Let's go team /break!

all I'm interested in is the game optimization part, I don't give 0 cents about the other things....and win7 won't be like vista since they will remove that +500 to +1000 ram for each/every game bs

[shought]

Thanks Marik, great info... Let's hope Win7 doesn't turn out to be another Vista... Let's go team /break!

all I'm interested in is the game optimization part, I don't give 0 cents about the other things....and win7 won't be like vista since they will remove that +500 to +1000 ram for each/every game bs

I'm think the opposite of you... I don't care about games being fast, if you want em faster buy a new graphics card. All I care about is performance and looks(a bit). Looks that look crisp, but don't use up too many resources :lol: Yep, I do ask much for MS.

[Anteus]

If it's going to be as good as they describe it to be I'm on it!

I only care about performance and some looks (clean not bloat) and the flexibility so if you only use the computer to play games theres a profile for that and it go down on the RAM usage, but if you got a new computer with decent amount of RAM and want OS performance then Windows should be able to use that free RAM to speed up thing but leave it if the user needs it.

[Marik]

I'm think the opposite of you... I don't care about games being fast, if you want em faster buy a new graphics card. All I care about is performance and looks(a bit). Looks that look crisp, but don't use up too many resources :lol: Yep, I do ask much for MS.

a....hello???

Gameplay over graphics any day!!!!

[zer0buRn]

Thanks Marik, great info... Let's hope Win7 doesn't turn out to be another Vista... Let's go team /break!

all I'm interested in is the game optimization part, I don't give 0 cents about the other things....and win7 won't be like vista since they will remove that +500 to +1000 ram for each/every game bs

This is the exact reason why I reverted back to WinXP. Vista couldn't play games with a shit. I don't know if SP1 fixed any of this. But this is also one of my main concerns for 7 as well.

[crack1up]

I have also reverted back to XP. Microsoft basically took better hardware and made it perform worse with windows Vista than on XP. Not just gaming but file transfer, memory management and lack of sound support and hid core system functions (ie. system restore). How could they have listened to the users? It was just plain sloppy. Any other company would have been heckled out of business.

I want the system to be user friendly ( not ask me 2 or 3 times do I really want to do this). I want good gaming performance without adding an additional graphics or sound card and memory. I want to be able to surf the net without the worries of getting hijacked and taken for a ride and my bank account emptied. And I want it all for the average price of a PC today. This is not asking for much.

[irefay]

From what I have read in the past, Vista was suppose to be a mid-step upgrade from xp, then Microsoft started putting to many "features" into it and its development slowed down. Windows 7 has always been the "big" release.

[shought]

From what I have read in the past, Vista was suppose to be a mid-step upgrade from xp, then Microsoft started putting to many "features" into it and its development slowed down. Windows 7 has always been the "big" release.

Let's hope so, I'd like to see some performance improvements in Windows7. I mean XP is cool, but it can always be better :o