razorsedge
October 29th, 2012, 09:04 PM
Well Today I had a surprise call from a bud of mine that has been pushing me to use Windows 8 and I have been tell him to go jump off a cliff that I was happy with win 7 he can have his win 8 lol
Anyways instead of going to work he got me to come to his place to do a real test of operating systems.
On one side we had win 7 pro we decided to go with pro cause the windows 8 version was also a pro so try and get the os's as identical as possible. We were installing on 2 identical machines, 2 amd quad cores both 965 processors, both with 16 gigs of ram both running GeForce GTX 560 TI graphics cards, hd's 2tb seagates in each and this benchmarking was to cover from fresh installs and usage of os and apps.
The reason again for this was he wanted to prove to me that what the boosters of win 8 like himself were saying that it was a faster all around os compared to win 7 we both don't like the metro ui I actually keep hearing the word "modern" metro ui used for that we both kind of chuckle at that as metro looks more like the win xp or win 98 style of ui as opposed to modern ui but we will leave that out for the time being lol. Anyways the thing between us was he was saying it was a faster overall os for all systems where my argument was it's faster most likey without the aero ui in older systems but ones with a lot of power the difference will be minimal so here is the results we came up with.
On a fresh install this is on a machine that has been wiped clean like you just bought it from the store no upgrade not installing over anything else the install times were almost identical windows 8 was 10 seconds faster on install of a fresh os thats it just 10 seconds so I pointed to my friend and said looks like ur already in trouble lol
Boot to desktop again almost identical windows 8 was maybe 2 seconds faster here getting to the actual start screen while win 7 loaded to the desktop but where as win 8 takes you to that tile screen win 7 is loading you right into the desktop itself so again the few seconds difference is minimal.
So far from what has been said and heard about how windows 8 installs faster and boots to the desktop much quicker is minimal at best a few seconds difference between them is all there was.
On to using windows 8, we started be opening and closing applications to see if there was a big difference in times it took to open and close apps him from the tile screen me from the win 7 start menu after we had installed a few apps on each such as photoshop, firefox, and some aps of that nature. Difference none the load and unload times were the exact same we noticed no difference at all between the apps loading up and unloading on close and we did this a number of times with different apps if there was any difference between them opening and closing it was not seen by us.
At this point I asked my bud if he would like to continue as he was not doing good so far he said I will show u it's better so we went on lol
So I asked at this point about graphics as my understanding was from what I had read up on win 8 this is one area where it was slower when it came to 3d rendering and such I wanted to see how working in ps was on both machines. So I started with a simple empty psd on each and proceeded to create a little design with text that I would move over the the 3d side of ps to make 3d. Working in ps on the psd's was the same I noticed no difference from one machine to the other till we hit the 3d part of the psd. Here I did notice a difference with the creation and render of the 3d image the photoshop app operated much smoother and faster on the win 7 machine then it did on the win 8 machine was the difference huge again no but there was a noticeable difference between the 2 when it came to that area.
Next we tried gaming, installing BF3 on each to see if there was any difference between the 2 machines playing offline and on we noticed no difference between the 2 machines we only did test the one game here but if there was a difference again it's not something that we could see by eye as was evident when we were in ps in the 3d rendering portion of the app.
Now for working in normal functions of the os, windows 8 of course is different and since my bud was more experienced with windows 8 he did the test there and I worked on the windows 7 machine. What the test was is to create a batch script working off instructions that each of us had to follow on something neither of us had done before. So we decided on the batch to do went on to the web and go the instructions loaded up in the browser and proceeded. I ended up finishing a few mins faster then he did as he had to keep switching between the desktop to the instructions to complete his task.
This aspect though as u become more accustomed to win 8 might be faster but at this point it was easier for me to make the batch script in win 7 then it was for him in win 8.
