PC World: Windows 7 Not Much Faster Than Vista

PC World have released Worldbench 6 benchmark results comparing the Windows 7 Release Candidate to Windows Vista Ultimate. Benchmark tests were performed on two desktop computer systems and one laptop. The general result of the benchmarks were that Windows 7 was beating Windows Vista in all tests but not by a margin expected by most users.

The largest difference was 4 points–102 for Vista versus 106 for Windows 7 on an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop. Our other two test machines showed similarly minor performance improvements: A Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop improved by 1 point (from 138 on Vista to 139 on Windows 7), and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop improved by 2 points, from 97 on Vista to 99 on Windows 7.

The test runs a series of ten commonly used applications including Microsoft Office, the Firefox web browser, Winzip, Nero Burning Rom and Adobe Photoshop on the computer system. The testers do acknowledge that they did not test areas like the boot time of the computer system where Windows 7 is clearly showing a much better performance than Windows Vista.

It should also be noted that tests with the final version of Windows 7 might look different although likely not by a large margin। Benchmarks are on the other hand not comparable to first hand user experience which is why it is suggested to test Windows 7 first hand.

updated from Martin Brinkmann (windows7news)