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Parallels: What's quicker, XP or 7?

majordude

majordude

macrumors 68020
Original poster
I have a new rMBP with 16GB memory. What's quicker, XP or Windows 7 (in a virtualized space)?

Any settings that work best?
 
I would have assumed that Windows XP would be the better option due to the fact that it requires fewer system resources than Windows 7.
 
I've got both XP and 7 (and Windows 2000 as well) and XP had felt faster (and 2000 fastest of all by far), however they've put in an effort to optimize operation with 7 and it now doesn't seem to have a speed disadvantage. OTOH performance with Windows 2000 has deteriorated as they don't put in any effort at all for that OS.

Like dealing with OS X, it's probably best to use the latest OS version. Alas, 8 is really ugly though.
 
Well, I "feel" that 7 is "snappier" than XP. Could it be that a diminished 64 bit system is faster than an optimized 32 bit?
 
majordude said:
Well, I "feel" that 7 is "snappier" than XP. Could it be that a diminished 64 bit system is faster than an optimized 32 bit?
Click to expand...

The 64 bit architecture is more efficient than the 32 bit architecture, so if you Windows 7 is 64 bit it probably will outperform 32 bit XP. (I've got 32 bit Windows 7 because I was concerned about compatibility.)
 
If you have some action that takes a long time to execute, just use that for comparison. It beats using a synthetic benchmark.
 
I prefer 7 and it feels a tad snappier not much but maybe a bit and looks a lot better to, xp has turned a bit boring to be honest.
 
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