At this point we took a small break to discuss things as he was in a bit of a surprise that win 8 was not smoking the win 7 machine, this is when I said well you have to think about the new toy factor most of us are gung ho most times to try new stuff and because your excited you might see things as moving quicker or installing a fresh copy of win 8 on a machine when ur using a win 7 one that you have been using for 2 years already with no reinstalls will always seem faster as is the cause with any new fresh installed os lol
So we ran a few more tests starting with the copy file feature he was so impressed about it is a pretty cool thing in win 8 with the more info it gives and he went on to talk show how u can pause a copy file but I said well honestly have u ever had to pause a file in transfer for anything I mean we have quad cores here and 16 gigs of ram would you ever have to pause a file transfer we both had a chuckle and said ya ok its kind of a moot feature. The one issue here is of course you lose the option of keeping files with the same name you are no longer asked even if the file sizes are different. So I explained to him where this would hurt someone like me is especially with photoshop psd's I have a habit to save stuff as default like ps sets it untitled-1 and such so say I am combining 2 folders of psd's I will lose some of those psd's for the ones I copy in when they are not the same file or even size and that would be pretty crap lol
Last we looked at user functions were he did mention to me at this pint win 7 was more user friendly as it does take more clicks to get to things in win 8 but is this a huge deal well I figure the more you get used to win 8 if u decide to use it then it won't be a real issue ( as u see I am being objective here not just sticking up for my love of win 7 lol ) but it still does take more effort to get things done in 8 then it does win 7.
Anyways the conclusion was this that when it comes to the so called speed factor improvement of windows 8 over win 7 this looks like it will be very dependant on the type of machine you have without all the extra ui in windows 8 on an older machine I could see the os being faster but if u have a powerful rig or a supped up gaming rig you are not going to notice pretty much any difference at all. As for the use of apps and such it's all the same times and working except it seems when it comes to rendering I would have liked to test out something in the nature that I use as in Adobe After Effects to see the difference but I did have to get into the shop at some point by the afternoon lol
So in closing ppl that say to you windows 8 is much faster then 7 ask 2 questions did you have windows 7 installed as a fresh os when u looked at the speed difference between the 2 and what type of hardware were you running win 7 on.
Anyways instead of going to work he got me to come to his place to do a real test of operating systems.
On one side we had win 7 pro we decided to go with pro cause the windows 8 version was also a pro so try and get the os's as identical as possible. We were installing on 2 identical machines, 2 amd quad cores both 965 processors, both with 16 gigs of ram both running GeForce GTX 560 TI graphics cards, hd's 2tb seagates in each and this benchmarking was to cover from fresh installs and usage of os and apps.
The reason again for this was he wanted to prove to me that what the boosters of win 8 like himself were saying that it was a faster all around os compared to win 7 we both don't like the metro ui I actually keep hearing the word "modern" metro ui used for that we both kind of chuckle at that as metro looks more like the win xp or win 98 style of ui as opposed to modern ui but we will leave that out for the time being lol. Anyways the thing between us was he was saying it was a faster overall os for all systems where my argument was it's faster most likey without the aero ui in older systems but ones with a lot of power the difference will be minimal so here is the results we came up with.
On a fresh install this is on a machine that has been wiped clean like you just bought it from the store no upgrade not installing over anything else the install times were almost identical windows 8 was 10 seconds faster on install of a fresh os thats it just 10 seconds so I pointed to my friend and said looks like ur already in trouble lol
Boot to desktop again almost identical windows 8 was maybe 2 seconds faster here getting to the actual start screen while win 7 loaded to the desktop but where as win 8 takes you to that tile screen win 7 is loading you right into the desktop itself so again the few seconds difference is minimal.
So far from what has been said and heard about how windows 8 installs faster and boots to the desktop much quicker is minimal at best a few seconds difference between them is all there was.
On to using windows 8, we started be opening and closing applications to see if there was a big difference in times it took to open and close apps him from the tile screen me from the win 7 start menu after we had installed a few apps on each such as photoshop, firefox, and some aps of that nature. Difference none the load and unload times were the exact same we noticed no difference at all between the apps loading up and unloading on close and we did this a number of times with different apps if there was any difference between them opening and closing it was not seen by us.
