Tech Reaction

What will we cover in this installment of our adventure into figuring out all this ‘he said, she said’ mumbo jumbo? I will be exploring the STOCK  e8400 and how it handles windows XP and windows 7. Do you lose a lot of performance by upgrading? We will find out later on. Is there a huge difference in anything the 2 operating systems do or is everything negligible? Hopefully we will find out later on. This segment could prove very informative for the average computer user who does not overclock 24/7 or does not overclock at all and just runs everything stock and just has questions about how it would effect their stock system.

First off, a recap of the system that the tests will be run under:
E8400/ QX9650 //\\ Fuzion V2 Water Cooled
ASUS Maximus 2 Formula P45 //\\ Swiftech MCR320 tri rad
PC Power and Cooling 750quad //\\ Swiftech MCP655 pump
BFG GTX 280 1GB //\\ Danger Den DD-Tieton Water Cooled
2×2 GB Corsair Dominators Creative SupremeFX X-Fi

Windows XP SP3 //\\ Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Now lets dive into this picture crazed explanation of everything that is going on with the 2 different operating systems.

First off lets get the E8400 STOCK XP photos rolling:

Alright for now that should be good for the XP. No worries, for all you picture lovers I have plenty more! For now, we will start with these.

Now lets see the E8400 STOCK Win7 photos:

Tired of looking at pictures yet? Just be glad you did not have to take them all! I have a lot more pics with different tests, I think I will save them for something else or a different segment. Well, now that everyones eyes are burning from all those pictures lets talk numbers and what all we see there.

If you bothered to look at all those pictures and compare them with their counterpart from the opposite OS, you probably noticed the same thing I did.  Windows XP seems to have some higher scores over all in the world that is benching. However, Win7 does hold its own in a few benchmarks. So if you are a striving world overclocking champion or ‘Mr. I run stock benches’ you would most likely want to stay away from Windows 7. Now note I did not go into Windows 7 and dumb it down(nor did i do that in WinXP). By that i mean, go in and turn everything off that does not need to be run or turn off any extra gadgits or things of that nature. This is a stock Windows 7, everything you would see when you first install it is what I ran my benchmarks on. So maybe if you really care and want to get the most out of your benchmarks you could spend an extra 30 minutes or an hour cleaning out everything you do not want running. However, if you were going to do that then why even upgrade in the first place. Am I right? Well of course I am right!

Lets toss out a few examples of what I am talking about when I say WinXP, for the most part, is faster with the benchmarks than Win7.

Super PI 1M/32M

XP

Win7

Did you happen to see the Super PI results?  In the overclocking community, the standard program provides a benchmark for enthusiasts to compare world record pi calculation times. With Super PI running on WinXP I had times of 16.516s in the 1M calculation and 16 minutes 13.390s in the 32M calculation. When we take a gander at Win7 Super PI results which were 15.643s in 1M and 15m 38.845s in 32M. This seems to be the one anomaly in my testing. Super PI runs noticeably quicker, for the experienced benchmark person, in Win7 than in WinXP. Is it just my system or possible a lucky stretch where my CPU felt frisky? I am not sure but I ran the tests a couple times and took the lowest run on each just to be sure once i saw this outcome. I guess if my tests hold true all the Super PI guys should be installing Win7 right about now!

Now on the flip side, tests like 3dmark01, pcmark05, and the Gun Metal benchmark you can see that XP has taken the advantage with the higher scores.

3dMark01

XP

Win7

The 3dmark01 showdown proved WinXP to be the victor. WinXP beat Win7 by an impressive 14,552 points by scoring 59087 to Win7’s lonely 44535 mark. I was really shocked by this one and yes I had to run the tests again because I wanted to make sure and got pretty much the same numbers. Take note for all you 3dmark01 benchers this could be your answer to high scores! So chalk one up for WinXP.

PcMark05

XP

Win7

Now with the PCmark05 it was closer, but once again Win7 just barely edges out WinXP with scores of 9018 to 8843 respectively. This I would say could be called a tie since its only 175 point difference so either way nothing extremely eye popping about it.

Gun Metal Benchmark

XP

Win7

The Gun Metal Benchmark you can see for WinXP the FPS marks were Min. 46.44 Avg. 86.81 Max. 142.15 and Win7’s FPS marks were Min. 40.20 AVG. 50.95 Max. 71.57. I would call this a substantial increase especially if your system is just barely getting by in some games. With a higher minimum frame rate you will cut out the lag spikes that can hit when something intense comes across with the game you are playing. AVG frame rate is another part i consider important because this is mostly your running around doing whatever you want. If it is decently high you will enjoy a lag free environment and therefore better enjoy your game, but if your AVG frame rate is low then I am sure you will not be happy with how the game is playing on your system. Once again WinXP i would say impressively takes the lead on this test also.

Part 2 Conclusion:

To conclude what you have seen above, unless you are ‘that’ guy who jumps to the wrap up instead of reading. As you saw for the most part WinXP right now is ahead by, I would call it, a slight margin. Considering Win7 actually won a benchmark and a pretty important one to boot, I can not sit here and say right now that WinXP is dominating Win7. However, I can say from the looks of it, that it really depends on what you would like to do with your computer. If you are a benching guru or if you are a gaming guru you probably just took 2 different conclusions from this section. Right now I will say that WinXP does have a noticeable advantage in the gaming arena. That is something to keep in mind when choosing your operating system. Win7 does put up a decent, shall I say a better fight, when it comes to CPU benchmarks leaving the GFX stuff alone. This is another thing to keep in mind while considering what you want to do with your computer.

Part 3 Teaser

Part 3 will cover the E8400 overclocked in WinXP and Win7. I split it up from this one because there is a ton of pictures  already and did not want to bore you with them. So I chose to split them to make things a little more entertaining and not a chore to read. You can thank me later!

Also, a little news update. The QX9650 is in the mail today so I should have that Monday or Tuesday so I can start overclocking and benching that bad boy later in the week.

Cheers!