Windows 8 Release Preview vs. Windows 7: Benchmarked

It's time to see how Microsoft's newly released Windows 8 Release Preview stacks up against Windows 7. Can the upcoming operating system keep up with -- or even beat -- Windows 7, or does Microsoft still have work to do?

Unlike the time where I benchmarked the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, where I ran into troubles with graphics card drivers issues and problems getting consistent results from a couple of the benchmark tools I was using, everything went smoothly with the benchmarking of the Windows 8 Release Preview.

The hardware

The following hardware platform was used for benchmarking the two operating systems. The system was purpose-built for the job of benchmarking:

• Intel Core i7-2600K processor
• Crucial 4GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) RAM
• EVGA 01G-P3-1460-KR GeForce GTX 560
• GIGABYTE GA-Z77MX-D3H motherboard
• Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB hard drive
• CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650 V2 650W power supply unit

Everything on the system was set to stock speeds, with no component overclocked.

For the tests I used a Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB hard drive with the Windows 8 Release Preview 64-bit installed on it. All drivers and updates were installed, along with all the software that would be needed for the tests. The drive was then defragmented using the Windows tool before the benchmarking was carried out.

Data related to the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows 7 was collected from the last benchmark test of Windows 8I carried out a little over a month ago.

The benchmark tests

Here's a rundown of the tests that were run on the three operating systems. I've chosen a mixture of real world and synthetic benchmark tests.

Each test was run three times and the results averaged.

• Boot time Measured using a handy tool called BootRacer. This measures both the time it takes to get to the logon screen and the time to boot to the desktop.
• Audio transcode time Transcoding an audio test file from WAV to MP3 format using iTunes. A measure of the operating system's ability to handle multimedia.
• Video transcode time Transcoding video test file from DVD to MP4 format using Handbrake. A measure of the operating system's ability to handle multimedia.
• PCMark 7 A benchmark run with PCMark 7. The industry standard PC test for CPU, HDD, SSD, memory, and graphics performance.
• 3DMark 11 A benchmark run with 3DMark 11. This is a set of six demanding benchmark test measuring the graphics performance of gaming PCs.
• FurMark A benchmark run with FurMark. This is a VGA stress test, GPU burn-in test and an excellent OpenGL benchmark. This is a very stressful benchmark and can damage or even destroy hardware if used incorrectly, and therefore I do not recommend running this tool on a system unless you know exactly what you are doing and fully understand the risks associated with it.
• Cinebench 11.5 A benchmark run with Cinebench 11.5. This is a real world cross, platform test suite that evaluates a computer's CPU and GPU performance capabilities.
• Heaven 3.0 A benchmark run with Heaven 3.0. This is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on the advanced UNIGINE engine. Not only does this tool give us the maximum frames per second (FPS), it also records minimum frames per second, which is handy observing dips in performance during heavy load.
• Alien vs. Predator A benchmark run using the in-built benchmark tool available in Alien vs. Predator. The benchmark is run at 1920x1080 screen resolution with DirectX 11 enabled. This is a real world gaming test.