Gateway NV58 (Intel) - Futuremark
Performing a few quick system/graphics benchmarks, let's see if there are any major differences between the Windows operating systems. As always, Vantage requires Vista/Win7 so XP gets a "0" on those tests (which is not to say XP fails - it's just the way we have to do things with our graphing engine).
The 3DMark results aren't quite as close this time, other than 3DMark05. XP trails in 3DMark06 by around 19%, and Vista leads in 3DMark03 by about 13%. Unlike the NV52, 3DMark Vantage scores almost twice as high as Vista with Windows 7 on the NV58, so perhaps Intel has invested some extra effort into improving their Windows 7 drivers. Of course, 3DMark Vantage barely worked on the NV58 and Vista, where it failed repeatedly to run anything other than the Entry test suite, so improving on that result shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully it's not simply a case of app detection and driver hacks to improve the score, though it looks rather suspicious. Anyway, we all know 3DMark isn't a game and as such you should take the above results with a grain of salt. PCMark05 also has XP in last place, but the 2D Transparency test again skews the results, so look at the table below. Meanwhile, PCMark Vantage again shows Windows 7 being Windows Vista, this time by 15%.
| Gateway NV58 PCMark05 Breakdown | |||
| XP SP3 | Vista SP2 | Win7 RTM | |
| PCMark05 Score | 4175 | 4671 | 4527 |
| HDD XP Startup (MB/s) | 9.661 | 8.158 | 8.14 |
| Physics and 3D (FPS) | 81.71 | 89.38 | 59.26 |
| 2D Transparency (Windows/s) | 119 | 3864 | 2050 |
| 3D Pixel Shaders (FPS) | 39.58 | 43.34 | 45.29 |
| Web Page Rendering (Pages/s) | 3.028 | 2.272 | 2.366 |
| File Decryption (MB/s) | 57.70 | 56.46 | 55.97 |
| 2D 64 Line Redraw (FPS) | 704.7 | 485.7 | 564.2 |
| HDD General Usage (MB/s) | 5.674 | 4.716 | 4.731 |
| Multitasking 1 | 1000 | 905 | 1015 |
| Audio Compression (KB/s) | 2209 | 1349 | 1248 |
| Video Encoding (KB/s) | 402.4 | 482.6 | 589.3 |
| Multitasking 2 | 1000 | 931 | 941 |
| Text Editing (Pages/s) | 140.9 | 123.1 | 127.5 |
| Image Decompression (MPixels/s) | 29.39 | 29.02 | 28.73 |
| Multitasking 3 | 1000 | 917 | 961 |
| File Compression (MB/s) | 4.951 | 5.005 | 4.36 |
| File Encryption (MB/s) | 27.99 | 25.79 | 33.13 |
| HDD Virus Scan (MB/s) | 72.95 | 54.57 | 58.54 |
| Memory Latency (MAccesses/s) | 8.207 | 8.108 | 8.012 |
As with the NV52, the PCMark05 composite score muddies the waters and makes it look like Vista is superior to XP and Windows 7. This time, 2D Transparency is 32 times faster on Vista than XP and 17 times faster on Windows 7. That score alone is able to drop Windows XP to the back of the pack in overall score, but it leads in virtually every other category. The 3D Pixel Shaders result favors Windows 7 and Vista over XP and Win7 is the fastest, potentially giving support to the idea that Intel has improved their graphics drivers under Win7. On the other hand, Win7 trails in the Physics and 3D test by 38% relative to XP and 51% compared to Vista. Maybe the 3DMark Vantage result is just a case of driver optimizations.
