XP SP3 faster than Vista SP1: report

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 07 April 2008 11:43

Opinion and Analysis

Is it any surprise than an older operating system performs faster on an identically configured system running the latest and greatest? No – I remember Win 3.1 screaming on machines that ran Windows 95 more slowly, but it’s still great news for XP holdouts.

Haven’t yet upgraded to Vista, be it the RTM version or Vista SP1, and still using XP? Then you’ll be pleased when Microsoft finally gets around to releasing Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Windows XP, as a new test from CRN shows XP SP3 is still a speed demon.

The US version of CRN (Computer Reseller News) has just tested Windows XP with the latest release candidate 2 (RC2) of SP3 against Windows Vista with SP1 with all updates.

The tests were conducted on identically configured desktops, which CRN says are HP rp5700’s “with a single 160 GB SATA drive on each machine, 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel processors and 1 GB RAM on both.”

Personally, I’d have bumped up the RAM to 2GB on both machines, especially considering its well known that 2GB of RAM on Vista is better, but then that said, CRN noted that they pretty much well turned everything off – even backgrounds, running only the benchmark testing software and Open Office.

CRN noted that when they performed their restart test, it was without any of the usual third party apps that end up in your system tray, next to the clock on the right hand corner of the screen, and without any protective software such as anti-virus.

XP SP3 restarted in 35 seconds, Vista SP1 took 58 seconds to restart.

This was the first test where Vista couldn't beat its younger brother, but there was one test where Vista did outshine XP. Please read onto page 2.