Intro, Test Bed and Installation Time
The latest public release of Windows Vista has finally reached Release Candidate 1. As with previous builds,
Microsoft released both the 32Bit and 64Bit version of the operating system. Its certainty clear that 64Bit Windows Vista will provide the necessary support for 64 Bit
applications. However, only a few companies have ported there current 32Bit applications to the 64Bit platform. Users who install Vista 64Bit will still have to rely on 32Bit to run certain applications. The question is does Vista 64Bit offer any advantages of Vista 32Bit at the moment? To answer this question we ran a test on both versions using PassMark's PerformanceTest V6 32Bit for Windows Vista 32Bit and and the 64Bit version for Windows Vista 64Bit. The results didn't really surprise this reviewer, mainly because it is the same results that have been shown for Windows
XP 32Bit vs. Windows XP 64Bit; the 32Bit version of Windows still dominates in many test. This conclusion is mainly based on better driver support for Windows 32Bit.
The configuration of the test system:
- ABIT AN8 Socket 939 with nForce 4 chipset
- AMD Athlon 64 bit 3500+
- 4 x 512 MB RAM Kingston Dual Channel 400 MHz (2GB Total)
- SATA 160 GB hard disk
- ATI Radeon 9550 8X AGP 256 MB RAM
- DVD-RW HP LigthScribe
Installation Time
The time taken to install both versions was recorded. Let this time be the time from when the first user prompt to the first sign of user input after installation was complete. Windows Vista 32Bit took a total time of 23 minutes and 13 seconds while Windows Vista 64Bit took a bit less time, 21 minutes and 2 seconds. Though not a huge difference, Vista 64Bit does show a faster install time in our test.
CPU Test, 2D Graphics test and Memory Test
CPU Test
For this test, a large array of random 32 bit and 64 bit integers is processed using particular mathematical operations.
Windows Vista RC1 32Bit shows about an 18% increase over the 64Bit counterpart in this test.
2D Graphics Test
This test runs a number of 2 Dimensional scenarios such as line drawing, painting bitmaps and
rendering fonts and text.
The results above shows Windows Vista 64Bit with a 27% increase in 2D rendering over Vista 32Bit.
Memory Test
The
Memory test exercises the memory sub-system of the computer (Random Access Memory- RAM). All tests use a combination of 32-bit and 64-bit data when reading or writing from or to RAM.
The result doesn't show much of an increase in Memory
performance from Vista 64Bit over 32Bit.
Disk Test, 3D Graphics Test and PassMark Rating
Disk Test
This part of the test exercises the following functions:
Disk Sequential Read
A large test file is created on the disk under test. The file is read sequentially from start to end.
Disk Sequential Write
A large file is written to the disk under test. The file is written sequentially from start to end.
Disk Random Seek RW
A large test file is created on the disk under test. The file is read randomly; a seek is performed to move the file pointer to a random position in the file, a 16KB block is read or written then another seek is performed. The amount of data actually transferred is highly dependent on the disk seek time.
Again, the results do not show any significant increase in performance in 64Bit Vista over 32Bit.
3D Graphics Test
Unfortunately, we ran into some problems when running this part of the test. Windows Vista 64Bit refused to run this test. This test was omitted from the 32Bit version tested to have a fair comparable PassMark rating.