As before, we calculated our own composite score among the operating systems, with and without the 2D Transparency result. We didn't weight any of the tests, and our average of the 11 tests puts Vista at 278% faster than XP and Win7 139% faster. Remove the 2D Transparency score from the average and XP suddenly jumps up to 11% faster than both Vista and 7, which end up in a tie. We're not trying to say that 2D Transparency is worthless, but it does account for deflated PCMark05 scores on Windows XP.
| Gateway NV58 PCMark Vantage Breakdown | ||
| Vista SP2 | Win7 RTM | |
| PCMark Vantage | 3397 | 3911 |
| Memory | 1896 | 2237 |
| TV and Movies | 2482 | 2613 |
| Gaming | 1999 | 1998 |
| Music | 2851 | 4206 |
| Communications | 3774 | 4033 |
| Productivity | 3039 | 3156 |
| HDD Test | 2643 | 2867 |
PCMark Vantage gives the lead to Win7 by 15%, with individual results ranging from a tie in Gaming to a 48% lead in Music. Unlike the NV52, the TV and Movies suite doesn't show a major difference, nor do the Communications and Productivity suites, but HDD and Memory show a larger benefit to Win7 on the NV58. Ultimately, PCMark Vantage still confirms that Windows 7 is faster overall than Vista, even if the only area that appears to benefit by a large amount (i.e. regardless of platform or hardware) is the Music suite.
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JarredWalton - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
Links please? I'm not a Linux guru by any stretch of the imagination, so if there's a "better" Linux option out there for testing I'm willing to give it a look. Ideally, I need something similar for the AMD platform.prince34 - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
You could always look a UNR(Ubuntu Netbook Remix) as a netbook distro. It's what I use on mine. I've done some comparisons to XP on it, and it seems to follow the trends you are seeing, but not with as much disparity.http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download-netbook">http://www.ubuntu.com/GetUbuntu/download-netbook
smitty3268 - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
I'm not sure Moblin is really a "mainstream" linux option at this point, it's more of an Intel "look at what we can do on netbooks" research project. It does supposedly have 5 second boot times. I suspect your tests here are almost completely dependent on the browser and Flash anyway, and the video drivers. All areas that Linux does not excel at - battery and performance testing of Linux + Apache or file serving would no doubt be much better.http://moblin.org/downloads">http://moblin.org/downloads, if you really want to try it.
smitty3268 - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
Or the LiveCD version: http://moblin.org/documentation/test-drive-moblin">http://moblin.org/documentation/test-drive-moblinsmitty3268 - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
Firefox for Linux is well known to be terribly slow and unoptimized compared to the Windows version. It would be interesting to see the battery results from running the Windows version through WINE on Ubuntu, just to see how that compares - I know it blows the Linux native version away as far as javascript performance is concerned, and I'm sure Flash is the same. You could also try Chrome, since I've heard it works quite fast, even though it's still in beta.Chlorus - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
But how could that happen? I thought Linux was the most awesome OS ever? All the people on slashdot said so! Are you saying they lied? M$ SHILL!!!smitty3268 - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
If you read what I was saying, it doesn't have anything to do with linux, it's a Firefox problem. They've got performance bug reports that say, "fixed, for windows. we could do this for linux but not worth the effort." They don't even enable profiled compilation, which is good for a 10-15% boost on windows.smitty3268 - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
Also, Ubuntu 9.04 (and other distros released last spring) had a terrible, terrible regression with Intel video driver performance. I'm not sure how much that really affects battery life, but it definitely could. Something to keep in mind, anyway, as you compare the differences between the two laptops.andrewaggb - Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - link
It's true about the intel driver, but let's be honest, if it wasn't the graphics driver it'd be pulse audio, or using 64 bit instead of 32 bit firefox, ext4 whatever... Seems linux get's alot of excuses for it's problems.I'm pretty tired of ubuntu and fedora. Releasing half-finished, barely tested, OS's to the masses is not doing linux a favour, but as the answer to everything is it's fixed in svn... you're kinda stuck.
JarredWalton - Monday, September 21, 2009 - link
I followed a guide on fixing Intel GPU performance in Ubuntu... I don't know if it really worked or not, but here's the reference:http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1130582">Jaunty with Intel Performance Guide. I stayed with the default kernel and the "Safe" configuration, which may be partly to blame for suboptimal results. Then again, the ATI platform fared worse under Jaunty.