Windows 7 64 or Windows 8 64 bit

[KalMaverick]

Windows 8 hasn't been out for four years, and we all know a new installation boots faster.

Who knows how slow Windows 8 will be after four years?

Yes, I thought so.

Windows 8 hasn't been out for 4 years, and 7 has... Mmm how could we possible eliminate that difference and benchmark start up times?

Oh right, we do fresh installs for both. Which is exactly what is done when benchmarks are done and guess what? Windows 8 is still faster.

EDIT: I had enough respect for you to answer your question about hardware, the least you could do is have some manners and respond to my question back on page 4.

We're not going to agree on point #1. Can we agree both 7 and 8 is sufficiently fast?

There have been numerous links posted to show Windows 8 boots faster, if you choose to ignore them that's your prerogative, doesn't change the facts though.

It's laughable that you decide to strike it off the list because you choose to remain ignorant.

 

[Non]

1 your win 8 license entitles you to install win7. 2 you can remove metro if you like. Silly to pay for win 7

 

[Swa]

This thread is derailed imo. If I may try steer it back ... Shogun, why is Windows 8 better than 7? I'll try be open minded but honestly I tried it and disliked it. Also I don't like being treated as a peon by corporate strategy.

It seems for some if an OS is better under the surface it's better. Some don't get that a UI can make or break it.

Right, so lets have a show of hands ... those that think Windows 8 boots faster?

I've installed OSes many times and they usually start of fast and end up slow even with more or less the same setup. I'll say it's probably responsive faster because what I've seen MS doing is moving load times away from boot time but at the expense of application startup. Overall not saving any time.

1 your win 8 license entitles you to install win7. 2 you can remove metro if you like. Silly to pay for win 7

Doesn't matter much when what you pay for in the shop is for a disk and not a license. You would have to download a windows iso which MS doesn't want to offer freely. And are Win8 install keys valid for Win7?

 

[SirFooK'nG]

Can't see any difference.... and if you have a SSD, would you?

I would say Windows 8 takes longer to shut down, Windows 7 is instant.

I see no difference in my Win 8 Pro since upgrading... Running a vertex 3 240gb SSD. I have no experience on either with a normal HDD, use SSD's as primary on all my PC's

 

[kingrob]

I see no difference in my Win 8 Pro since upgrading... Running a vertex 3 240gb SSD. I have no experience on either with a normal HDD, use SSD's as primary on all my PC's

Thanks, so we can put the myth that Windows 8 boots faster than Windows 7 to rest now.

It's also possible to do a UEFI secure boot with Windows 7 64-bit, would love to see how fast the notebook boots up.

 

[DominionZA]

Thanks, so we can put the myth that Windows 8 boots faster than Windows 7 to rest now.

It's also possible to do a UEFI secure boot with Windows 7 64-bit, would love to see how fast the notebook boots up.

Don't think so dude.

My Alienware M17X R4 arrived last Fri with Win 7 as the stock OS. 32GB mSata and 2 x 1TB HDD in raid 0 striped configuration. I fiddled with it for a day or so then installed Win 8. There was a noticeable improvement in boot and performance IMO. Not enough to go Oooohhhhh aaaaaah. But noticeable.

Did not last long like this anyway. By day 3 I replaced the primary 1TB with the 256GB Vertex 4 that I pulled out of my XPS 15. Which BTW is something I really love about Win 8.
This Vertex 4 has gone through 4 machines now without a reinstall. Win 8 seamlessly clears the HAL and resets itself up with the new hardware. Bonus... And each of these 4 machines have different chipsets AFAIK.

 

[kingrob]

Don't think so dude.

My Alienware M17X R4 arrived last Fri with Win 7 as the stock OS. 32GB mSata and 2 x 1TB HDD in raid 0 striped configuration. I fiddled with it for a day or so then installed Win 8. There was a noticeable improvement in boot and performance IMO. Not enough to go Oooohhhhh aaaaaah. But noticeable.

Did not last long like this anyway. By day 3 I replaced the primary 1TB with the 256GB Vertex 4 that I pulled out of my XPS 15. Which BTW is something I really love about Win 8.
This Vertex 4 has gone through 4 machines now without a reinstall. Win 8 seamlessly clears the HAL and resets itself up with the new hardware. Bonus... And each of these 4 machines have different chipsets AFAIK.

When Windows 7 was installed, did it have fast boot and UEFI boot enabled in the BIOS?

 

[DominionZA]

When Windows 7 was installed, did it have fast boot and UEFI boot enabled in the BIOS?

