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Windows 7 Upgrade Performance

One of the main goals with Windows 7 in general has been to be better than Vista. As part of the Windows Upgrade team we have tracked Windows 7 upgrade performance using Vista as our baseline comparison.
 
The upgrade performance tests used the metric of total upgrade time to gauge how Windows 7 upgrade performed against Vista upgrade. The tests were designed to measure total upgrade time simulating different user profiles (with different data set sizes, number of programs installed and settings) against different hardware profiles.
 
The goal was to determine whether an upgrade from Vista SP1 -> Windows 7 was within a 5% threshold faster than an upgrade from Vista SP1 -> Vista SP1. The reason we choose to use a Vista SP1 -> Vista SP1 upgrade instead of Windows XP -> Vista as our baseline was for the following:
  • Windows XP is a vastly different operating system compared to Vista and an upgrade from Windows XP -> Vista would not be a good comparison with Vista -> Windows 7
  • Windows XP did not support 64-bit upgrades and we wanted to track 64-bit upgrade performance as well as 32-bit upgrades for Windows 7
  • Vista SP1 -> Vista SP1 is a valid upgrade path that exercises all upgrade code (this upgrade is commonly used by Product Support Services for a repair scenario)
 
User and Hardware Profiles Details
 
Here are the user profiles and hardware profiles used:
 
Definitions
 
 
 
 
User Data Profile
 
Hardware Profile
 
 
Medium User
Medium User Profile
User Data: 70Gb of data (documents, music, pictures)
Applications: 20 applications installed
OS Settings modified
Optional Components: 15 optional components installed
Windows Targeted Release: 5 Windows Targeted Release installed (WTR)
Low End Hardware
OS: 32-bit
Memory: 1Gb
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+ 2.2 Ghz
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD3200BEVE 320Gb 5400 RPM ATA-6
OS: 64-bit
Memory: 1Gb
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3200+ 2.2 Ghz
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD3200BEVE 320Gb 5400 RPM ATA-6
Heavy User
Heavy User Profile
User Data: 125Gb of data (documents, music, pictures)
Applications: 40 applications installed
OS Settings modified
Optional Components: 15 optional components installed
Windows Targeted Release: 5 Windows Targeted Release installed (WTR)
Mid Range Hardware
OS: 32-bit
Memory: 2Gb
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ 2.60 Ghz
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD10EACS 1TB up to 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
OS: 64-bit
Memory: 4Gb
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40 Ghz
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD10EACS 1TB up to 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Super User
Super User Profile
User Data: 650Gb of data (documents, music, pictures)
Applications: 40 applications installed
OS Settings modified
Optional Components: 15 optional components installed
Windows Targeted Release: 5 Windows Targeted Release installed (WTR)
High End Hardware
OS: 32-bit
Memory: 4Gb
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40 Ghz
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
OS: 64-bit
Memory: 4Gb
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40 Ghz
Hard Drive: Western Digital WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
 
Upgrade Performance Time Results
 
Here are the Windows 7 upgrade times from the user profiles and hardware profiles. For example to read this, the result for MEDIUM / High shows the total upgrade time for the "MEDIUM User Profile" dataset on a "High Hardware Profile" machine. Note that the baseline times include the 5% threshold as part of our testing criteria:
 
X86
PROFILE/SYSTEM
VISTA SP1 BASELINE
VISTA SP1 --> W7 RTM LATEST BUILDS
 
CLEAN / Low
40.79
39.30
 
CLEAN / Mid
31.20
29.75
 
CLEAN / High
29.35
26.75
 
MEDIUM / Low
179.19
170.41
 
MEDIUM / Mid
117.73
116.25
 
MEDIUM / High
106.80
99.65
 
HEAVY / Low
361.15
343.36
 
HEAVY / Mid
194.79
187.30
 
HEAVY / High
176.37
159.50
 
SUPER / Mid
1305.72
1214.86
 
SUPER / High
768.24
672.87
 
 
X64
PROFILE/SYSTEM
VISTA SP1 BASELINE
VISTA SP1 --> W7 RTM  LATEST BUILDS
 
CLEAN / Low
57.19
46.51
 
CLEAN / Mid
39.09
33.03
 
CLEAN / High
36.66
30.28
 
MEDIUM / Low
217.65
177.00
 
MEDIUM / Mid
111.15
92.40
 
MEDIUM / High
101.03
83.56
 
HEAVY / Low
390.97
345.88
 
HEAVY / Mid
186.05
164.85
 
HEAVY / High
172.37
151.25
 
SUPER / Mid
635.54
608.07
 
SUPER / High
611.61
545.93
 
 
Upgrade Performance Matrix
 
The upgrade performance matrix shows the expected upgrade performance results matching user profile and hardware based on our test results in the lab:
 
 
 
 
Hardware Profile
 
 
 
Low End Hardware
Mid Range Hardware
High End Hardware
 
Clean User
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 40 minutes
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 30 minutes
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 30 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 50 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 35 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 35 minutes
User Data Profile
Medium User
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 175 minutes
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 115 minutes
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 100 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 185 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 95 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 85 minutes
 
Heavy User
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 345 minutes
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 185 minutes
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 160 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 355 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 165 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 150 minutes
 
Super User
N/A
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 1220 minutes
32-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 675 minutes
 
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 610 minutes
64-bit OS Upgrade from Vista: 480 minutes
 
Summary
 
From the testing we have done, the results show that Windows 7 upgrade time is faster or equal within a 5% threshold to the Vista SP1 upgrade time.
Published Friday, September 11, 2009 3:31 PM by chrishe

Comments

Friday, September 11, 2009 7:08 PM by chrishe

# re: Windows 7 Upgrade Performance

I got some questions about the data sets we used in this post, and the upgrade times associated with them. The "super user profile" is not a normal user; rather, it's the user profile that represents the extreme power-user who's working with an enormous data set (650Gb of user data) and a large number of installed applications. This user profile is not representative of what most "regular" users, who typically have a much smaller data set and would therefore experience a much, much shorter upgrade time.

The goal of this particular test was to verify that even in the most extreme scenario, upgrading to Windows 7 is significantly faster than upgrading to Vista.  This kind of fundamental improvement is just one example of how we listened to our customers and took their feedback to build a great product.  

Cheers,

-Chris

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