Gateway NV52 (AMD) - OS Benchmarks
The final aspect of operating system performance we want to look at involves common OS tasks. We measure how long it takes to perform the routine operations of booting, shutting down, hibernating, resuming, suspending, and waking your computer using the four test operating systems. Unlike other test results, there was a huge degree of variability in some of the tests. We ran each test at least five times, and we took the best result - the reason being that some of the results were completely out of line with the average result, so including one or two results where the system took four times as long it didn't seem logical. Ubuntu and Windows 7 didn't show as much variation as XP and Vista, particularly in the sleep/wake testing, but the hibernate/resume test once again varies quite a bit between test runs.
The variability remained even after following a relatively straightforward test procedure. First we booted each laptop using the test OS (timing how long it took). Then we let the system stabilize for at least 15 minutes, with no extra applications running and the system sitting idle at the desktop. Finally, we performed one of the other tests - shut down, hibernate/resume, or sleep/wake. Obviously, you can't test resume time without first hibernating, and you can't test wake time without first putting the system to sleep, but otherwise we made sure to shut down the system between test runs.
We also need to mention that Windows XP has an inherent advantage in the hibernate/resume testing because we are using a 32-bit OS instead of a 64-bit OS. That means the system doesn't make use of all 4GB of memory, and the hibernation file is 3GB. Writing 3GB of data will obviously be easier than writing 4GB of data, especially when you're dealing with a 5400 RPM laptop hard drive.
The results are rather scattered this time, with certain functions favoring one OS and others looking better on a different OS. Boot times favor Windows XP, followed by Windows 7 which takes 11% longer. Vista trails Windows 7 by 10%, and Ubuntu brings up the rear at 5% longer than Vista. Shutdown times are a different matter, where Ubuntu takes the lead. Vista and Windows 7 are essentially tied, taking 55-60% longer to shut down than Ubuntu. Windows XP brings up the rear this time, at over 2.5 times as long as Ubuntu, although we have to say that this appears to be a driver issue as the result for the NV58 is radically different. When you shut down Windows XP on the NV52, there's a delay of about 15 seconds where there is no apparent activity, after which the hard drive activity light begins blinking. It would seem that without that handicap, Windows XP would be roughly the same as Vista and Windows 7.
As already stated, Windows XP 32-bit has an advantage for the hibernate/resume testing because it doesn't have as much addressable RAM. It ends up walking away with the hibernate/resume performance crown, followed by Windows 7. That said, the time to hibernate in Windows 7 is 34% longer than Windows XP and resume time is 32% longer; Win7 has 33% more memory, so a 32-bit version of Windows 7 ought to be as fast as Windows XP (or a 64-bit XP as slow as Win7). The gap between Windows 7 and Windows Vista is extremely large for hibernation time, with Vista taking 65% longer to hibernate and 46% longer to resume. Ubuntu is almost tied with Vista on the hibernation time, but it takes 50% longer to resume - about twice as long as Win7 - making it by far the slowest OS for this particular test.
We need to take a moment to discuss boot times and resume times, however, as there's more going on than meets the eye. When booting or resuming a system, the computer needs to perform a Power On Self Test (POST). That takes around nine seconds on these Gateway systems, and once that's complete the boot loader is activated which then loads the OS. Ubuntu uses GRUB and that appears to add an extra ~10 seconds relative to Windows. Without that time penalty, Ubuntu would be far more competitive in boot time (about equal to Win7), although it would still be in last place in the resume test. There are also laptops that have a fast boot feature so that they don't perform a lengthy POST, which can shave another 6 or 7 seconds off the boot/resume times. This is definitely a feature we would like to see implemented on more systems going forward, particularly laptops where users routinely boot or resume several times per day.
Wrapping up the OS performance analysis, the sleep/wake times were highly variable on the Windows XP and Vista operating systems. This is especially true if you put the system to sleep right after waking it up, booting, resuming, or any other complex task; in those cases, it might take over a minute to go back to sleep. Ouch! It may also take over 20 seconds for Windows to go to sleep if you have a bunch of applications open - that's about six times as long to put your laptop to sleep, which can be very annoying if you just want to pack up and go. You might think that you can just put your system to sleep and throw it in its bag and walk off, but sometimes a glitch will prevent a laptop from going to sleep so we like to make sure our laptops actually shut off before putting them in an enclosed space. We have heard of a few instances where a laptop has apparently overheated because it didn't go to sleep and a user put it in a laptop bag, resulting in a dead system. That's some food for thought anyway. Ubuntu and Windows 7 did a lot better, with the worst-case result being around twice as long as the best time.
Sleep times are a tie between Ubuntu, XP, and 7 at just under 5 seconds. Vista took noticeably longer even in our best-case result, trailing XP by 59%. Wake times mix things up quite a bit and show a lot less variation between runs, with Ubuntu falling to dead last and Vista and 7 essentially tied at ~3.5 seconds. XP takes 46% longer than Vista to wake and Ubuntu is 55% longer than XP (over twice as long as Win7). Again, though, variability in sleep times makes us prefer Windows 7 and Ubuntu followed by XP, with Vista being the worst at consistently going to sleep without a large delay.
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orionmgomg - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
You are right - I did shouldn't have been so brass on saying who cares - it is a very well written artical and I am sure you spent a lot of time puttinmg together very accurate data for the people who actually do care.Sorry for being thoughtless to say the least.
I always love anandtech and I love all the articals and the diversity of reviews and studies.
