[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Windows 8 Preview Beats Windows 7 in Most Performance Tests here

[WallyDuke]

The very first and very last graphs in this article are poor visual representations of the results they are displaying, I believe the x-axis should start at 0.

[Amusal]

Agreed. It is a misrepresentation of data. Thankfully its not very important data, although benching a beta has produced some interesting results.

[srini1969]

Can you compare this with Windows xp?

[karthiq]

It will be interesting if compared with xp.

[DouglasBrace69qh]

a middle-of-the-road PC has 8 GB of RAM???

come on...

do the tests on a computer that is 32-bit, has 2 GB or RAM and is from 2008

[GetReal]

In my world this was NOT a middle of the road PC that was used for testing! Should have used a dual-core at around 3 Ghz with 2 Gb memory and a 320 Gb hard disk.

But we all know that PC Authors live in a different world, having access always to top-line hardware such that they dream that power is standard everywhere!

[BigOkieTechie]

So, Metro (a CSS/XAML/HTML5-based interface) rendered a web interface faster than an OS that has to load a browser engine?

I AM SHOCKED! :-o

Seriously, you can see Metro has worse application execution and instruction execution. It's proof that it is focused for the mobile environment, since most of what mobile users do are email, web browsing, and instant messaging.

Metro is not something you'd use for rendering 3D animations, engineering map layering with ArcGIS, etc.

Metro = Mobile apps for mobile intellects.

[ClaudeD]

Load of hooey! Performance is one thing, easy of use and navigation are of paramount perfomance. Previous study by PCWorld is a better barometer of Win8's actual opinions by testers and users. Difficult to use, loads of required navigation points missing and probably the biggest flop of an interface ever created. If you want a computer that looks and works like a cell phone and is as difficult to use as a cell phone for office or everyday uses, Win8 will fill that need and test your patience. But, who really cares...microsoft is releasing this work of art and new pc users are going to use it, like it or not.

[JeffSimon]

DouglasBrace69qh, on 23 March 2012 - 02:29 AM, said:

a middle-of-the-road PC has 8 GB of RAM???

come on...

do the tests on a computer that is 32-bit, has 2 GB or RAM and is from 2008

That's not a current computer at all! I have an HP Pavilion with 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and its 64 Bit with Windows 7 Home Premium.

[BulldogXX]

What baloney! (Win8, not PC World.) So it boots faster...how many times do you boot your computer anyway, absent developers or testers. Smart people S3 or S4 their computers. And it doesn't actually boot faster, it hibernates the core OS. Anyway, better performance doesn't help if you're stuck doing serious work on a tablet interface. This is such a loser OS.

[JasonCross00]

srini1969, on 22 March 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

Can you compare this with Windows xp?

Unfortunately, Windows XP is so old it will not even run some of our test software. It's simply incompatible.

[JasonCross00]

GetReal, on 23 March 2012 - 05:03 AM, said:

In my world this was NOT a middle of the road PC that was used for testing! Should have used a dual-core at around 3 Ghz with 2 Gb memory and a 320 Gb hard disk.

But we all know that PC Authors live in a different world, having access always to top-line hardware such that they dream that power is standard everywhere!

It's absolutely middle-of-the-road. Consider this Dell that costs only $700: http://configure.us....del_id=xps-8300

It is very similar, only with a very slightly less powerful CPU and a worse graphics card. Making it equal to our test system would bump the price up to about $850 or so. Our test system is leagues behind the $2000 super-powerful PCs you may be imagining.

Also consider that the vast majority of users (well over 90%) get a new version of Windows when they buy a new PC, rather than upgrading their existing PC. By the time Windows 8 is released later this year, you'll be able to get an even more powerful PC for a reasonable $800 or so.

Given that Windows 8 actually uses less RAM and CPU cycles than Windows 7, in our tests, it seems as though testing on a lower-end PC would actually move the needle further in Windows 8's favor.

As always, remember that this is a test of an operating system that is not yet complete. The numbers can change between now and release. Historically, they get better in the final months of an operating system's development.

[JasonCross00]

ClaudeD, on 23 March 2012 - 06:03 AM, said:

Load of hooey! Performance is one thing, easy of use and navigation are of paramount perfomance. Previous study by PCWorld is a better barometer of Win8's actual opinions by testers and users. Difficult to use, loads of required navigation points missing and probably the biggest flop of an interface ever created. If you want a computer that looks and works like a cell phone and is as difficult to use as a cell phone for office or everyday uses, Win8 will fill that need and test your patience. But, who really cares...microsoft is releasing this work of art and new pc users are going to use it, like it or not.

Don't take this article to be a review of the operating system (which isn't even complete yet). It is merely a performance comparison. Usability, interface, manageability features, and all that other stuff are another story.

[ronin7752]

Great! If all you ever do is start your system and run benchmarks, you should be very happy with Win 8! (I don't know of anyone except magazine editors and speed geeks that do that, though.)

