Windows 7 HD and SSD Performance Analyzed

[Sabre]

Performance Summary: Our performance numbers verify our initial impressions of Windows 7. Platter based hard drives and high-end solid state drives, all run faster on Windows 7. Solid state drives see the largest performance boost, which showed up to a 35% improvement in read performance and up to a 23% boost in write performance. The performance difference for platter based hard drives is admittedly smaller, but even though the numbers don't showcase it, there is a definitely smoother, snappier feeling to running Windows 7 compared to Vista, which can be perceived even on traditional hard drives.

Windows 7 does a lot to un-do the damage that Microsoft did with Windows Vista. Windows 7 feels lightweight, fresh, and far more intuitive. Sure, lots of the new user interface elements are pulled from the Mac OSX design guidebook, but they are implemented well in the Windows environment, and the whole thing feels polished. Even in a release candidate (i.e, non-final) state, the OS is quick, solid, and feels production ready. For the first time in years, we are anxiously awaiting an operating system release from Microsoft.

Windows 7 is shaping up to be an improvement over Windows Vista in almost every meaningful way. At this point, everything seems like it's moving in the right direction with this new operating system, and Microsoft is finally showing that it can better compete in terms of usability and user-experience in today's computing environments against OSX and Linux, providing a compelling case why the Windows operating system is such a dominant force. Those who like to bash Microsoft at every turn will have to find some new reasons to hate on Windows 7, as low, machine-halting performance won't likely be a factor when Win7 comes into the mix

I'm more than likely going to switch my work and home machine over to 7 very shortly.

[complacent]

It's about goddamned time. I've been playing with 7 since they were first posted on the msdn subscriber network.

I'm very excited about the final release. They better not this up.

[chicken n waffles]

can't wait to dump vista off my desktop. i've been tempted to just throw xp back on it but i'd rather hold out for 7.

1.5GB of memory usage just to sit at idle with no programs running? EAT SHIT AND DIE VISTA

[scheherazade]

can't wait to dump vista off my desktop. i've been tempted to just throw xp back on it but i'd rather hold out for 7.

1.5GB of memory usage just to sit at idle with no programs running? EAT SHIT AND DIE VISTA

It's not all 'used'

The system cache sucks up memory and it looks like a lot is used up...

BUT, only a small part of that isn't released when needed.

Most of it acts like a buffer for files that were previously accessed from hard disk.
Which means that any re-access is super fast.
And you do IO in ram, which is later flushed at its own pace to disk.

So really, you want it to suck up as much memory as possible.

At home, my PC has 8 gigs of ram, and I set my system cache to MAX. As I access 8 gigs of files, my ram basically counts down to near zero.

But when I need to open large files (like multi hundred meg psd's, or max files with tons of references), the memory is instantly available again (and used up again by my apps )


By default, the system cache isn't set up to be maxxed out, because people flip out over 'all my ram is gone, wtf!'.
But it's really not as bad as it seems.

(unless the base image is 1.5 gigs... in which case : bleh. But I highly doubt all that is just the base image.)



I am glad that SSD performance is improving.
Soon I hope they will *actaully* be faster than hard drives.

And I hope they decrease the sector sizes. Losing data in unrelated files cause a write failed in another file kinda sucks...
And the linear micro-write performance is a DOG because of the large sectors...

In case you didn't know : the Solid State HDD reads an entire sector into local memory, modifies it, and writes it back out to flash. So if you read 1 byte, write one byte, read one byte, write one byte, all in order, you're wasting a TON of reads/writes, as for each byte the drive has to yank up a very large buffer. I don't remember the size, but I *believe* it was typically in the megabytes.
And because of that, multiple files can be in one sector. So if you kill power in the middle of a write, you can nuke unrelated stuff. Which is what was happening on an embedded vehicle system I worked on. You *HAD TO* power off nicely, or else you could kill your OS because an application was logging data, and some of that was near critical OS files. Every once in a while, the OS files would get corrupted with hard-powers.

-scheherazade

[chicken n waffles]

can't wait to dump vista off my desktop. i've been tempted to just throw xp back on it but i'd rather hold out for 7.

1.5GB of memory usage just to sit at idle with no programs running? EAT SHIT AND DIE VISTA

It's not all 'used'

The system cache sucks up memory and it looks like a lot is used up...

BUT, only a small part of that isn't released when needed.

Most of it acts like a buffer for files that were previously accessed from hard disk.
Which means that any re-access is super fast.
And you do IO in ram, which is later flushed at its own pace to disk.

So really, you want it to suck up as much memory as possible.

At home, my PC has 8 gigs of ram, and I set my system cache to MAX. As I access 8 gigs of files, my ram basically counts down to near zero.

But when I need to open large files (like multi hundred meg psd's, or max files with tons of references), the memory is instantly available again (and used up again by my apps )


By default, the system cache isn't set up to be maxxed out, because people flip out over 'all my ram is gone, wtf!'.
But it's really not as bad as it seems.

(unless the base image is 1.5 gigs... in which case : bleh. But I highly doubt all that is just the base image.)

-scheherazade

no, this is off a fresh reboot. indexing turned off. cache or not, that's a stupidly large amount of physical memory to be utilized from the get-go.

[Sabre]

The difference between the Beta and RC are substantial (atleast on the machines that I've run it on). Windows 7 is really what Vista should have been. They still really need, IMHO, to rewrite things from scratch. I know they have to keep up the old code base for legacy apps.... but isn't it time we drop SOME of it?!?!?

[scheherazade]

no, this is off a fresh reboot. indexing turned off. cache or not, that's a stupidly large amount of physical memory to be utilized from the get-go.

Some people say : unused memory is wasted memory


Curious, when you look at your memory readout, how much is listed under "cached" ?

The difference between the Beta and RC are substantial (atleast on the machines that I've run it on). Windows 7 is really what Vista should have been. They still really need, IMHO, to rewrite things from scratch. I know they have to keep up the old code base for legacy apps.... but isn't it time we drop SOME of it?!?!?

You know, with virtualization, you could run an old OS install just for your old crap... So yah... you could probably get away with it today.

-scheherazade

[Mr Kleen]

I think it's cool that the final release of Windows 7 will have an XP VM built in, at least on the higher tiers of 7.

[complacent]

I think it's cool that the final release of Windows 7 will have an XP VM built in, at least on the higher tiers of 7.

Agreed, that is certainly cool to have it built-in.

I'm currently trying to wrap my head around assessing the vulnerabilities of a permanent machine within a machine based upon code that is officially depreciated (technically) by the end of this year.

Kinda makes me go a bit dizzy...

[Libra Monkee]

can't wait to dump vista off my desktop. i've been tempted to just throw xp back on it but i'd rather hold out for 7.

1.5GB of memory usage just to sit at idle with no programs running? EAT SHIT AND DIE VISTA

I thought you were the one that said you didn't have any problem with Vista. Emphasis on "the one".

[chicken n waffles]

can't wait to dump vista off my desktop. i've been tempted to just throw xp back on it but i'd rather hold out for 7.

1.5GB of memory usage just to sit at idle with no programs running? EAT SHIT AND DIE VISTA

I thought you were the one that said you didn't have any problem with Vista. Emphasis on "the one".

no, i said i didn't have a problem with vista crashing/incompatibility issues like many people were reporting. i've always made a note to mention the resource hog-like tendencies of the os, even though i sourced a machine that is physically capable of running it (unlike many people out there).

[Sabre]

Speaking of SSD's, check these two bitches out. These things are starting to haul!