Evaluation of Windows 7 RC Build 7100 By Muswera Walter Supervisor: Mr John Ebden Consultants: Billy Morgan and Jill Japp

Background Vista was not received warmly due to bugs, crashes, poor performance and software incompatibility and demand for system resources Microsoft has been working on a new Operating System (OS) Available release at time of evaluation was Windows 7 RC Build 7100 (May 2009)

Motivation Claims have been made about improvements that have been made on Windows 7 since the XP era and the ill fated Vista era:  Security  Software compatibility  Enhanced performance (graphics, disk I/O, robustness etc)  Ease and speed of installation  Fast start-up and shutdown time  User friendliness This assessment was carried out to validate some of these claims

Importance of this Research Every new OS should be tested/evaluated before being deployed at full scale to allow for:  Planning of transition (upgrade and training)  Avert loss of time and revenue through crashes and incompatibilities  Evaluate availability of system support

Features Evaluated Security Virtualisation Software compatibility Performance benchmarking

Specifications of Experimental Machine Intel Core 2 Quad processor (Q GHz, 6MB L2 cache) 4GB RAM 500GB SATA hard drive with 32MB cache 256MB graphics with DirectX 10 support DVI and VGA connector DVD writer with LightScribe G45M Digital motherboard with 1GB network port Minimum System Requirements for Windows 7 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor 1 GB of system memory 16 GB of available disk space support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme) DVD-R/W Drive Internet access for updates Same as Vista

Testing Conditions The same computer hardware was used for all tests Both OS were installed fresh in a dual boot setup Results obtained reflect what you get when you install a plain OS without any tweaks or configuration changes (standard install) Install time was measured from the moment the option to boot from CD/DVD was chosen until the point where the desktop reached. Windows 7 Ultimate (32bit RC Build 7100) XP Professional (32bit SP3)

Security Bitlocker and Bitlocker To Go  100MB partition  TPM and PCR  Usability on other PCs running other Oses  Bitlocker To Go Reader UAC  Implementation of the 4 new levels  Is it really secure?

Virtualisation Windows XP Mode consists of two things:  the Windows Virtual PC engine  a licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 System requirements  2GB of memory  15GB disk space/virtual machine

Software Compatibility tests Successful Installations Compatibility issues  Drivers (TPM)  Nero 7 (program has known compatibility issues)  Daemon Tools (program blocked due to compatibility issues)

Tests carried out on XP SP3 and Windows 7 Performance benchmarking Installation time for each operating system Logon, boot up and shutdown time

Performance Passmark PerformanceTest version 7.0 was used to assess perfomance  CPU test suite is designed to measure CPU operations  Memory test suite is designed to exercise the memory sub-system of the computer.  Disk test suite is designed to measure the rate at which files are read and written from and to disk  2D Graphics test suite tests of standard two dimensional graphical functions  3D Graphics test suite measures the performance of the 3D graphics

CPU Tests Units of Measurement Integer - Millions of operations per second Floating Point - Millions of operations per second Find Prime numbers Thousands of Primes per second Compression - Kilobytes Processed per second Physics - Frames per second Random String Sorting - Thousand Strings per second

Memory Tests Units of Measurement Cached - Megabytes transferred per second Uncached - Megabytes transferred per second Write - Megabytes transferred per second Allocate small block - Megabytes transferred per second Large RAM - Operations per second

Disk Tests Units of Measurement Disk Sequential Write - Megabytes transferred per second Disk Sequential Read - Megabytes transferred per second Disk Random Seek + RW - Megabytes transferred per second

2D Graphics Tests Units of Measurement Solid Vectors - Thousands of vectors drawn per second Transparent Vectors - Thousands of vectors drawn per second Complex Vectors - Complex vectors drawn per second Fonts and Text - Operations per second Windows Interface Operations per second Image Filters - Filters per second Image Rendering - Images per second

3D Graphics Tests Units of Measurement Simple - Frames per second Medium - Frames per second Complex - Frames per second. DirectX 11 issues on complex graphics test

Summary of Findings BitLocker Drive Encryption and Bitlocker To Go in Windows 7 require special hardware XP Mode also requires special hardware BitLocker Drive Encryption and Bitlocker To Go are only available in the Ultimate and Enterprise Editions XP Mode is available only in the Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise Editions Windows 7 is incompatible with some software Windows XP dominated most of the benchmarks run Windows 7 performs better in the 3D graphics

Conclusions XP still remains a better desktop OS since: –it has few application compatibility issues –works on ordinary hardware and –has a better performance. disadvantage of “black box” benchmarking is that it cannot conclusively explain all of the performance differences –it merely exposes the differences