When reality finally sinks in, I hope PCW will accept their share of the blame for user dissatisfaction.

[ronin7752]

JasonCross00, on 23 March 2012 - 10:47 AM, said:

srini1969, on 22 March 2012 - 08:34 PM, said:

Can you compare this with Windows xp?

Unfortunately, Windows XP is so old it will not even run some of our test software. It's simply incompatible.

Then maybe you should look a little harder for software that will run on all Win platforms, because I *know* they exist.... It *is* your job, you know! ...And most surveys indicate that 40-50% of end user-owners are still running XP.

This post has been edited by ronin7752: 23 March 2012 - 11:05 AM

[GetReal]

JasonCross00, on 23 March 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

GetReal, on 23 March 2012 - 05:03 AM, said:

In my world this was NOT a middle of the road PC that was used for testing! Should have used a dual-core at around 3 Ghz with 2 Gb memory and a 320 Gb hard disk.

But we all know that PC Authors live in a different world, having access always to top-line hardware such that they dream that power is standard everywhere!

It's absolutely middle-of-the-road. Consider this Dell that costs only $700: http://configure.us....del_id=xps-8300

It is very similar, only with a very slightly less powerful CPU and a worse graphics card. Making it equal to our test system would bump the price up to about $850 or so. Our test system is leagues behind the $2000 super-powerful PCs you may be imagining.

Also consider that the vast majority of users (well over 90%) get a new version of Windows when they buy a new PC, rather than upgrading their existing PC. By the time Windows 8 is released later this year, you'll be able to get an even more powerful PC for a reasonable $800 or so.

Given that Windows 8 actually uses less RAM and CPU cycles than Windows 7, in our tests, it seems as though testing on a lower-end PC would actually move the needle further in Windows 8's favor.

As always, remember that this is a test of an operating system that is not yet complete. The numbers can change between now and release. Historically, they get better in the final months of an operating system's development.

I don't dispute that there are much faster PC's available, some even at competitive cost. My point was the typical home computer in use today, not system cost. As example my home has 4 desktop machines plus a new tablet, all are of similar power as mentioned in my previous post. I do lots of church work refurbishing PC's for donation to disadvantaged children. Granted that what I see there is systems that are broken or otherwise going out the door to be replaced by newer, nonetheless, the desktops with a dual-core CPU and 2-Gb of memory are still intensely placed in users homes around the country and the most likely to be initially exposed to new installs of Win-8, whereas the type of test system used for this article would likely be found in less than 10% of peoples homes today, though these numbers can only increase.
So, not currently a mid-range system at all! Anyway - possibly I mis-percieved the reason you selected such a test system.
:-)

This post has been edited by GetReal: 23 March 2012 - 11:28 AM

[chances14]

JasonCross00, on 23 March 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

GetReal, on 23 March 2012 - 05:03 AM, said:

In my world this was NOT a middle of the road PC that was used for testing! Should have used a dual-core at around 3 Ghz with 2 Gb memory and a 320 Gb hard disk.

But we all know that PC Authors live in a different world, having access always to top-line hardware such that they dream that power is standard everywhere!

It's absolutely middle-of-the-road. Consider this Dell that costs only $700: http://configure.us....del_id=xps-8300

It is very similar, only with a very slightly less powerful CPU and a worse graphics card. Making it equal to our test system would bump the price up to about $850 or so. Our test system is leagues behind the $2000 super-powerful PCs you may be imagining.

Also consider that the vast majority of users (well over 90%) get a new version of Windows when they buy a new PC, rather than upgrading their existing PC. By the time Windows 8 is released later this year, you'll be able to get an even more powerful PC for a reasonable $800 or so.

Given that Windows 8 actually uses less RAM and CPU cycles than Windows 7, in our tests, it seems as though testing on a lower-end PC would actually move the needle further in Windows 8's favor.

As always, remember that this is a test of an operating system that is not yet complete. The numbers can change between now and release. Historically, they get better in the final months of an operating system's development.

8gb of ram is not the middle of the road when it comes to the real world. i can assure you that more people have 2gb of ram on their desktop/laptop than have 8gb

majority of computers that are bought for the average user nowadays have 4gb of ram in them

[chances14]

DouglasBrace69qh, on 23 March 2012 - 02:29 AM, said:

a middle-of-the-road PC has 8 GB of RAM???

come on...

do the tests on a computer that is 32-bit, has 2 GB or RAM and is from 2008

I am running windows 8 on a dell inspiron laptop with 2gb of ram and 120gb hard drive that i bought in 2008. I can definitely tell the performance increase in windows 8

[weirdlyperfect]

JasonCross00, on 23 March 2012 - 10:53 AM, said:

Also consider that the vast majority of users (well over 90%) get a new version of Windows when they buy a new PC, rather than upgrading their existing PC.

I doubt this very much. This is easily testable by analysis of past sales and installation - are you saying that 90% of all Win7 installs were OEM versions shipping with new machines and only 10% came from people upgrading other (Vista, XP) OS versions?