Anandtech reviews Vista

[Lovesong]

Hey... I didn't see anyone posting this, so for those that are interested, Anandtech (fairly respectable hardware geek site) reviewed Vista. In short, their conclusion, after a series of tests is that a power user of Vista will need ~4GB of RAM, and in many instances it's actually slower than XP.

In terms of Vista vs. Tiger, they conclude,

"Given how long Vista was in development and how long after Tiger it is being released, it's almost a bit sad to see that Microsoft couldn't come up with something that was far above and beyond Tiger. Leopard will undoubtedly change things again, but for now Vista could have surpassed Tiger only if Microsoft had done more sensible things with the UI."

This is pretty funny. I mean this is a respected and generally unbias website.
Check it out:
http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=1

 

[illegalprelude]

a great read. mostly at work, i gotta answer questions about Vista all the time and besides the few minutes i get to click around on it, I dont plan to buy Vista anytime soon so reading some useful information makes my life alot easier

 

[MacVault]

Filesystem I/O - Vista vs Mac OS X

From the AnandTech article...

In Microsoft's corner, Vista's file-I/O improvements keep it solidly ahead of Tiger. The SuperFetch family of abilities is clearly beyond Tiger, as Tiger's own caching system doesn't have the speed or refinement to match what Vista can do and it makes a remarkable difference. System Restore/Volume Shadow Copy is also well beyond what Tiger can do, and although this is apt to start debates at VSC versus Apple's already-revealed Time Machine technology, only one of them is in a shipping operating system and that's Vista.

Is Apple ever going to fix the filesystem I/O issues? Also their AFP/network performance issues? Before Apple even thinks about takling the enterprise world they will have to fix these two things for sure.

 

[After G]

From the AnandTech article...



Is Apple ever going to fix the filesystem I/O issues? Also their AFP/network performance issues? Before Apple even thinks about takling the enterprise world they will have to fix these two things for sure.

Superfetch sounds like it would slow down startup from the MS blurb on the Vista website. Why would you want your computer to "pre-open" programs? I want them open when I click on them, and not before. It sounds like a MSified version of Startup Items...where they pick what opens for you, instead of you making the decisions. Not good IMO.

But what I/O issues? I find as a user that stuff opens fast enough, reads fast enough, and saves fast enough on OS X. I can understand networking I/O issues, as I've waited for iTunes on 100MB LAN, but it sounds like Apple just has to adapt the flash-enabled drives to the OS for filesystem.

 

[MacVault]

Superfetch sounds like it would slow down startup from the MS blurb on the Vista website. Why would you want your computer to "pre-open" programs? I want them open when I click on them, and not before. It sounds like a MSified version of Startup Items...where they pick what opens for you, instead of you making the decisions. Not good IMO.

Hey if it makes my experience faster I really don't mind the computer trying to guess what I want to open next. It surely doesn't make it slower. I have ever noticed how fast an app opens the second time.... like reboot your Mac, open Safari (many dock bounces), then quit Safari, then open Safari again (one or none dock bounces)! The boost in performance is because a lot of the code is still in RAM. This is what SuperFetch improves upon and makes apps open like they were never closed. Sounds good to me. Why would you have a problem with that? It's not like it slows down an app it failed to "cache" for you.

But what I/O issues? I find as a user that stuff opens fast enough, reads fast enough, and saves fast enough on OS X.

"fast enough" is not fast enough. If everyone thought that we'd all be back in the dark ages.

 

[mkrishnan]

I do also really respect Anandtech's reviews...they're long-winded, but very informative.

Look at this:

Microsoft Word remains single threaded, although Excel can now take advantage of multiple cores when performing calculations.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding... just opening up three documents in Word brought it up to seven threads right away on a Mac (Office 04). You're kidding me, right?

There do seem to be some interesting features in Vista, though. This was a good review of a number of them...I especially liked that it contained actual tests of the ReadyBoost system.

 

[Dont Hurt Me]

Vista 2007 is OSX 2001, whats new here? Not much its the same old story. Microsoft tries to copy Apple and screws it all up. Whats new?

 

[clevin]

i would think anandtech's is ok, but consider vista just out, there will be many patches for both hardwares and softwares, to think "Vista is slower in current software environment than XP" is more accurate than simply say its slower than XP, after all, eventually vista's new features will be utilized and the performance will be enhanced. to fairly compare these two, wait for 6 month until ATi, Nvidia's new drivers out.

Im surprised they go ahead comparing OSX and Vista with no data or test, did they do that before? I would luv to see some data about the comparison between those two.

