The Dawn of the Integral Age

Windows 7 performance on modern hardware is amazing 2010-Jan-13 at 15:16 PST

Windows 7’s killer feature: Windows on multicore, redux, by Randall C. Kennedy, 13-Jan-2010

Simply put, Windows 7 is significantly faster than Windows XP when running heavy, multitasking workloads on advanced, multicore hardware. And when considered in light of current trends in PC hardware design and multicore road maps, this advantage should be enough to sway even the most ardent fence sitters to finally jump on the Windows 7 bandwagon.

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All of those advantages that make Windows 7 so compelling — the improved security, manageability, and usability features — come at a cost in terms of additional CPU cycles consumed by their respective background services. Thus, making the most of what processor bandwidth is available takes on a new urgency as the layers of software separating hardware from operator continue to accumulate.

But no matter how you slice the results, Windows 7 — or at least its underlying kernel architecture — is clearly the future of Intel-based PC computing. This will remain true even if Microsoft decides to gut Windows and do away with all the layers above the NT Executive (MinWin taken to the extreme). The fact is that Microsoft has built a robust, highly scalable, multicore-aware OS foundation with Windows 7, and it should continue to serve Redmond well as it maps out future versions of the OS.

Simply put, Windows 7 kicks ass.  It kicks ass in user experience, it kicks ass in device compatibility, it kicks ass in media rendering, and it seriously kicks ass in raw multi-processor performance.  The kernel is amazing, the UI is amazing, and if you’re still on XP or Vista, it’s time to make the move.

And for a server, Windows Server 2008 R2, which is essentially the same kernel as Windows 7, is an incredible platform.  Can’t wait to build a new server at home.