Yes - it did. I have not fiddled with any BIOS settings yet and UEFI is still enabled. Can't recall fast boot though. Will fire up the Alienware in the AM and check (too lazy to get up now ). Sure it was though.

 

[grim]

Thanks, so we can put the myth that Windows 8 boots faster than Windows 7 to rest now.

It's also possible to do a UEFI secure boot with Windows 7 64-bit, would love to see how fast the notebook boots up.

Oh FFS, one user stating he hasn't noticed an improvement means nothing. I'll build stock Win7 and Win8 VMs tomorrow and record video of the boot times

 

[Swa]

Let's settle this. Kotaku gives these. Most figures are not that impressive enough to really notice so anybody who says they do is likely experiencing the placebo effect.

Boot times do look impressive at first glance with one caveat though, windows logo to desktop isn't the entire windows boot sequence. Even if we do give it a more realistic 9 out of 45 seconds, 20% isn't so impressive on an already bloat free installation. As time continues and bloat increases it will seem to fade into nothingness and become unnoticeable. The 75% figures being touted are due mainly to the effect of a clean install. So as I said before because MS has been moving loads away from boot time to more just in time loading it's going to show up somewhere else.

Windows 8 is faster on paper but overall only about 1-2% which nobody will notice. I wonder what effect virtual memory management is having. MS has the fugly habit of preemptively offloading memory into pagefile so slowing down performance. Since enabling it for memory requirements some of my applications actually stop working for a few seconds.

 

[Roman4604]

Windows 8 is faster on paper but overall only about 1-2% which nobody will notice.

Not what I'm experiencing on my MacBook Air (only comes with SSD). Win8.1 boots in half half the time of Win7 when factoring out the Boot Camp vBIOS load time (doesn't support UEFI installation yet). Coincidentally the 13 sec Win8.1 load time matches OSX ML 10.8.4 almost exactly (which does UEFI boot).

As time continues and bloat increases it will seem to fade into nothingness and become unnoticeable.

The concept of this mythical bloatware only applies to those who don't understand what is happening in their OS's startup sequence. On that subject, Win8.x's enhanced Task Mgr gives one a nice view of their user level startup modules ...

 

[ponder]

I would say Windows 8 takes longer to shut down, Windows 7 is instant.

By default Win8 is configured to hibernate/suspend to disk so it never shuts down, this takes longer but it also increases the boot time once you start it up again.

 

[Roman4604]

this takes longer but it also increases the boot time once you start it up again.

Yeah, regular shutdown/bootup is much faster than hibernate (save/load memory contents). Thus I've configured my MBA to only hibernate on Critical battery level.

 

[Rickster]

I personally would go for Win 7, Win 8 for me was hate at first sight, I didnt like it at all.

 

[Swa]

Not what I'm experiencing on my MacBook Air (only comes with SSD). Win8.1 boots in half half the time of Win7 when factoring out the Boot Camp vBIOS load time (doesn't support UEFI installation yet). Coincidentally the 13 sec Win8.1 load time matches OSX ML 10.8.4 almost exactly (which does UEFI boot).

Exactly what I said. A few seconds off from a few seconds will seem like a lot but will fade with time. There is also no factoring out of anything. If you want a fair comparison you have to compare from the boot sector load.

The concept of this mythical bloatware only applies to those who don't understand what is happening in their OS's startup sequence. On that subject, Win8.x's enhanced Task Mgr gives one a nice view of their user level startup modules ...

There's nothing mythical about bloat. How many people actually knows how to use taskmgr? Even if you do I don't buy the "knowing how to maintain a system" argument. Windows is not designed to be easily maintainable. Things get uninstalled with bits being left behind. The only way you're not going to see bloat is to just install your standard set of programs and not trying out anything else ever.

 

[Roman4604]

There is also no factoring out of anything. If you want a fair comparison you have to compare from the boot sector load.

Same applies for Win7 or Win8.x on a MacBook, both (currently) require the VBIOS, only OSX can do UEFI boot. Hopefully with the launch of OSX Mavericks, Apple will officially support UEFI installs of Win8.1 (can supposed be hacked now).

Anyway the difference between the two Windows is still notable in my experience 15+26=41 sec for Win7 vs. 15+13=28sec for Win8.1.

There's nothing mythical about bloat.

Well, had Win7 64 on my MBA for a year & half. During that time I install/uninstalled a reasonable amount of sw (inc apps, utils, games etc.), along with the weekly Win/Office updates. I still managed to maintain roughly the same bootup times during the entire period, same goes for my older Dell E6400 laptop.