 

[jdechko]

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding... just opening up three documents in Word brought it up to seven threads right away on a Mac (Office 04). You're kidding me, right?

I think "Multi-threaded" means that its dual/multi-processor aware. Sure Word may open up 7 threads, but it has to run them all on one processor/core, whereas Excel can take advantage of the second (third, fourth or eighth ) core. At least, that's what I took that statement to read.

 

[mkrishnan]

I think "Multi-threaded" means that its dual/multi-processor aware. Sure Word may open up 7 threads, but it has to run them all on one processor/core, whereas Excel can take advantage of the second (third, fourth or eighth ) core. At least, that's what I took that statement to read.

My understanding was that a thread is a thread... meaning that, certainly, a better designed application will distribute tasks more evenly across many threads, but that as long as an application uses more than one thread, the OS has free reign to try to distribute threads to cores.

That is, I thought multi-threaded just meant using more than one thread?

 

[Lovesong]

Is Apple ever going to fix the filesystem I/O issues? Also their AFP/network performance issues? Before Apple even thinks about takling the enterprise world they will have to fix these two things for sure.

In all honesty, the SuperFetch technology would be great... on something like a MacPro, with 16GB of RAM, where you have enough system RAM to burn, that you can have all your favorite software ready to open at the touch of a button. The article made a good point in that there are very few beige boxes out there (especially in the enterprise world) that are packed with more than 2 gigs. Unless you are hardcore gamer, a video/ audio/ or imaging pro, there simply isn't a need for more than that. XP can't really use it, and if you're one of the latter three, you're probably siting in front of a G5 or MacPro.
I simply don't understand the argument about I/O. For the most part that is dependent on the speed of your HD, coupled with your L2 cahe, and FSB (correct me if I'm wrong). Right now I'm sitting in front of a C2D MBP, which has a 4MB L2 cache running @1:1 with my processor.
Yes, solid state is faster than I/O from a hard drive, but if you went away from HD's you'd be stuck at 32 GBs.
I don't think that anything in Apple's approach to how you read and write to the HD is necessarily wrong. Hardware is usually top of the line, and I don't feel like I need to go and get more RAM for my new notebook, as some processes are dumping my entire HD onto it.
I could, of course, be wrong.

 

[jdechko]

My understanding was that a thread is a thread... meaning that, certainly, a better designed application will distribute tasks more evenly across many threads, but that as long as an application uses more than one thread, the OS has free reign to try to distribute threads to cores.

That is, I thought multi-threaded just meant using more than one thread?

I'm not sure about that, but just the wording that they used adds a layer of confusion (threads vs. cores). But the way that the article makes it sound makes me believe it's actually cores, not threads.

 

[tyr2]

My understanding was that a thread is a thread... meaning that, certainly, a better designed application will distribute tasks more evenly across many threads, but that as long as an application uses more than one thread, the OS has free reign to try to distribute threads to cores.

That is, I thought multi-threaded just meant using more than one thread?

Correct. A process can contain multiple threads. When a thread needs execution is is executed by a running kernel thread. This execution can take place on any running core.

However just because an application has multiple threads doesn't mean you get good performance scalling over multiple cores. For example one of the threads could just manage the menu bars, and one performs background saving. Splitting these up onto multiple cores won't hurt but it won't be much faster.

An application needs to be designed with multicore execution in mind to acutally reap the rewards.

 

[mkrishnan]

However just because an application has multiple threads doesn't mean you get good performance scalling over multiple cores.

True, thanks, yes, I do understand this... I'm not sure how *well* Office is multi-threaded in OS X, but my point was that it *is* multi-threaded. That's certainly a big issue, though. If you have 25 threads managing "pretty" things and one thread converting a video file format, forget it!

 

[YS2003]

When I was at BestBuy today, I checked out several Vista installed HP and Gateway notebooks. Ctrl + Tab to cycle through the open apps in a 3D manner was cool for the first few seconds. Then, I realized OS X's Exposé is more functional.

The interesting thing about Vista is there is the section in Control Panel's System area where you can check your machine's Vista readiness scoring. Those brand new notebooks at Bestbuy has scores like 2 to 8. The existence of that feature is telling something. With OS X, I feel the OS is very nimble and not taxing the hardware unnecessarily. But, with Windows Vista, I just felt MS's OS is bloated too much for my taste. I just feel Vista is the turning point for MS's market position. The notion that the company who was sitting on $30 Billion cash created Vista after such a long wait was simply a big disappointment.