Vista Performance V's XP

Hi All

I've had Vista now for just under a month and have to say that the performance of Microsoft's new OS leaves alot to be desired.

My PC isnt slow, well it wasnt under XP.

I've uprgaded several of my apps to make them Vista compatible but the whole OS just seems sluggish allround.

My PC with Vista installed has a 3.6Ghz P4 HT with 3gb RAM, my laptop with XP is a 1.5 ghz Centrino with 1.2gb RAM and it trounces my PC.

I've been in the PC support arena for many years and have dabbled with PC's for as long as I can remember so know little about them so Vista has been like a slap in the face in the way it does its thing....but wow is it slow.....

It seems to show symptoms of incorrect drivers that are being used (or at least inefficient driver) despite the device manager not showing anything wrong. I suspect that the drivers including the drivers perhaps for the chipset could do with updating.

I cant beleive that Vista is this slow overall.

What experiences have you got so far for Vista ? is it awaiting a service pakc do you think ?

Have you guys n gals had to update all of your drivers to get it working at a good speed or has Microsoft made this OS so clumbsy that you need the latest quad CPU's just to get it through the day??


What do you all think ?


Interested

Steve

 

I havent had any performance issues with Vista, its running just as well as when I had XP.

I installed it on my laptop back in February and the home desktop end of April, fresh installs.

On the desktop I needed to get the sound drivers from Creative, but most other drivers installed by Vista.

Overall I'm having a good experience with Vista

 

My vista is ok but nothing great that I can brag about.

It is not lightning fast but it is fairly stable.

I have had to turn off UAC and Aero and Defender to get it to respond as fast as my old XP box and considering all of the newer faster hardware I put into the vista build, you would think it should be faster, a lot faster, but it is not. I would say they are about equal now that I have turned off all of the unnecessary services in Vista.

I found the biggest thing to turn off to make Vista work faster is the to configure it for performance rather than appearance under the advanced system settings tab which is just another way of saying that I turned off the Aero-glass thing that is suppose to make vista look more like a Mac.

It looks really good if you have it configured for appearance but it really slows things down

My new vista build has a much better video card, a gig more of ram, a faster dual core cpu and a 10,000 rpm raptor hard drive compared to my XP computer but even with all those improvements Vista fails to decisively overthrow XP. For me, the match between XP and Vista ends in a draw.

Simply put, there is no WOW factor with Vista

Currently, it cost's too much money for the necessary hardware upgrades and delivers too little of anything new to be considered a must have.

 

I'd have to say that over all, Vista does quite a few things a lot more slowly than I'd like. But if I remember right, XP "Gold" was a bit like swimming in molasses at the beginning until SP1 and some other fixes came down the road.

There is a service pack being readied for Vista, and I'm sure it will make some major improvements. Despite being behind schedule originally, Vista was still rushed out the door and can do with some tweaking.

 

Its interesting that you're saying that you're not getting great performance out of your system despite what sounds like a decent hardware spec. Certainly sounds better than mine.

Dont get me wrong, Vista works with the Aero Pack, I've just got to be a little patient. Maybe I should try and turn it off. The thing is I really wanted to keep the Aero pack, afterall a 3.6Ghz with 3gb RAM ought to be enough to be decent enough to run most things at a usuable rate. My system is rated at 4.4, with the memory, hard drive and Graphics being rated at over 5.5....the cpu gets 4.4.

Its interesting really, I really dont want to go back to XP, its in my interest to continue with Vista...thought it might be a simple case of upgrading the drivers, but since leaving this post I checked on the intel site and apparently Vista has the current chipset drivers which surprised me, I've already upgraded the graphics ard drivers, so may be my system is running at optimum with good drivers, but it is alittle disapointing overall given the performance I'm seeing, I like Vista but i'm alittle annoyed a the overall performance. Perhaps it is time to turn off Aero. The funny thing is, I've recently helped a few friends who have bought new PC's with less spec than mine but have Vista with Aero running faster. Strange..but as I've said, mine does run ok, but not as fast as my laptop with half the speed running XP.

cheers all for your respnses

Steve

 

Hopefully a SP can help somewhat. I suspect this will be the case. Like the look of Vista, glad I upgraded (can't believe I said that, well typed that !)


Steve

 

LOL. Well, I'm glad you did, too. You can only drag your feet for so long before you will get dragged into the future, and those who don't move ahead, fall behind. Can you imagine having to learn the next OS if your last was 98? No matter how good a mechanic may have been with a '56 Chevy, he'd end up helpless with a hybrid.

 

I am confidant that Vista is here to stay and will be much better once the service pack 1 and 2 are released. I like to stay up with evolving PC technology as much as possible so I am not unhappy with my decision to go with Vista this early in the game. I still have my XP box to fall back on in the event of something really bad going wrong with my new Vista build.

Microsoft seems like they focused heavily on appearance and security in the development of Vista and in my opinion they succeeded at neither.