I just had a knee reaction to this because every time I buy a lappy - and test the battery for the first time, I realize - yes battery performance gets better and better - even though ever so slightly, but I also realize with great frustration that you really can not rely on battery power for the most part - it will get you out of a jam for sure - but to base any computing time on battery power is futile - that has been my expreiance and so I made those comments more out of my own frustration than anything...
Thank you for all the hard work, good articals and being the very best tech web site!
Fox5 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Ubuntu may be released on a 6 month time frame, but by the time a version comes out, the software in it is 6 months out of date. Since Linux is finally getting some real development attention, it's advancing very quickly, and being 6 months to a year out of date represents a large change in features.Hold off on any future Ubuntu comparisons until Ubuntu 9.10 (fresh install only). It switches to the ext4 file system which fixes some firefox performance issues and should decrease boot times as well and should have more up to date drivers. It's also the next long-term release I believe, which is kind of scary considering how much new stuff they're adopting in that version.
I'm surprised you couldn't get the latest ATI proprietary driver installed though. I've used both ATI and nvidia cards in linux, and ati by far had the easier install process. If I recall, it was as simple as sudo ./atiinstaller and then hitting enter a few times. Then again, I've also heard ati integrated chipsets have horrible driver support under linux, so they may not be supported, though I'd think the hd3200 igp would be since it's still fairly recent.
The intel drivers may also get a big boost in ubuntu 9.10. There's some new video driver (or just 3d?) framework being introduced and the older Intel drivers have all but been abandoned to work on the new framework, so a lot of issues that need fixing aren't even being considered for the current drivers in use.
themissinglint - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
This reads like you guys don't know your way around GNU Linux systems well enough to get what you could out of them. It reads like you did the minimum to get it running, which is, from a perspective, fair, since that was probably more work than you put into the Windows OSs.It's also a small sample because you're only using one/two set ups. Laptops like these are optimized up and down for Windows. Of course that is also true for most computers people buy.
Overall, I am glad to see Ubuntu included at all-- it's usually absent from these sorts of tests. The more you include it, the more experience AnandTech will have running Ubuntu (and other Linux systems), and the more you'll be able to get from it. Also, Ubuntu in particular is quickly becoming more out-of-the-box (as more and more people contribute to development on more and more machines). In the next couple years you'll be testing Linux systems that will blow Windows away in some places.
But: Kudos on including Ubuntu... where's OS X? Couldn't you get it to run on a Gateway machine?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Not going to try OS X on a hackintosh... at least not yet. As for the ATI drivers, I went through the manual install procedure multiple times and was greeted with a failed driver message. It was so bad that I couldn't even get back to the original Ubuntu ATI fglxr driver and ended up just going back to my previous Ubuntu image. I did it three times following various instructions and it failed each time. :(If someone has specific experience with getting an optimized driver for the HD 3200 working, point me at some instructions. The experience right now unfortunately was horrible. All the DVD playback programs I tried on Ubuntu crashed when using the latest "stable Ubuntu Jaunty" driver package, sometimes after five minutes, sometimes after 60 minutes. If you weren't at the PC when the DVD playback froze up, the system would eventually enter a completely locked up state (a la the lovely BSOD, but with no error message).
I still have the laptops and will test out other options if any of you want to point me to guides that are of reasonable quality. I got just a brief glimpse of what Ryan experienced over the past year with Ubuntu, though, and I didn't want to get sucked in any further. I have plenty of other reviews I need to get done!
smitty3268 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
I think that crash during video playback is fixed by turning off redirected rendering when full screen apps are active (it's an option in Compiz somewhere). Or you could just turn off desktop compositing completely. It seems like the newer drivers have fixed that, but I'm not running fglrx and I don't remember for sure.Fox5 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Agreed, the desktop effects, besides wasting battery life, interfere with the ATI's drivers video acceleration and should have been off during the test.Of course, you could then ask why Ubuntu enables something buggy by default.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
I did disable Visual FX on both systems - is that the same thing? The ATI setup was pretty much a complete no-show with DVD playback before I did that. It would stutter and fail withing seconds. Sorry I didn't mention that.nofumble62 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
Intel battery life at least 1 hour longer.AMD boot up time 50% longer.
Those are the two most important things for me.
jodomcfatty - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
If you look at the specs, he's comparing a Intel 4500 graphics chip with an AMD 3200HD(which while integrated, will seriously destroy the 4500 in gaming tests) but that will ALSO completely affect battery life since it can't just be turned down to 4500 usage levels. This thing alone eats up significant battery power while expelling a lot more heat.He did this before and I completely lose respect for him for talking battery life while using totally different setups.
I would agree that equal systems the Intel will most likely be better, but no where near by this much.
This article is more about the OS but even there he knows little about linux but I will say he's willing to do more testing....just seems crazy to me that he couldn't just get a AMD with a 4500(harder to find but not impossible)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
What's a better IGP for AMD than the HD 3200? You're being completely obstinate to suggest that it's not a fair comparison.The fact is, AMD can't do any better power-wise than what I've got in the Gateway, can it? An X1270 IGP is similar in performance to the 4500MHD, and power draw is similar to the HD 3200 (because it's on an older process).
As for finding an AMD setup with a 4500, either you're talking about an AMD HD 4500, which would be even WORSE on power draw than the HD 3200, or you're suggesting it's possible to run an AMD CPU with an Intel chipset. It's not, as HyperTransport isn't an Intel feature and that's what AMD CPUs use.