Windows 7 RC x64 Boot Times
Machine: Dell XPS 420, E8400 CPU, 8gb Ram Intel X-25-M SSD.
Bios Time: This is the amount of time in seconds spend in the Machines Bios prior to loading the Operating System.
I finally got around to taking some boot speed times as I was pretty sure this was slower than I was expecting.
Back in February 2009 I did some quick tests on the Windows 7 Build 7000 x86 version. I compared it to XP and Vista. The post bios boot speeds were considerably quicker at 13.43 seconds.
Sadly I no longer have the machine I used to benchmark back in Feb so I cant do a like for like but my current machine had the same CPU and same SSD hard disk (Intel X-25-m).
I know comparing x86 Build 7000 to x64 Build 7100 isn’t a fare comparison especially as the machines are different. I am however curious why the extra 26 seconds.
Shims can’t slow it down this much or at least I hope not.
I can see a Windows 7-7100 x86 re-format on this rig in the near future just so i can do a proper comparison.
On a Desktop PC I can live with longer boot time but not on a Laptop for instance.
Once the OS has loaded there aren’t any performance issues I can detect as a user.
I shall update this post in the future.
Update: 05/05/2009
I did a reformat and a full comparison x86 to x64 7100 boot times on the same hardware. I found that the boot times were near identical.
I then did a 32bit build 7000 to 32bit build 7100 and found the 7000 build to be 21% faster booting around 11 seconds faster. Any other discrepancies are down to the differences in the machines I used to benchmark.
