While there is a lot of debate about the Metro user interface that Microsoft has created for Windows 8, it seems that in terms of sheer performance, the new version of the Windows OS is better overall than the current version, Windows 7.

That's the conclusion of a new report on PCWorld: http://www.pcworld.com/article/252383/windows_8_preview_beats_windows_7_in_most_performance_tests.html
Its PCWorld Labs division recently ran a number of tests on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. It included a test using its own proprietary benchmark software WorldBench 7.

Both Windows 8 and Windows 7 were installed on a PC with the same hardware specifications. It included an 3.3 GHz Intel Core i5-2500K processor with 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card.




The WorldBench 7 benchmark results showed that the Windows 8 Consumer Preview was 14 percent faster than Windows 7. Other tests such as startup time, web performance and content creation all showed the pre-release version of Windows 8 performing better than Windows 7.

One test, the office productivity benchmark, did show Windows 7 beating Windows 8 Consumer Preview by eight percent. The article notes that Microsoft likely will improve performance in upcoming pre-release versions of Windows 8 before it is officially launched later this year.

(NW)


"WebVizBench" benchmark: http://webvizbench.com/