Win10 1511 seems... snappy?

[VirtualLarry]

I got back a PC from someone I sold it to in 2011. Anyways, I upgraded it from Win7 to Win10, and I don't know if it's my imagination, but it seems a lot snappier, opening menus and stuff.

Specs:
E3300 dual-core Celeron (E5200 2.5Ghz Celeron equivalent)
4GB DDR3
G41 chipset GMA graphics, VGA out
WD 500GB HDD
DVD-RW

I installed Win10, saw that it was activated. Added a Syba (ASMedia) SATA6G controller card and a Corsair (refurb) 120GB SSD. Now I'm re-installing Win10 on the SSD, hopefully it will activate again on the new SSD.

 

[nerp]

Welcome to Windows 10.

 

[Ketchup]

That's the flipside to an uglier GUI - loads faster. Turning down the visual effects in 7 would probably accomplish the same.

Plus, you know, there is about 5 years of "whatever the last owner did" on Windows 7 that is being wiped (and yes I know the personal data would have still been there) which is probably helping too.

 

[sweenish]

Windows has been slimming down and legitimately getting faster since 7.

But let's continue down this road where a subjectively ugly UI must load faster because it's ugly.

Yes, a fresh 7 would also be faster than an old 7 install. But let's not discount that Windows "snappiness" itself has improved each version starting at 7.

 

[Ketchup]

Windows has been slimming down and legitimately getting faster since 7...

Not sure about the slimming part. I calculate Windows being roughly 1 GB "slimmer" now (in real data) than it was in Windows 7 (and that number includes the program files folders, windows folder, and program data folder, so the 1 GB number could be exaggerated). Why does it look slimmer than that (because your drive will tell you it is)? It's because Microsoft has been cutting down the hard links in the winsxs folder ever since they saw what a problem the seeming waste of space was causing in Vista. Since they decided they were going to market the OS to tablets and the like, and knowing that the NTFS file system was not going away, they shrunk the folder of hard links from ~14 GB in Win 7 to right around 5 in Win 10 (and 8 was pretty close to the 10 number, maybe a tad higher IIRC).

If you look at the review Techspot did let year, only a few benchmarks show a difference of any significance:
http://www.techspot.com/review/1042-windows-10-vs-windows-8-vs-windows-7/

Am I saying you shouldn't enjoy Windows 10? No. But let's be realistic about what we are actually seeing, and not just what we hope to be seeing. In VL's case, it shouldn't surprise anyone that a newly installed OS runs better than one that has been dealing with 5 years of changes, even if it is an upgrade (frankly, the last version of Windows that ran slower for me as an upgrade started with a 9).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Interestingly, after activating the Win10 upgraded version on the 500GB HDD, then I shut down, pulled the HDD cable, and installed a Corsair Force LS 120GB SSD (refurb), on a Syba / ASMedia dual-port PCI-E 2.0 x1 SATA6G card, and re-installed Win10 fresh on the SSD.

Well, after that was all said and done, I reconnected the HDD and wiped it.

But, I assume due to drivers, Win10 does now seem LESS "snappy", than the HDD upgraded install.

Weird.

The SSD benchmarks about 167/125 seq read/write, and 66/78 4K32 read/write. The 500GB HDD benchmarks 127/127 seq read/write.

 

[tidy]

.

 

[escrow4]

Interestingly, after activating the Win10 upgraded version on the 500GB HDD, then I shut down, pulled the HDD cable, and installed a Corsair Force LS 120GB SSD (refurb), on a Syba / ASMedia dual-port PCI-E 2.0 x1 SATA6G card, and re-installed Win10 fresh on the SSD.

Well, after that was all said and done, I reconnected the HDD and wiped it.

But, I assume due to drivers, Win10 does now seem LESS "snappy", than the HDD upgraded install.

Weird.

The SSD benchmarks about 167/125 seq read/write, and 66/78 4K32 read/write. The 500GB HDD benchmarks 127/127 seq read/write.

The SSD is rubbish. Pick up a 750 EVO which will murder it.

 

[thewhat]

Not sure about the slimming part. I calculate Windows being roughly 1 GB "slimmer" now (in real data) than it was in Windows 7

FWIW, a clean install of Windows 7 uses less disk space than Windows 10.


Also, I'm not sure what people mean when they say "snappier".
GUI animations/transitions? Yes, those have been shortened after Windows 7 (default GUI), so maybe that's why people think the GUI became faster. In Win 7 you can also disable transitions completely, so it's as "snappy" as it gets.
Faster opening of programs? I haven't seen any difference at all, but I'd have to measure with a stopwatch to be sure.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Windows 8 feels as snappy when used on a conventional hdd. As long as you have enough ram (I'd recommend minimum 6-8gb).

Larry, Windows 7 a.k.a Vista on the rocks, is way too old. There is no comparison, really. Windows 8.1 x64 is the minimum (unless your CPU doesn't support the required instructions introduced with the 8.1 x64 update), if you care for overall performance (and not the looks).

The other week I had to use Windows 10 w/ 16 gigs of ram on some average hdd (random seek ~15ms, ~100mb read/write) and the performance was also quite decent, when it was able to cache all of my apps. Sleep all the way. On a desktop, you could do even without ssd, if you can spread IO across multiple drives.

My scratch disk:

HD Tune Pro: GIGABYTE i-RAM Benchmark

Test capacity: full

Read transfer rate
Transfer Rate Minimum : 124.3 MB/s
Transfer Rate Maximum : 126.7 MB/s
Transfer Rate Average : 126.6 MB/s
Access Time : 0.043 ms
Burst Rate : 126.7 MB/s
CPU Usage : 2.6%