At this point I asked my bud if he would like to continue as he was not doing good so far he said I will show u it's better so we went on lol
So I asked at this point about graphics as my understanding was from what I had read up on win 8 this is one area where it was slower when it came to 3d rendering and such I wanted to see how working in ps was on both machines. So I started with a simple empty psd on each and proceeded to create a little design with text that I would move over the the 3d side of ps to make 3d. Working in ps on the psd's was the same I noticed no difference from one machine to the other till we hit the 3d part of the psd. Here I did notice a difference with the creation and render of the 3d image the photoshop app operated much smoother and faster on the win 7 machine then it did on the win 8 machine was the difference huge again no but there was a noticeable difference between the 2 when it came to that area.
Next we tried gaming, installing BF3 on each to see if there was any difference between the 2 machines playing offline and on we noticed no difference between the 2 machines we only did test the one game here but if there was a difference again it's not something that we could see by eye as was evident when we were in ps in the 3d rendering portion of the app.
Now for working in normal functions of the os, windows 8 of course is different and since my bud was more experienced with windows 8 he did the test there and I worked on the windows 7 machine. What the test was is to create a batch script working off instructions that each of us had to follow on something neither of us had done before. So we decided on the batch to do went on to the web and go the instructions loaded up in the browser and proceeded. I ended up finishing a few mins faster then he did as he had to keep switching between the desktop to the instructions to complete his task.
This aspect though as u become more accustomed to win 8 might be faster but at this point it was easier for me to make the batch script in win 7 then it was for him in win 8.
At this point we took a small break to discuss things as he was in a bit of a surprise that win 8 was not smoking the win 7 machine, this is when I said well you have to think about the new toy factor most of us are gung ho most times to try new stuff and because your excited you might see things as moving quicker or installing a fresh copy of win 8 on a machine when ur using a win 7 one that you have been using for 2 years already with no reinstalls will always seem faster as is the cause with any new fresh installed os lol
So we ran a few more tests starting with the copy file feature he was so impressed about it is a pretty cool thing in win 8 with the more info it gives and he went on to talk show how u can pause a copy file but I said well honestly have u ever had to pause a file in transfer for anything I mean we have quad cores here and 16 gigs of ram would you ever have to pause a file transfer we both had a chuckle and said ya ok its kind of a moot feature. The one issue here is of course you lose the option of keeping files with the same name you are no longer asked even if the file sizes are different. So I explained to him where this would hurt someone like me is especially with photoshop psd's I have a habit to save stuff as default like ps sets it untitled-1 and such so say I am combining 2 folders of psd's I will lose some of those psd's for the ones I copy in when they are not the same file or even size and that would be pretty crap lol
Last we looked at user functions were he did mention to me at this pint win 7 was more user friendly as it does take more clicks to get to things in win 8 but is this a huge deal well I figure the more you get used to win 8 if u decide to use it then it won't be a real issue ( as u see I am being objective here not just sticking up for my love of win 7 lol ) but it still does take more effort to get things done in 8 then it does win 7.
Anyways the conclusion was this that when it comes to the so called speed factor improvement of windows 8 over win 7 this looks like it will be very dependant on the type of machine you have without all the extra ui in windows 8 on an older machine I could see the os being faster but if u have a powerful rig or a supped up gaming rig you are not going to notice pretty much any difference at all. As for the use of apps and such it's all the same times and working except it seems when it comes to rendering I would have liked to test out something in the nature that I use as in Adobe After Effects to see the difference but I did have to get into the shop at some point by the afternoon lol
So in closing ppl that say to you windows 8 is much faster then 7 ask 2 questions did you have windows 7 installed as a fresh os when u looked at the speed difference between the 2 and what type of hardware were you running win 7 on.