By their own admission, the threw out some of the more important security features they were working on for Vista because they weren't ready by the release date and and what they left us with was Defender and User Account Control which are little more than annoyances at best.

While the aero glass interface looks good, I wonder if they stopped to ask the big question as to if the average PC was up to the task of delivering the goods.

I said average PC because that is what most store- bought computers are and that is what most people use.

IMHO, the average store bought computer is not sent out the door really, truly ready to handle the intense requirements placed on it by the aeroglass feature.

People tend to feel cheated and shortchanged when they get their new pc home and find that the cheesy video card that came with it and the 1 gig of ram that was supplied from the factory can't really handle Vista with aero - glass enabled.

Vista should never have been offered in the "upgrade" version. You cannot reasonably take a pc that is more than 1 years old and expect it to be able to be able to run Vista well.

As far as the security angle for Vista, I think if your behind a router and using a decent anti virus and capable anti spyware program you should be as safe as it is possible to be and in any case,no less safe than XP.

 

im running vista and it runs better then my other pc with XP

dont your mother board have dual channel memory slots? i was just wondering because you said you have 3GB.
i wonder if you would have gotten Intel Core2 Duo Processor if it would have helped it run better?

 

I quite agree with the above, the average PC aint gonna have the guts to handle the Aero theme.

I'm just rather disappointed with MS, it reminds of when they released the plus packs on win 95 and 98 to spruce up your PC, but with all those fancy animated icons n screensavers the OS never really performed very well with it running .

Surely nowadays with hyperthreading, Dual+Quad core technologies in CPU's and their expanded cache stores, programming techniques and languages, nervermind the ever faster memory chips, Microsoft could & should have built a more efficient, robust and usuable OS ??? or is that the idea eh? to keep their friends at intel in business ?!? (not that I'm one for starting conspiracies!). V.disappointing and surprising. it just seems that as Hard drives, CPU's grow bigger and faster, Microsofts OS gets bigger and more power hungry meaning that we need more RAM.......(as I said I'm not wanting to jump on hte conspiracy bandwagon here)

My XP OS with 1gb of RAM used 450mb without running any programs. Vista at idle with 3gb RAM now uses 850mb, erm whats the extra 400mb for ? Aeroglass ?

I know this is one discussion that could run and run and I appreciate all your inputs...


Cheers

Steve

 

Vista Performance Update :

I did some further digging with regards to my systems performance and found that my Canon scanner wasnt quite installed correctly despite it looking fine in Device Manager, my WiFi Card had an issue and I found some Graphics Drivers from Nvidia which I thought I already tried but which installed and has seemingly had an impact on the system.

I turned off Aeroglass and the performance difference was huge. So I turned it back on again and then using the advanced section, turned off a few Aeroglass items which I felt were not necessarily needed. The performance is now much better and very much usable. I've still got the Aeroglass look with various shadows and bits and I've got wey better performance too. Much happier now.

The Nvidia software helped boost my 3D graphics rating too on the Vista Index which BTW was at 4.9 until the other day when it dropped to 4.1 (which dropped my systen to 4.1 too! not happy) and then after instaling the latest Nvidia drivers is now backup to 4.6 how does that workout ?!?

Apart from a few startup and shut down issues marked as critical the system is fine.

A little happier now !!

Steve

 

I have 512MB and 512L2 Cache on this Vista machine, pages load in a matter of seconds...programs start up in seconds...all I did was...

Disable services I don't need....
Disable start up programs I don't need...
Disable some internet protocols *If you experience slower internet than before, the network protocls are probably the problem*
And a few pc tools registry tweaks, which updated the settings to fit my L2 cache and all..

And now, I can do stuff at the blink of an eye, if only I had XP...

It would be blazing fast...

 

reading all these replies,,, i'm getting to the reaction that most people would rather stay with "XP" than moving to "VISTA" so quick....

 

thanx all , for the time , my laptop and i are goin to hang tough with "XP"

 

well hanging in there with XP, would seem a good idea.

My Laptop (running XP) with half the spec of my desktop still has the edge on performance despite the changes mentioned in my previous post.

For me though I had to go down the Vista route asap as my Job as demands that I know the various MS OS's.

I'm glad I've done it I dont want to go back, I like what MS have tried to do with Vista, what with the extra features it brings. As mentioned just alittle frustrated at the performance. I'm sure theres still things I can do to improve this but time will tell. Probably the biggest improvement will be a Service pack from MS, we shall see.

BTW, my friend who has a PC with less spec that mine tells me that his Vista install (Ultimate, like mine) is infact quicker than when he had XP Pro on his PC (with Aero too!!!)

So there you go its not all doom and gloom..Vista will no doubt like previous 'new' OS's will make us more technically aware and proficient at solving issues. ahem..(tongue in cheek now) Well done Microsoft !!

Cheers All


Steve