Microsoft Vista Performance on Par with XP
Refuting rumors that Windows Vista's vaunted Aero UI slows down computers, Microsoft pointed to a study this past week that comes to a different conclusion. According to a Principled Technologies study sponsored by Microsoft, the Aero UI has little or no negative effect on Windows Vista's performance. In fact, in some instances the Aero UI actually provides a performance boost.
We put quite a bit of effort into making sure that the new visuals were as efficient as possible and it really paid off. Matt Ayers, a program manager in Microsoft's Windows Client Performance group wrote in the newly christened Windows Performance Blog. The key finding of this study which measured performance on a wide range of machine types is that Vista is more responsive than Windows XP after rebooting and is roughly as responsive as XP in general. The Aero UI, meanwhile, has little effect on Vista responsiveness.
What I find interesting about this study is that most of the PCs tested weren't particularly high end systems. Principled Technologies reported that it tested one notebook system three desktop PCs and one Tablet PC. Only one of those systems had a dual core processor. A wide range of system operations were also tested including opening and using various Microsoft Office and third party applications. You can download a PDF version of the study's findings (Responsiveness of Windows Vista and Windows XP on common business tasks) from the Principled Technologies Web site.
