XP beats Vista in performance tests

Well its time for what most corporations do, fudge the old to make the new better. Windows will do another stealth patch to make XP perform like tar on a winter day. Then their claims of Vistas vast superiority will then be true.

Abandon Vista Already. It's a failed commercial product. I wont slap down 200+ dollars for DX10. 

So give DX10 to XP and give up Vista.

~The Dude

Eeek! XP needs to be three times faster than it is, in fact, it should perform at least ten times faster than it does on an resource starved system. Is Vista really that slow, how can it hold it's head up around Linux (not that Linux is the best).

XP is such an performance mess on my system, that an/any "patch" to reduce it's speed, rather than an "patch" to obtain verifiable full speed, would make me feel like instigating the old "class action". I have had too many hours sacrificed (plus all the pain and hardship they prove in civil cases) because of XP already.

Ohh, for the days of my "high performance" Commodore Vic-20 home computer (if you don't believe me, run word on my Internet machine compared to the word processor I used on the few Mhz Vic).

It is very Unlikely Microsoft would endure rath of european union in tens of Billions figure, just to Snuff Out XP. If you want old operating system, BUY XP, it maakes little difference to "the brain". It just slows progress.

The tests that were performed on the Vista machine were done with 1GB of RAM, which is widely known to be too little for Vista to run well. If the tests were run on a system that was adequate for BOTH OSes to run optimally (2GB RAM), Vista would most likely be much closer to XP. This test is bunk, and the Inq is contributing to the echo chamber in perpetuating bad data.

In addition, speed is not the only factor in the usefulness of an OS. Many of the services that Vista provides are very useful, and it has been written to run on hardware that will continue to get faster. Just like when XP was launched it was "too slow" for the hardware of the day.

sdgsdgdsfh sdfhsdddddddddddddddddddgdsghdffds dfsgdfgsdfg

MicroSloath taketh away.

Not even DAAMIT was able to design a successor product that is that much worse than previous version.

Throw Windows 2000 into the mix and what it kick the stuffing out of XP and Vista!

Vista was at a disadvantage from the word Go! The XP system had 16 times the minimum ram requirement of 64MB to run XP pro whereas the Vista box only met the minimum 1GB requirement. Why does everyone forget that an old OS on modern hardware will always outperform a modern OS on modern hardware? XP ran like crap compared to the same machine running 98, yet here we all are still running XP.

Come on, just a little fact checking? Theres no reference as to what type of system the tests were run on, or for how long, or what beta versions were used. Honestly this isn't news, please try to own up to your pay or at least show some integrity this is no worse than a flame post on a forum. 80 seconds longer on what? For what test? On what sytem? This article is tripe, I hope more people will question these phantom tests.

I am not surprised

We all knew that Vista is a bloatware since the start 

Just give DX10 compatibility to Windows XP and let Vista DIE in peace

Isnt it all just history repeating itself, i remember when XP came out i was soooo reluctant to move to it because Win2K run so much faster on my hardware. Give it 6 years and Vista will run as well as XP does now.

No sheet sherlock!

I only hope that Vista goes truly belly up, before my campus' "Tech Support" decides to convert everything over. So far they've been cautious, affected possibly as much by their own staff's negative opinions and experiences as by the general aura of distaste for for this turkey.

But I'm not hopeful. They'll most likely hurry to convert just before MS pulls the plug.

I doubt that would actually happen. You realize that more people would perform benchmarks after such a stealth patch and notice the extreme drop in performance. This would turn every XP using geek's flak cannon right at Microsoft for making their favorite OS run more slowly. If Microsoft is its own greatest competitor, why not make both products the best they can? Money is money, and people buying copies of XP still spells money for MS. In fact, I think a patch for XP including DX10 support would only really help them. It would make more people happy while they try to fix the broken toy that is Vista. Then when that broken toy is finally fully operational and perhaps offered at a more reasonable price point, there will be some transfer to the new product.

This isn't really surprising, though I am intrigued by the fact that XP SP3 actually increases performance, not the other way about. The overall result isn't anything new though. Vista is a smelly pile of dog crap that has been walked the whole way through the office by that clueless nerd. 

