Windows XP requires a little more processing power that
Windows 2000. However, it is considered a "dynamic"
operating system as opposed to a "static" operating system.
The more you use Windows XP, the better it performs!
Why? See the following:
Windows XP's Built-In Optimization
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1149277,00.asp
Utilize the following maintenance programs, at least monthly, in this order:
Description of the Disk Cleanup Tool in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310312&Product=winxp
How to Perform Disk Error Checking in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315265&Product=winxp
HOW TO: Analyze and Defragment a Disk in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305781&Product=winxp
Cripes, seems a bit complicated. Is there an easy way to turn off the
'prettiess' to speed up the computer?
Also, is there a way to turn off Autoplay - -it gets very annoying
with my external hdd.
I found this discussion elsewhere on Google Groups:
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XP Performance Aug 18 2001, 6:02 pm show options
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.beta.perform-maintain
From: "XP Performance" <
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Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 17:59:31 -0700
Local: Sat, Aug 18 2001 5:59 pm
Subject: MS Perspective on WinXP Performance
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I got this post from MS
"I think we did a great job with Win2k's performance. We
set a new bar and
have had to work like mad to WinXP to that same level of
performance.
My team and I know quite a bit about the performance
differences between
Win2k and WinXP, we directly wrote some of the code that
allows XP to
perform as it does today and worked with a huge list of
other developers to
get this product performing well. We've run a wide
variety of performance
benchmarks/workloads on a wide spectrum of machines.
We've started to
provide information via the web, but haven't completed
that effort yet.
This is still not the final product, after all.
That said, let me give you a sense of where we stand,
what our goals were at
the onset, and why we chose those goals.
Where we stand (128mb or more).
1. XP is faster than Win2k at some things, but
clearly not everything.
2. Win2k is faster than XP at some things, but
clearly not everything.
3. XP, like Win2k, is faster than Win9x & WinME at
just about
everything, but some gaming benchmarks.
Some perspective
*** NT4 vs Win2k
Win2k is bigger than NT4. There is more code to
execute. Win2k has more
UI work to do as well.
Win2k generally outperforms NT4 because it manages
memory better, had an
improved registry, etc....
Managing memory better is key. We made fewer
mistakes in page
replacement than did NT4. So, even though bigger, we were
able to offset the
costs by being more efficient. With respect to the
registry, the high costs
of the registry are often associated with disk i/o's
needed to bring in data
from the registry. Win2k did a better job keeping the
right registry bytes
in memory. In a sense, the registry improvements were
just memory mgmt
improvements as well.
*** WinXP vs Win2k
WinXP is bigger than Win2k. There is more code to
execute. WinXP has
more UI work to do as well.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
To offset the added code and UI work, WinXP needs to
manage memory
better & improve disk i/o efficiency. In a sense, we can
pay for the costs
of a new UI, new services like system restore, and so
forth by cutting our
disk I/O costs. The disk, by far, is the biggest
bottleneck on the system.
We focused heavily on reducing disk i/o costs.
*********************************************
For the most part, the balance equation is this
If (Video/CPU Costs of New UI & New Code) <
(Savings Gained From
Better Mem Mgmt & Disk I/O efficiency)
Then XP will be faster than Win2k
Else, Win2k will be faster.
**********************************************
****Some of what we've looked at****
Boot, (WinXP generally beats Win2k by a wide
margin.)
Resume from Standby, (WinXP generally beats Win2k by
a wide margin. XP
can resume from standby in <2 seconds on many laptops)
Resume from hibernate, (WinXP beats Win2k here as
well)
Application Launch (WinXP generally beats Win2k for
cold starts, not so
if the app is completely in memory already)
Content Creation Winstone 2001, (XP and Win2k can
both be best here, See
Below)
Business Winstone 2001, (XP and Win2k can both be
best here. (See Below)
Webmark 2001, (XP is typically winning by a small
margin) (See Below)
Sysmark 2001, (Win2k is currently edging out WinXP,
again small margin.)
(See Below)
PC WorldBench 2000, (Win2k will beat XP on this,
unless you click Best
Performance)(See Below)
I-bench, (we've not run it in a while. Win2k should
have the edge.)
(See Below.)
Gaming Benchmarks (I'm gonna skip this now, we can
discuss in another
message. It is really separate wrt to the central points
below)
OfficeBench, we've never run this. Results from
this are on the
anandtech site. I've spoken to the developer. To be
sure, short running
benchmarks that take the disk out of the equation are not
sufficient to
judge the full performance of a product the size of
Windows. Managing the
disk for improved efficiency is the most impressive
performance advance in
Windows XP. It really is cool and new stuff. A measure
of operating system
performance w/o incorporating disk i/o and memory mgmt
decisions is
incomplete. I'm sure it measures something, but it simply
is not possible to
make wide sweeping performance claims based on something
that runs for 30
secs or less. A data point? Yes. A complete story?
Not even close!
****How do we Run Benchmarks?****
We run the above by taking all OS defaults. We do NOT
turn off services.
