Windows 8 delivers the goods on benchmarks

[nsane.forums]

Most people may swear by the number seven for luck, but results from CNET Labs show that Microsoft's new favorite very well could be lucky number 8.


A few of the coming Windows 8 computers.

CNET Labs has released its system benchmarks comparing Windows old and new, and they've discovered that Microsoft's controversial new operating system doesn't steamroll over Windows 7 as much as it gently shoves it out of the way.

Operating system	Boot time	Shutdown time	MS Office performance	iTunes decoding	Media multitasking	Cinebench
Windows 7 SP1	45.2	7.7	408	127	343	16985
Windows 7 SP1	47.5	7.8	412	124	344	17,116
Windows 8 RTM	31.4	8.8	372	123	340	15,300
Windows 8 RTM update	26.4	11.7	367	123	340	17,114

*All tests measured in seconds, except for Cinebench. On the Cinebench test, the higher number is better.

Our test bed is a Dell XPS desktop, running a 3.2GHz Core i7 processor, with 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, a Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS PCI-Express with 512 MB RAM graphics card, and a 1 TB Western Digital hard drive (model WDC3200AAKS).

We tested Windows 7 Service Pack 1 twice, and Windows 8 RTM twice. The second time we tested Windows 8, we updated the operating system because Microsoft claimed that the update was a big improvement to the OS. We conducted the "Wake from Sleep" test only once on Windows 7 because of its recent addition to our benchmark tests.

A word of caution about these benchmarks: They provide a snapshot of how our specific test hardware performs under strictly controlled conditions. They are not always representative of actual real-world performance.

We excluded our new "wake from sleep" test from the chart because the results were erratic. The second Windows 8 "wake from sleep mode" test gave us an average of 17 seconds, significantly slower than our experience with a real-world Windows 7 computer running Windows 8. My Toshiba DX1215 all-in-one touch screen, running the Windows 8 RTM with all the updates, regularly wakes from sleep in under two seconds. That's a major win for Microsoft, even if our Windows 7 hardware running Windows 8 resulted in erratic tests.

Nevertheless, you can see that the Windows 8 RTM from August and the big October update to Windows 8 proved to boot significantly faster than Windows 7 Service Pack 1. Boot time shrunk by around 45 percent between Windows 7 SP1 and Windows 8 RTM updated, and that's a key metric in making Windows 8 appealing.

Claims about sluggishness in Windows will be slightly harder to prove in Windows 8. Our in-use performance tests were fairly even, which CNET Labs explained to me as being because the tests have not been optimized to run on Windows 8. However, the Microsoft Office performance test shows Windows 7 taking around 410 seconds to complete its tasks, to around 370 seconds in Windows 8 -- about 10 percent faster.

Shutdown times in the lab were recorded at about the same speed for both Windows 7 and Windows 8, which parallels my real-world experience. Windows 7 SP1 has never been beastly for me when shutting down, although that hasn't been the case for everybody.

So, what we can conclude from all these lab tests is that on the key metric of how long it takes you to get going on your computer, Windows 8 lives up to its promise. But as always, your personal configuration could greatly affect your device's performance.

View:Original Article

[RealNeo]

Our test bed is a Dell XPS desktop, running a 3.2GHz Core i7 processor, with 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, a Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS PCI-Express with 512 MB RAM graphics card, and a 1 TB Western Digital hard drive (model WDC3200AAKS).

And that 320gb WD blue is compressed to 1TB? :D Don't give me fabricated numbers, Win7 is still the best. :)

[csmdew]

Our test bed is a Dell XPS desktop, running a 3.2GHz Core i7 processor, with 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, a Nvidia GeForce 8400 GS PCI-Express with 512 MB RAM graphics card, and a 1 TB Western Digital hard drive (model WDC3200AAKS).

And that 320gb WD blue is compressed to 1TB? :D Don't give me fabricated numbers, Win7 is still the best. :)

And only a sata 3.0 GB at that

[calguyhunk]

..... 1 TB Western Digital hard drive (model WDC3200AAKS).

And that 320gb WD blue is compressed to 1TB? :D Don't give me fabricated numbers, Win7 is still the best. :)

LOL! Nice catch. I missed it when reading the story :uhoh: But the numbers don't necessarily have to be fabricated. Most benchmarks tell you roughly the same thing. Win8 is better on the benchies, but requires a little bit of getting used to on the part of the users that most people are wary of atm. With time, I guess most of us have to get used to it. ;)

[centserick2]

so far so good in windows 8..though there area issues which need to be addressed...hopefully fix will come out soon. lol

[centserick2]

win8 ftw

[mosaji]

the time you save due to these enhancements will be lost toggling between metro and desktop...

give us back our desktop and start button...

[R3C0N]

Getting used to it is the point. I was to long on XP and changed over a year ago to windows 7 x64 but I still feel especially under the hub Im not so familiar as on XP where I found everything to fix manually, erase traces complete. I feel a little bit locked out on win7 cause there just to many settings, hidden folders, under it makes it difficult to clean it or fresh it up.

[visualbuffs]

thats why i start to love windows 8