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Windows 8 Is Twice as Fast as Windows XP on a 7-Year-Old Laptop


AlienForce1

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A report released by Troy Hunt, a software architect and Microsoft MVP, reveals that Windows 8 is almost twice as fast as Windows XP on a 7-year-old laptop.

“I mean I know there’s this unwritten law that newer software requires more resources but my experience with Windows 8 has always been that’s it’s way faster certainly than Windows 7 was on the same hardware, but it’s my recollection that XP was never really as snappy as 8 is now on any hardware,” he said in a post.

Hunt used a Lenovo T60 laptop released in 2006 with 1GB of RAM, a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo CPU and a 7,200 RPM HDD. The results pretty much speak for themselves.

Windows 8 installed in only 24 minutes and 55 seconds, while Windows XP needed 26 minutes and 12 seconds to copy all of its files. Windows 8 boots in 6 seconds, much faster than XP and its 17-second loading time.

Windows 8 opens a Word and a PDF document in 3.4 seconds, while XP needs 4.3 and 2.8 seconds, respectively, to cope with these two tasks.

Last but not least, the new Windows operating system managed to load a Photoshop file in 16.5 seconds on the aforementioned hardware configuration, while Windows XP was a lot slower with 41.5 seconds.

The PassMark Performance Test brought Windows 8 a total of 407.5 points, while Windows XP managed to score a final mark of 356.5 points.

[Softpedia]

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“I mean I know there’s this unwritten law that newer software requires more resources but my experience with Windows 8 has always been that’s it’s way faster certainly than Windows 7 was on the same hardware, but it’s my recollection that XP was never really as snappy as 8 is now on any hardware,” he said in a post.

I've documented this and also mentioned the same a few times on the forums - however, there's an unglamorous reason for it.

Windows 8 lacks Aero which is the prime reason for being able to leave XP far behind.

Windows 8 installed in only 24 minutes and 55 seconds, while Windows XP needed 26 minutes and 12 seconds to copy all of its files. Windows 8 boots in 6 seconds, much faster than XP and its 17-second loading time.

In fact, Windows 8 takes slightly more time than Windows 7 with the installation process. There's a nice tweak which shaves off a bit of the installation time which shall be also covered in the upcoming tutorials.

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For a change, it's good to see an Author, Troy Hunt post with some substantiating statistics.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of benchmarking - tend to rely more on tests that revolve around my own pattern of work rather than some tests formulated around unfamiliar parameters. :dunno:

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WTF using xp !? compare it to win 7 maybe and see no serious if any at speed, anyway in my system i see no diff :P

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:unsure:

but if faster than 7's, I think yes :) :tehe:

Oh yes, of course - BTW, on a fast system even Windows 7 is faster than XP (on a slow system however, XP is faster chiefly because Aero overloads Windows 7.)

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WTF using xp !? compare it to win 7 maybe and see no serious if any at speed, anyway in my system i see no diff :P

I installed Windows 8 on a laptop that previously had Windows 7 -> now it`s much faster ... so, it seems that it depends on hardware ...

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Oh yes, of course - BTW, on a fast system even Windows 7 is faster than XP (on a slow system however, XP is faster chiefly because Aero overloads Windows 7.)

aero glass by default slowdown the systems here on win7 :dunno:

probably that's why Win8 seems faster to me :)

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Oh yes, of course - BTW, on a fast system even Windows 7 is faster than XP (on a slow system however, XP is faster chiefly because Aero overloads Windows 7.)

aero glass by default slowdown the systems here on win7 :dunno:

probably that's why Win8 seems faster to me :)

Right, apart from the Aero factor, Windows 8 has some modernized innovations & enhancements that utilize resources and hardware in an optimized manner. ;)

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Right, apart from the Aero factor, Windows 8 has some modernized innovations & enhancements that utilize resources and hardware in an optimized manner. ;)

yep, booting time seems faster too :)

btw I'm waiting for your tutorial :D

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Right, apart from the Aero factor, Windows 8 has some modernized innovations & enhancements that utilize resources and hardware in an optimized manner. ;)

yep, booting time seems faster too :)

btw I'm waiting for your tutorial :D

Yep - shall be putting it up, soon. :)

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  • Administrator

In other news, Firefox 19 is faster than Firefox 1.0.

Back to the point, where does it show that it's "twice" as fast? I don't see any numbers that show it's "twice" as fast. Only loading Photoshop is exceedingly faster.

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WTF using xp !? compare it to win 7 maybe and see no serious if any at speed, anyway in my system i see no diff :P

I installed Windows 8 on a laptop that previously had Windows 7 -> now it`s much faster ... so, it seems that it depends on hardware ...

Yep and then apart from the hardware aspect, a lot depends on the level of the User's competency and resourcefulness - tweaking options for any OS other than Windows 8 are saturated.

EOD, it depends on one's outlook, too - an Optimist may look forward to learn and be humble in asking whereas someone else might take on a jaundiced perspective (such people will not acknowledge speed gains.)

With Windows 8 Users, it's very easy to differentiate between the Competent & the Incompetent - this OS widened the gap between those two categories. One doesn't require the services of an Astrologer to learn why a certain User belongs to Whiners Unlimited Inc.

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WTF using xp !? compare it to win 7 maybe and see no serious if any at speed, anyway in my system i see no diff :P

I installed Windows 8 on a laptop that previously had Windows 7 -> now it`s much faster ... so, it seems that it depends on hardware ...

and maybe the speed came from the scratch instillation not from w8 only? :rolleyes:

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A report released by Troy Hunt, a software architect and Microsoft MVP, reveals that Windows 8 is almost twice as fast as Windows XP on a 7-year-old laptop.

Incidentally, I had tested Windows 8, Windows 7 and XP on the IBM T42 - the predecessor of the Lenovo T61 (which means a laptop which was older by nearly 2 more years.) :showoff:

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interesting but a little bit of piece fitting i think..

cache use has changed in win8 which is why app load times are better

BUT

You can modify any OS to improve this and the same goes for copy / transfer performance.

and the same thing as Boot times.. WIN8 booting up should not be compared to anything else.

its drasticly changed and not a fair comparison.

i do know that there were some advanced so called optimizations down with GPU hardware aceleration for WIN 8

and that would make the UI perform better than WIN 7 (as stated on MS blogs during the beta sorry can't rememeber the link)

but i don't care i still have so many reasons to dislike the OS that its dumb for me to use it.

If i did i would have to go on a rampage customizing everything about it. you name it i would slash and burn it..

the problem i think is people don't factor in people like me customize a TON of stuff.

so that means i don't use my computer like other people do, so whats good for you *may not be good for me.

I use my own custom themes on and off that require patching system files and that includes WMC (custom i made for me)

i use a custom start menu i made out of a toolbar basicly and i have an OSD that is created from scratch and i have custom icons everywhere

the list goes on and on and on!

How many people keep icons on teh desktop ? ..i bet they love the new win 8 start screen lol

me ? i havn't had an icon on my desktop in 10 years.. i do things my way.

twice as fast ???

anyway when they decided to make a new OS why do i still have to hack stuff like system files for themes ?

and why do i have to hack even more now ? they SHOULD have done a ton of things we have been asking for instead we got win 8 :(

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MidnightDistortions

It always appears to be that way with every OS. Granted benchmarks might be better with Win 8 then they were with previous OS's. I noticed this with upgrading my PC from Vista to 7 that it responded better but only better, it doesn't fix the lack of system resources and i am sure that within a few months of having Win 8 on either my laptop or my older desktop that it would be running into the same performance problems Win 7 has which is not really all that bad considering the limited specs i have on both systems.

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