Performance Improvements
The last significant group of core improvements to be found in Vista is a collection of several changes Microsoft has made to various subsystems in order to boost overall system performance. Unfortunately, because Vista is still in a beta state where performance optimizations have yet to be turned on, not to mention the lack of diagnostic programs to test these features, we won't be able to bring you any meaningful performance numbers until the release version of Vista ships. However, we can talk some about the most important of these features.
Since XP was launched 5 years ago, broadband internet access has come to be the dominant connection method in much of the world. While XP had some targeted improvements to increase performance on these connections, Microsoft is taking it one step further in Vista with a heavily modified TCP/IP stack. The primary changes will be that the stack is now capable of a greater level of self-optimization by automatically adjusting some settings to maximize performance, and some overhead has been removed to better reach the maximum theoretical performance of high-speed LANs (GigE and higher). The new stack also has support for both IPv4 and IPv6 (instead of requiring 2 separate stacks as is currently the case), but the amount of hardware support to go with this is still fairly low.
The I/O subsystem has also been given a major overhaul, and like the forthcoming changes with DirectX 10, the focus is on better ways to schedule and execute I/O tasks. I/O tasks can now be given a priority level, so that unimportant tasks such as virus-scanners can be given a lower disk priority that will prevent them from being so detrimental to system performance.
The I/O system will now also be able to handle Microsoft's SuperFetch technology, which promises to improve memory usage by creating a third tier of memory pages between those important enough to be in RAM and those relegated to being in a pagefile. The new tier will be a class of pages that are important enough that they need to be accessed often, but are small pages that don't take much time to transfer; these pages can be stored in connected flash-memory devices which offer latencies measured in nanoseconds (a couple orders of magnitude faster than a hard drive page file), and in turn free up the main memory for more important tasks. It's an interesting idea that we hope will give some real benefit in the release version of Vista, and is likely to become more important in the near future as hard drives start to be released with integrated flash memory buffers.
Lastly, the kernel itself has been slightly overhauled, implementing new methods of memory and task management. Microsoft's pitch here is that it will be better optimized for dual-core systems, but since the NT kernel has always had a good level of SMP support for multiple processors, we're a bit skeptical on just what kind of performance improvements can be found here.
The last significant group of core improvements to be found in Vista is a collection of several changes Microsoft has made to various subsystems in order to boost overall system performance. Unfortunately, because Vista is still in a beta state where performance optimizations have yet to be turned on, not to mention the lack of diagnostic programs to test these features, we won't be able to bring you any meaningful performance numbers until the release version of Vista ships. However, we can talk some about the most important of these features.
Since XP was launched 5 years ago, broadband internet access has come to be the dominant connection method in much of the world. While XP had some targeted improvements to increase performance on these connections, Microsoft is taking it one step further in Vista with a heavily modified TCP/IP stack. The primary changes will be that the stack is now capable of a greater level of self-optimization by automatically adjusting some settings to maximize performance, and some overhead has been removed to better reach the maximum theoretical performance of high-speed LANs (GigE and higher). The new stack also has support for both IPv4 and IPv6 (instead of requiring 2 separate stacks as is currently the case), but the amount of hardware support to go with this is still fairly low.
The I/O subsystem has also been given a major overhaul, and like the forthcoming changes with DirectX 10, the focus is on better ways to schedule and execute I/O tasks. I/O tasks can now be given a priority level, so that unimportant tasks such as virus-scanners can be given a lower disk priority that will prevent them from being so detrimental to system performance.
The I/O system will now also be able to handle Microsoft's SuperFetch technology, which promises to improve memory usage by creating a third tier of memory pages between those important enough to be in RAM and those relegated to being in a pagefile. The new tier will be a class of pages that are important enough that they need to be accessed often, but are small pages that don't take much time to transfer; these pages can be stored in connected flash-memory devices which offer latencies measured in nanoseconds (a couple orders of magnitude faster than a hard drive page file), and in turn free up the main memory for more important tasks. It's an interesting idea that we hope will give some real benefit in the release version of Vista, and is likely to become more important in the near future as hard drives start to be released with integrated flash memory buffers.
Lastly, the kernel itself has been slightly overhauled, implementing new methods of memory and task management. Microsoft's pitch here is that it will be better optimized for dual-core systems, but since the NT kernel has always had a good level of SMP support for multiple processors, we're a bit skeptical on just what kind of performance improvements can be found here.
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stash - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Sleep is more effecient in the long run. Shutting down and doing a cold boot every day uses a lot more electricity than sleep. When the machine is in sleep, it uses a fraction of a single watt. Yes, this is obviously more than zero (completely off), but when you cold boot a system, it uses many times more power.As a side benefit, you get back to where you left off almost instantly because sleep combines standby with hibernation.
Griswold - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Oh so wrong. Why would a cold boot use more power? Because the HDDs spin up? Going from sleep to full on does the same. Because the OS has to be loaded from the HDD? Sleep mode also writes to disk. And thats actually it. This is a computer, not an engine that uses more fuel at startup than when it runs.stash - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
When you can resume from sleep in a few seconds compared to 45-60 seconds from a cold boot, then yes, a cold boot uses much more power.johnsonx - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Stash, your logic is faulty. Please give up.stash - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Why should I give up? How is my logic faulty.smitty3268 - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
<I>Is Expose the same as the new compiz and XGL?</I>No, that is more like the Aero interface or OSX's Quartz Extreme. Expose lets you hit a button and then automatically scales and moves every window so that you can see them all and pick out which program you want to use. Think of it as a replacement for ALT-TAB. There is a plugin in compiz that does the same thing.
Locutus465 - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Not sure what your issues with 3D were, I only skimmed the artical so I'm sure which video card you used... But it's possible that if you're using ATI you experienced problems due to their drivers. I've seen many more ATI issues in the MS groups than nVida. My 7800GT has no problem with 1600x1200 (full 3d acceloration, no apparent crashing). My only concern wth Vista 64 is drivers... As of right now there's no driver avaailable for the Promies Ultra100TX2 controller card which is a huge issue for me as I have my secondary drive (used to store installers and as my page file drive in XP). I hope MS manages to convince to support 64b as well as 32b is supported. When I do upgrade to Vista, it will be to 64b.JarredWalton - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Page 10: using 6800 Ultra card.The problem is both with drivers (64-bit are still being worked on), the OS (still being worked on), and resource requierments are increased under 64-bit mode. Compatibility with various hardware is already worse with Vista, but 64-bit mode is even worse still. Can they fix it before shipping? Hopefully, and one way or another we're going 64-bit in the future.
It could be that other test systems would be more or less stable, but with a preview of Vista Beta 2 that's really too much extra work. The article was already over 12000 words, so trying it out on five other platforms would make this monolithic task even more daunting. The bottom line is that Vista is still interesting, but it's definitely not ready for release. There's a good reason it has been delayed until 2007, just like the XP x64 delays in the past.
DerekWilson - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
We have tested Vista with both ATI and NVIDIA drivers and see similar issues between the two. While the numbers were gathered under NVIDIA hardware, we are confident that the same patterns would emerge with ATI at this point in time.Locutus465 - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Well, weird... I've had my share of beta issues but thus far Glass + 3D acceleration hasn't been one of them. I have noticed that installing QuickTime 7 on Vista (at least in my case) renders Vista Ultimite 64 unbootable.