We do NOT turn off the BIG background bitmap that XP has
(which gives Win2k
a big edge in some things). We do NOT change any UI
settings. During setup,
we clean format the disk and use NTFS. We take all
defaults when setting up
the benchmarks and we run them with all defaults as
well. For newer
systems, we're generally running 32bpp. Some systems
can't support 32bpp, in
which case we use 24 or 16 (the max it can do).
======We run workloads one or more times (or just use the
apps) and then
either WAIT 3 days before timing, or we force the once-
every-three-day
disk-layout optimizations to occur right then and
there.======
That last step sounds odd, doesn't it? Let me explain.
XP is a dynamic
self-tuning OS. One of the most critical things it does
is move files around
on the disk based upon use. There is no static list, we
build it up
dynmaically as you use your system. Moving files can be
a noisy thing, we
don't do it often (every 3 days max). We wait for the
system to be idle
before we do any idle-time performance work. Every 3
days we look to see if
a new layout for better file placement is warranted. If
it is, we move
files around, and keep the files we move contiguous.
This isn't a full
defrag so it is usually pretty quick.
The code that controls all this is in the Task Scheduler,
but not visible as
a scheduled task. If you disable that serivce, you loose
this optimization
as well as the boot and application launch optimizations.
You can trigger the once-every-three-day disk layout
optimizations to occur
manually by calling the ProcessIdleTasks() api in
advapi32.dll. This can be
called from a program or from the cmd line. To call from
the cmd line, just
run
rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
The cmd line version returns immediately, but the work
will proceed in the
background. You need to wait for the dfrgntfs, and wmi*
processes to all
stop before rebooting. This can take a few minutes.
Even though the defrag
processes are involved, it isn't a full defrag.
If you call the API from a program, you'll find it to be
synchronous; when
the api returns, the work is done. More information
about controlling the
dynamic tuning can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/performance/benchmark.htm
****Rules of thumb for what we measure****
1. Boot
2. Resume from Standby
3. Resume from Hibernate
The details on these can be found at
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/fastboot
XP should be significantly faster than Win2k across
the board. We did a
lot to improve these.
4. Application Launch
You can find for information at
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/techinfo/howitworks/performanc...
lt.asp
XP records previous launches of each application. It
knows the file
pages needed and can prefetch them into memory
efficiently if they aren't
already in memory. This gives XP the edge when you
haven't launched an app
recently or some of its pages aren't in memory. For big
apps, the difference
can be 50%, 3 secs instead of 6.
If the app is in memory already, Win2k is generally
faster. But here,
the times are usually very small (often less than a
second to launch an app
if no disk i/o is needed).
5. Business Winstone 2001 &
6. Content Creation Winstone 2001
-XP can outperform Win2k on systems with 700Mhz+
processors, 128MB or more
of RAM, 16MB of video memory, and 30GB partitions. You
can buy these
systems today for ~$700 or so, w/o monitor.
-Win2k can outperform WinXP on systems with less capable
processors, less
capable video, smaller partitions.
Those aren't universally true statements. We have some
lower end systems,
400MHz, 8MB video, small disks, and such where Win2k is
slower than WinXP.
We have some higher end systems where Win2k is slightly
faster than Win2k.
Why does partition size matter? Well, the truth of the
matter is that
Win2k's performance degrades as the size of the
disk/partition grows. As
the size of the disk increases, so to does the average
seek distance for
Win2k. As the seek distance increases, so too does the
average seek time
for Win2k disk i/os. XP, because it dynamically moves
files based upon
usage patterns, doesn't degrade as much (almost no
degradation actually) as
the size of the partition grows. XP also has a different
NTFS format layout
than Win2k. XP also moves files onto the system during
setup in such a way
that it minimizes the amount of filesystem metadata (MFT
entries) required
as it runs.
Why does cpu matter? When taking all defaults, XP
executes more code for
every window opened, menu pulled down, icon drawn, etc.
Why does video memory matter? When taking all defaults,
XP has the
background bitmap. It has more animating, shadowing, and
more elaborate
icons.
The differences between Win2k and WinXP are sometimes
small, 1% or so, and
sometimes large, 5-10% or so.
7. Webmark 2001
-XP & Win2k are less sensitive to partition size on this
workload than the
Winstones. Webmark is a big workload. It runs for an
hour, not just a few
seconds, 1 full hour! We're looking at this workload on
700MHz+ Celerons,
Durons and above. Although, XP is winning across the
board on our systems,
the margin is so small I doubt anyone would notice the
difference. I also
suspect video cards/drivers will allow XP and Win2k to be
either slightly
slower/faster than the other.
8. Sysmark 2001
- A new benchmark, it really did just started running
with consistency on
WinXP. I don't have any general rules of thumb yet. The
two systems we're
looking have Win2k edging WinXP. There are 2 scored
parts to this workload.
XP wins on one, Win2k on the other. In both cases the
margin is small. As
with Webmark, I suspect video cards/drivers will allow
one or the other to
be slightly faster.
This is a very big workload. It ships on 2 CDs. It
runs for close to 2
hours.
