Windows Vista SP1 outperforms Windows XP SP2 in file copy

Posted By: Michael Kleef [MSFT] | May 20th, 2008 @ 12:22 AM | 17,435 Views | 23 Comments

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Its interesting that people seem to think that Vista underperforms in every area of the system which is quite an incorrect perception. In this demo I show how Vista outperforms Windows XP and I show the under the covers process traces of just how it achieves it.
Demo environment consists of two images. One Vista SP1 and the other Windows XP SP2 both on the same HDD IO and communicating across my home wireless network to a Windows Server 2008 box on my main LAN. Once the two images get going latency gets introduced and things start to slow down....except Vista doesnt slow down. Watch and see!

Tags: performance, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Rating:

TheQuestor

I so call BS on this.

By default Vista disables Advanced Caching which is tick 1.
I can copy a 100 gigs worth of files from one drive to another in XP and get over 100mb/s the same files in Vista get me 28mb/s if I AM LUCKY.
Moving files to another location on the same partiation is XP is instant, in Vista it is nearly the same as copying [though not always, really hit and miss here]
Don't even get me started on network copying. Sometimes I get 50 mb/s but most of the time I get 6mb/s. The more I use vista the less I like it. And I have been using Vista since 2005 [yes I was an official beta tester] I use it for a couple months, get so ticked off at it, I go back to XP. SP1 beta came and I was like ok sure maybe I can help, not one of my bugs were fixed.
The only difference now is SP1 doesn't always wait until the file is actually done copying to close the copy window [much like XP] which gives the illusion of faster copying, but if you watch your HD light, it still churns for some time after the window closes.
It is FUD like this that makes me have Vista more and more daily.

Pedro Lino

I think that it wasn't such a great idea doing the two file transfers almost simultaneously. Since both virtual machines are running in the same PC, doesn't the first one to run, have priority?

You should do the Vista transfer, time it and then do the Xp transfer, time it.

As mentioned in the previous post, this is only a scenario. I think that disk to disk transfers are more common/frequent on a daily basis so the title as an incorrect generalization...

Just my 2cents

smbunn

I agree this is inaccuarte. I would appreciate a comment on media files especially. As a user of DVB-T HD TV I am creating media files that are about 4GB per hour of TV recorded. So a typical recorded show with some over-run can be up to 6GB in size. If I try to copy this file to a USB key or another machine it appears DRM kicks in and can take up to 8 minutes to decide if it will even copy the file, then the file copy itself is much slower than XP. I have dicovered that it is quicker to change the file extension to something Vista dose not recognize as a media file, copy it, then change the extension back, but this is hit or miss. Sometimes just clicking on rename starts the whole 8 minute cycle before it will even let me rename. Explorer.exe consumes 100% of a CPU core for the whole time. Everything else on my dual core Intel just stops. Surely this is going to have a significant impact on MCE (fiji) when it tries recording in HD mode?

vIQtor

This comparison is a bit shady or misleading.

You should not tellthat look on Vista it's 3 minutes, on XP that is 23 minutes.

That is only the estimation for the copy which does not work fine on XP - lots of us know that.
Also the server is also a Vista machine. The real comparioson would contain all variations: XP to XP, XP to Vista, Vista to XP and Vista to Vista.

Guys, please stay more close to the truth not just to the reality - you know what I mean:

More honesty less business.

tucum

"Its interesting that people seem to think that Vista underperforms in every area of the system which is quite an incorrect perception"

When there is smoke.. there is fire...
If a large number of people complains about one problem, there is a (big) chance that there is a problem.
Now Vista developers could assume the problem (and try to study it and fix it) or try to convince people of something they know is not true.
And don't get me wrong, i'm not against windows Vista or anything.
I like it.
It looks better and all.
I use it at work with VS2008, Expression Blend, among others, and its just perfect because i dont do file transfer. But at home i went back to XP months ago specially because of the file transfer problem. Try to transfer new files to your mp3 when you're in a hurry and you'll know what i mean.

conden

In reply to System

#May 7th, 2008 @ 7:11 PM

这是什么东西!!

Steve Rochford

I'd agree that title is inaccurate - a better one would be "Put Vista on your network and trash the performance of your XP machines!"

It's clear from the demo that once the Vista machine has finished, the XP one works just fine. Copying an ISO image across my wireless network takes about 4 minutes so Vista has no particular benefit over XP in one-off scenarios.

My experience (even with Vista SP1) is that copying a large tree of files (eg contents of a CD) is massively slower with Vista than XP

jbowski

There is a better reason you had better performance using a Vista virtual machine than an XP VPC. Namely, your host computer is Vista 64.... that means that the NIC you are using for your demo on BOTH virtual machines utilizes the Vista x64 drivers, which I would be willing to bet have a QoS bias towards Vista.

mkleef

In reply to jbowski

#Jun 6th, 2008 @ 2:34 AM

Err - thats not correct. I havent enabled QoS on any of the platforms. Secondly both have the VM integrations loaded too. Thirdly both are using the same NIC to communicate out on and theres no favouritism in the VM network switching protocol for selected OS's.
Take a look at APC's article on XP vs Vista perf. I think youll see they also correlate the results.