Jeff is right as well. I don't doubt that it will be too long before XP is forced upgrades that degrade its performance (again), this time continually until it's actually closer - or, God forbid, worse - than Vista.

"Wow, an operating system thats had years of optimization and service packs and designed to run on older hardware performs better than a relatively new OS designed for future hardware on its first round of updates? Amazing!" 
Honestly, its time everyone moved on from bashing these things. it happened with XP and is happening again. Im not saying that Vista is perfect, but its not worse than XP aside from the "DRM infection" that has yet to show itself to me. Yes its slower in the take now, but in a few years it will be further optimized or changed entirely. The price, while also very high, is... well theres no real excuse for the price. But from what ive heard alot of people that did research and built new computers around the OS say that theres nary a problem. So stuff it, wait a bit, and get on with your lives.

Has anyone actually SEEN this report rather than a report of this report?

I've just spent 1/2 hour scouring the web and cannot find it. Everyone is quoting it, but no one has a link to Devil Mountains home page or the original report.

Haha... tests run with 1gb of memory. What a big surprise, surprise...

Wasn't SP3 supposed to do just that to XP ? Apparently, somebody made a big mistake.
Ballmer is NOT going to be happy about that. Better order a few dozen new chairs.

From what i read of this article it was not a apple to apple comparison; it was a apple to orange..
office 2003 vs 2007 
same office suit on both pcs please
thanks 
Vista still isn't too fast but all i don't like is it will probly be better than the next one.. Drm will probly get worst not better.

This is the same article that was run last week, idiots. See here : http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/19/vista-sp1-doesn-improve-poor

It was flawed then, and it's flawed now.

There's no doubt Vista has flaws, but if you're going to test it, test it on a sensible platform with decent benchmarks. Word does not count.

Tom above, thanks for proving me wrong that this site is exclusively pestered by a bunch of frustrated sheep sucking up to confrontational journalism with the only purpose to drive ad revenue.

This is for all those who are complaining that the VISTA test was rigged to fail because it only had the minimum requirement to run the OS in Ram and all. 

You MISSED THE POINT ENTIRELY! To be fair, these tests should have been done on IDENTICAL machines, amking the only difference the operating system. If you have to get 4X your RAM and update all your hardware just to run VISTA, and then with the extra horsepower your OS is STILL slower than what you had before you ever opened the case, you my friend have made a VERY bad decision! 

Or to put it another way, doesn't it bother anyone that VISTA "needs" all the extra hardware just to BREAK EVEN in processing power? If a racecar driver paid an extra 10 grand for a special engine and it ran SLOWER than what he had, you don't think he'd have the right to complain? VISTA simply offrs NO benefit to the user for the additional hardware required. Hence, it's crap.

Throw "Windows NT 4" into the mix and what it kick the stuffing out of Windows 2000, XP and Vista!

Just popping in to say that this is probably the first comprehensible post I've ever seen by von_dreshek. Good on ya Cap'n!

Or it could be that since XP is Vista's biggest roadblock, these numbers were thrown out to keep people on XP and not dabble elsewhere.

If memory serves, XP got bashed quite a bit on its day. People complaining on how much of a memory hog it was, how slow it was, how lame was all that unnecessary eye-candy of an interface...

Blah blah blah... Vista is far from perfect, but XP had a tons of issues too, let it age and maybe some of the problems will get better.

XP SP3 where the heck did you get that! I want it!

i have tried this over and over and i dont know why but vista on my dell d620 runs much faster then xp.i have fresh installed over and over again to make sure it wasnt just me.i even did a dual boot and still vista was much faster.and my machine is not a beast.duo core 1.66ghz 3 gig ram 256 video card nvidia quatro 110m.80 gig hd.and i hated vista because it was so slow on anything i put it on but on this laptop it just smokes xp in speed.processess are around the same number in the 40's i run vista premium and the xp was media center edition.and 1 gig ram for a bench test is not fair for the vista against xp.

Don't know diddly squat about their respective speeds, boot-up or otherwise.

But as I'm called many times to sort out other peoples OS, my gripe with Vista was/is, WHERE THA HELL IS EVERYTHING.

Sorry I'll calm down now ;-)

Yes old habits die hard,I know read the tutorial, don't have the time, i'll get there in the end, just like I did with XP.