Vista seems slow? Slower than XP?

O-Dog · 28 Mar 2007 at 09:51

Hi, is it me or does Vista seem slow? On the install there were long pauses of the screen where it didnt seem to be doing much, i though the install had crashed.

I mean its not abnormally slow, maybe slightly slower than XP... i was just expecting with a 3GHz P4, nvidia 7300 and 2GB of ram it would be faster than XP!!

Any ideas? I am running on a PATA harddisk, maybe the delays are from the harddisk access.

Thnx

theboyrob · 28 Mar 2007 at 09:54

Does seem to run slower on one of my machines.

On my main as in sig it runs fine, on my laptop (Celeron 1.5m, 1GB, 60GB) it chugs beyond believe.

Also installed on a works machine, Sempron 2800+, 1GB, 80GB and its a little slow on that.

Seems you need a very high spec pc to run vista at a decent rate!

garyh · 28 Mar 2007 at 10:27

You're comparing an operating system that's 5 years old with a newly released operating system for speed?

Makes sense :rolleyes:

hardware has advanced since the launch of XP, if you've not kept your PC up-to-date then that's your problem.

If you reduce the feature set of Vista (things like disabling the indexing service, windows defender etc) then you may get performance similar to that of XP.

O-Dog · 28 Mar 2007 at 11:27

garyh said:
Makes sense hardware has advanced since the launch of XP, if you've not kept your PC up-to-date then that's your problem.

If you reduce the feature set of Vista (things like disabling the indexing service, windows defender etc) then you may get performance similar to that of XP.

dude, a 3GHz P4 with 2GB of DDR2 ram may not be bleeding edge but i would expect it to still be able to haul ass... it aint exactly a rig from the stoneage! i mean vista isnt slow.. its just not like in the old days of win xp fresh install would boot within 10 seconds!

Cheers

clone · 28 Mar 2007 at 11:49

It`s slow on my rig see sig,cant even play BF2142 without crashing and blue screening everytime :/

something daft already!! · 28 Mar 2007 at 12:03

Boot is nice and quick for me in Vista, much quicker than in XP. Have you got the latest drivers for your hardware? My guess its something to do with that, although I have found one install of windows on the same machine can behave differently to the smae install done again. Maybe a reinstall will help?

clone · 28 Mar 2007 at 12:15

All my driver`s are up to date.

SideWinder · 28 Mar 2007 at 12:15

clone said:
It`s slow on my rig see sig,cant even play BF2142 without crashing and blue screening everytime :/

Surprised it runs slow on your rig...could be a driver issue? And you just posted about your drivers...nevermind.

Priapus · 28 Mar 2007 at 12:22

It is strange to hear some of you are having problems.

I am running Vista Ultimate on a Shuttle XPC system:

AMD A64 3400+ (2.4Ghz)
2Gb Memory
X800Xt 256mb AGP
300Gb SATA (160GB x 2) ina RAID

And it is by no means slow..

Like said above, maybe a reinstall?

jrodga2k5 · 28 Mar 2007 at 12:45

On my spec Vista runs so quick its unreal! I do only use it if im just in for a bit of web browsing etc because lets be honest it aint great for much else at the moment

Core 2 Duo e6300 @ 2.45Ghz
2048mb DDRII Mem
8800GTS 320MB
250gb Sata II HDD
80gb Sata II HDD
Audigy 2 ZS (With official drivers now....thank you god lol)

Boots in no time and is so fast and smooth also

clone · 28 Mar 2007 at 12:54

If i reinstall vista will i have to phone microsoft up to reactivate it as it`s oem?

Priapus · 28 Mar 2007 at 13:04

I don't think you will have to phone them again.

something daft already!! · 28 Mar 2007 at 18:03

No, you wont have to call them. I did several re-installs and activated ok on-line, before I realised I had some dodgy memory (which is 3 years old and being swapped now free!) which was causing my issues.

Minstadave · 28 Mar 2007 at 18:17

I find it a little laggy, it doesn't feel as sharp as XP. I've removed all the fancy effects too, but it still just doesn't feel right.

bledd · 28 Mar 2007 at 18:31

use vlite to strip out components pre-install, makes installation way quicker and a smaller os

Macro · 28 Mar 2007 at 20:31

Hopefully we should see some additional "nippiness" in Vista as the hardware manufacturers get to grips (hurry up ffs!!!

) with getting the new driver model stable, then they can focus on speed.

Don't forget companies like Nvidia have been writing drivers for 5 years for XP and still issue new ones with speed/stability improvements (allegedly

) even now!!

Doesn't negate Vista feeling a bit less responsive now though...

the-void · 28 Mar 2007 at 20:51

I admit it could be the drivers that is causing all the problems with Vista. I hope it is.

However, its rather too convenient to keep blaming the drivers for Vista's problems.

Is it not possible that Vista base is just inherently inefficient compared to the XP code base. Possibly one reason is the fact they had to scratch Vista halfway through development and start again. Time was not on their side and towards the end it just got rushed out the door with a lot of rough edges.

Personally I don't believe its just down to bad drivers. I think 70% is down to rushed coding. There is a problem with Vista looping on thumbnails which is why you get reports of slow disk to disk transfer whilst vista is "calculating remaining time". This is on various hardware platforms, which rules out mere driver issues. MS have refused to fix this problem yet. Google for it. It effected me really badly. In fact, my transfer rates were half that of XP!

Hence why I binned my Vista until SP1. I am under the impression that they pushed Vista out of the door knowing it had certain issues, but was stable enough for general release. It would be nice for people to acknowledge that it might be Vista itself that's a little bit faulty, rather then keep blaming the drivers.

Macro · 28 Mar 2007 at 22:20

You're missing the point. Vista may well be slower by default on the same hardware as XP, but then Vista is designed to have additonal features and functionality that will take advantage of new hardware today and for the next 5 + years over and above that of XP.

This is no different to XP being slower on a 486 PC than Windows95 on XPs release.

The point I made about drivers is that indecernable feeling of nippiness. As the drivers are refined and tuned for speed they will be optimised to get the best out of the OS & hardware, with that performance will increase. This covers everything from GPU to m/b chipset, SATA/IDE drivers as well as sound, network etc. In fact every aspect of the interface to the underlying hardware.

I don't think anyone would dispute drivers are sorely lacking at the moment. Given the challenges with the driver releases, or lack thereof from Creative, Nvidia, ATI etc we're seeing at the moment I think it's fair to say the "in the box" drivers are feature limited and tuned for basic stabilty rather than performance.

I stand by my previous post, I think the optimising and tuning of drivers along with OS tweaks will produce a much nippier feeling OS whilst keeping the added bells & whistles.

clone · 29 Mar 2007 at 08:08

Took out my flashdrive yesterday and vista runs far quicker :confused:

and i sorted my bf2142 problem crashing,must have been a bad install of the game ,all sorted now and loving vista

the-void · 29 Mar 2007 at 09:08

Athanor said:
You're missing the point

I can get every single additional feature that Vista provides on XP with third party software and XP is still quicker than Vista. The hardware I am running XP is far different than the hardware I was running XP on FIVE years ago. Please don't tell me Vista is designed to run slower than XP on my dual core 4200+ machine because its old hardware and needs something more powerful. :rolleyes:

I don't beleive its just the drivers Athanor. I think you might be just being hopeful. I beleive a good deal of Vista's problem is in the codebase itself. Is that too hard for you to accept?