Three years ago we were benchmarking Microsoft's then latest operating system, Windows 8 . At the time we were keen to make sure Windows 8 performed as well as Windows 7, which was a huge upgrade from 2006's Windows Vista.
In the end, we determined that Windows 8 on par with windows 7 and at times a fraction faster, leading us to this conclusion in our performance review:
"Looking beyond benchmarks, Windows 8 appears more polished than Windows 7, even if you plan to live on the desktop and aren't too fond of the Start screen, general usage is smoother and appears to be faster on Windows 8, which I found most noticeable on our somewhat underpowered Athlon II X4 system. If anything, it's a great start. Now the Metro/Modern style will have to prove itself as a cross-platform OS that marries desktop, laptop and tablet PCs."
It's obvious now that the 'Metro' Start screen was an epic failure and in my opinion it was the only real issue with Windows 8, as I thoroughly enjoyed using the operating system with Classic Shell installed.
Fortunately, Microsoft learned from its mistakes and addressed some of Windows 8's shortcomings In Windows 10 which we believe is the best version yet, if only for its improved looks and functionality across devices and form factors.
After running the beta for months, I installed Windows 10 on launch day with the impression that it was relatively fast and stable, though it remained to be seen precisely how fast it was compared to Windows 8.1 and the beloved Windows 7.
That's what we plan to find out today as we test various aspects of the operating system including boot up and shutdown times, file copying, encoding, browsing, gaming and some synthetic benchmarks.
Test System Specs
All three operating systems were tested using a fresh install with all the updates applied and then our test software installed. The exact same hardware was used for each configuration with the only difference being the OS used.
- Intel Core i5-4670K (3.4GHz - 3.8GHz)
- Asrock Z97 Extreme6
- 8GB DDR3-2400 RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 980
- Crucial MX200 1TB
- SilverStone Essential Gold 750w
- Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Boot, Sleep & Hibernate Performance
The wake up from hibernation results are similar to wake from sleep. Here Windows 10 took just 21 seconds, while Windows 8.1 was slightly slower taking 23 seconds and then Windows 7 at 27 seconds.
Application Performance
- Windows 10 delivered similar performance to Win 7 in Excel 2013, while 8.1 was consistently slower.
- At this point Firefox is slower in Windows 10 when compared to 8.1 and 7, based on an average of 7 runs we found it was 7% slower.
- he Windows 10 performance when testing with WinRAR wasn't great as it was consistently slower than 8.1 and 7 when measuring single and multi-threaded performance.
- The best results with Photoshop CC were seen when using Windows 8, while Windows 10 matched the performance of Windows 7.
- Like what we saw when testing with WinRAR, we find that Windows 10 is slower than both 8.1 and 7 in 7-Zip.
Storage Performance
- We have updated the initial storage results testing both AHCI (Samsung SSD 850 Pro) and NVMe (Samsung SM951) solid state storage. The following tests were conducted using the Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD installed on the Asrock Z97 Extreme6.
- The CrystalDiskMark sequential 32 queues and 1 thread test provided similar results across all three operating systems using the Samsung SSD 850 Pro 512GB.
- The 4K 32 queues and 1 thread test showed Windows 10 and 8.1 delivering similar read performance while Windows 7 was a fraction slower. That difference was amplified when looking at the write performance, here Windows 7 was noticeably slower.
Gaming Performance
- As anticipated, it looks like Windows 10 offers little to no performance advantages over previous versions when it comes to DX11 gaming, at least not in BioShock.
- Surprisingly Windows 10 provided consistent gains in Metro Redux with the GTX 980. This could simply be an issue with the drivers though.
- Tomb Raider delivered the exact same performance across all three Microsoft operating systems.
- Finally we have Crysis 3 and here Windows 10 performed well, delivering strong performance at both tested resolutions.
Faster, Slower, Better?
After watching near-identical results pour in on most tests, from application to encoding, to storage and gaming, it's hard to read too much into results as there are many variables we can't control.
The same hardware that currently runs Windows 7 competently can be upgraded to Windows 10 with no issues whatsoever on the performance front.
We can ensure that the operating systems were evaluated using the exact same hardware, benchmarking software and methodology. However, we can't ensure that something such as GPU drivers didn't cause variations in performance. Moreover, technologies such Intel's Turbo boost feature can impact the accuracy of the results, though we generally run all tests at least three times, taking the average from multiple runs.
The short version of this conclusion is that a properly set up Windows machine equipped with semi-modern hardware should be capable of running Windows 7 or above more than adequately. The same hardware that currently runs Windows 7 competently can be upgraded to Windows 10 with no issues whatsoever on the performance front.
It used to be the case a few generations back that a new Windows release would need time to be at least on par with the performance of its predecessor. Possibly the most extreme example I can recall was the move from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Though that was partly due to immature drivers on the all-new platform, Vista was a resource hog, too.
We wouldn't be surprised if certain aspects of Windows 10's performance are improved over the coming months and into next year, but most importantly today, you can feel free to upgrade and know you won't be sacrificing performance in the process.
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