Windows 7 Graphics PC: Benchmarks Versus Windows XP

The following posting is taken from our thePhotoFinishes.com blog verbatim. The performance results for Windows 7 versus Windows XP are of interest.

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Well we spent most of the weekend trying to figure out our benchmarks results – would Windows 7 be able to beat Windows XP in raw speed and performance? Here is that tale of the table:

Speed Comparison: Windows 7 versus Windows XP
Test	Windows 7	Windows XP
Copy 800MB file from USB	29sec	27sec
Copy 800MB file to USB	59sec	52sec
Copy 800MB file to file	25sec	28sec
Copy 430MB directory USB to drive	31sec	68sec
Create 120,000 line .sql file using PHP	6sec	12 sec
Insert 120,000 records into MySQL Table SQL	46 min 05sec	140sec
Select 120,000 records with filterand group by	<1 sec	< 1 sec
Insert 60,000 records into MySQL Supplier Table	24min 11sec	68sec
Insert 60,000 records into MySQL Supplier Table SQL	275sec	16sec
Insert 60,000 records into MySQL Supplier Table PHP	291sec	18sec
Left Join between Product and Supplier Tables	<1 sec	<1 sec
Premiere Elements Boot up	29 sec	25sec
Premiere Elements Analyze Scene	200 sec	190sec
Premiere Elements write FLV 10min clip 640 x 480	630sec	428sec
Photoshop CS3 First Boot up	14sec	12sec
Photoshop CS3-Smart Blur 14MPixel image	16sec	12sec
Photoshop CS3-Finishing Impressionist 14MPixel image	9sec	6sec
Photoshop CS3-Finishing Filter Gallery 14MPixel image	15sec	9sec
Photoshop CS3-Finishing \impressionist 24MPixel image	31sec	25sec
Photoshop CS3-Crop, Resize, Shape, Color Correct	<1 sec	<1 sec
Photoshop CS3-Brighteness, Exposure, Sharpen	<1 sec	<1 sec
Photoshop CS3-Topaz Smart Sharpen 26MPixel image	20sec	18sec
Photoshop CS3-Reshape 26MPixel image	160sec	154sec
Photoshop CS3-Texture Finishing 26MPixel image	44sec	36sec

Green shows the faster performer and red marks where the speed of a system is 2 or more times slower than the other. Two things are obvious from these benchmarks. Windows XP on a 2.26GHz Dual Core PC with 3GB of RAM plus a 250GB hard drive consistently outperforms Windows 7 on 2.10GHz Dual Core PC with 4GB of RAM plus a 500GB SATA hard drive.

Well of course Windows XP does, it has a faster CPU. Well, not exactly.

I looked up the Passmark ratings of the two CPUs and the Windows XP Dual Core is rated at 1046 while the Windows 7 is rated at 1251. So theoretically, such a slight performance advantages of Windows XP remains an anomaly. But what is of real concern is the very poor performance of Windows 7 doing Web development tasks. PHP and MySQL ran significantly slower in Windows 7 using an XAMP . So I had to drag out PHPed and Xdebug to profile and debug the problems. To date I do not have any solutions or insights.

I was going to do some AutoCAD, Corel Draw, Java, JavaScript, Oracle and PostgreSQL benchmarking but the the Windows 7 problems with PHP and MySQL forced a delay in game penalty. If any readers have insights into the Windows 7 problems with PHP and/or MySQL please post a comment.

Summary of Benchmarks

On one hand Windows 7 on a Gateway with a 17.3 inch screen at $650 Canadian [before taxes] is a pleasure to work with. Users will have plenty of room to work in. And the new Windows 7 taskbar makes moving among apps a lot easier. The system had close to XP-like Boot up, Shutdown and Start-up or Hibernate restore times. And copy operations [ notably faster than XP] and open file popups are not painfully slow like in Vista. Also I have yet to run into the annoying Vista roller-coaster performance lags [bright and peppy for 20 minutes then slow as molasses in January for the next 25, then back to …..]. But I have to admit, it is galling to have to endure a 5-20% performance hit in photo and video editing when the new Windows 7 machine should be delivering the very opposite in performance.