9. PC WorldBench 2000
- Win2k is going to win on this test (and others like it)
if you take all
defaults with the OS installation, as we do. PC
WorldBench is a good
benchmark, I don't mean to be critical of it. We decided
it was OK to lose
on this benchmark and others like it. XP beats Win2k if
we turn off two of
the default UI settings, "Fade or slide menus into view"
and "Show shadows
under menus". If you choose "Adjust for best
performance", XP will
outperform Win2k by a wide margin.
Why? PC Worldbench runs at a very fast rate. That's
good for evaluating
one hardware system against another, but not always so
good at evaluating
one operating system version vs another. The high rate
means the fading in
of UI elements is going to have a very demonstrable
impact on the overall
time it takes to run the workload (and thus the score).
With WinXP, we've
added more UI effects. To pull down a menu, the time it
takes to draw a
shadow around the box is in the microseconds. It isn't
noticeable by the
human eye. But, if we pull down 1 million menus in a
short period of time,
that extra shadowing becomes significant.
We have looked closely at the operations used within PC
WorldBench. It uses
real apps to place a load on the operating system and has
been immensely
helpful in our OS performance efforts.
10. I-Bench
-Like PC WorldBench, we'll probably lose to Win2k on I-
Bench. Win2k is
probably slower than NT4 on I-Bench too. It has
sequences where it displays
pages, windows, menus at a very high rate. The time it
takes to display
windows and such is a high percent of the total score.
The added costs of
WinXP over Win2k are going to show if you take all
defaults.
To be honest, we've not run I-Bench in quite sometime.
The applications and
types of things it does are well represented in many
other workloads we
have. If I-Bench were easier to setup/run on a large
scale & daily basis
(lots of plugins have to be installed), we'd probably
still use it
regularly.
---- System Restore------
This subject deserves a special note. The costs of
system restore are quite
small for the average user. We leave it on in all the
tests we run above.
However, I wouldn't leave it on for any development. As
executables,
drivers, dlls and such are created, system restore notes
their creation and
is going to create a new "checkpoint" with them included
in it. That's
gonna be costly for people doing development. I'd
suggest turning it off
for the drives/directories into which you'll be creating
images.
------ A note about XP's size & Tools-----
Many people use task manager and such to measure the size
of Windows XP.
Task manager does not report sharing between process
working sets. With a
dozen processes sharing a page, task manager will report
that as 12 pages.
That's not at all accurate, it should be 1. Also, Win2k
task manager
reports on "Mem Usage", now referenced as "PF Usage" (for
pagefile usage).
PF Usage is simply the amount of "reserved space" from
the paging file. It
doesn't correlate to memory usage well at all.
Here is a simple example of why PF Usage isn't too
helpfull. First, if a
program allocates 1MB of memory but doesn't reference it,
that's a 1MB PF
Usage charge, but represents 0 pages of real memory usage.
Also, working sets are a tricky thing in Windows NT based
systems. In a
nutshell, just because a page is in a process working set
doesn't mean the
OS is unaware that the page is freely available for use
if it needs it. The
mem mgr lets processes hold onto pages for long periods
of time if there
isn't sufficient memory pressure to warrant taking the
pages. That's why
people report increased working set figures for processes
as they add
memory. It doesn't mean the system needs any more memory
to operate, nor
does it mean the mem mgr isn't paying close attention to
page use (it is).
For most processes, the vast majority of pages touched
are touched ONLY
during the initialization of the process (during
launch). Absent any memory
pressure, those pages can stay in memory forever. If
memory pressure
increases, XP knows which pages it can go get and can do
so very rapidly.
Why isn't task manger better? We don't want it to be
intrusive. The
overhead of figuring out page sharing and such is more
costly than we'd
like. It could actually require task manager to touch
data structures that
may not be in memory, making task manager more obtrusive
than we'd like.
**** Upgrades *****
The overwhelming number of upgrade performance issues
I've investigated are
due to fragmentation. A full manual defrag after
upgrading is recommended.
I've seen this too often not to make note of it. Some of
the prior posts on
the newsgroup suggest other things may be involved
(drivers, bios, ....).
I'll be looking more closely at that.
**** Summary *****
No benchmark is perfect. All are open to some degree of
criticism. All
provide insight into the performance of the system. I
won't conclude on
WinXP's performance based upon a single benchmark, or
even the results of a
few. A full spectrum of workloads is needed to evaluate
something as
functional as Windows, and even then we have to do more.
Beyond benchmarks, we also perform a wide variety of side-
by-side
performance comparisons. We set up pairs of identical
machines and sit two
people down side-by-side. As they go through a series of
typical and random
operations, we can see visibly if Win9x or Win2k has an
edge of WinXP on
things. For the most part, the differences are pretty
small between Win2k
and WinXP.
Of course, the most useful metric for me is the responses
we get from
customers.
I hope this has been informative.
Mike Fortin
Here are the whitepaper links again.
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/performance/benchmark.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/fastboot
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/techinfo/howitworks/performanc...
lt.asp
"
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