Windows Vista Beta 2 Performance Reports

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Windows Vista is system intensive, as we knew it would be. We set out to find out just -how- system intensive it is. We run a slew of benchmarks and gaming runs on both the 32-Bit and 64-Bit versions to see how they compare to XP.

When Microsoft develops a major software product, the entire world knows about it. Vista is one of the few products that has ever received this much attention, but it's for good reason. Windows is the leading OS on the market, which leads to many people dependent on it to be a standout product. Since the first incarnation of Longhorn in 2002, the OS has made numerous alterations and cuts, namely WinFS.

In early Alphas of Longhorn, it merely resembled Windows XP with a gray skin. Since that time though, things have changed drastically, and Vista Beta 2 is nothing like the system was even two years ago. The original goals are still there, but since that time, more have been added.

One thing that each new beta of Vista has proven well to do, is become more system intensive than the last. The Aero Glass feature alone can be responsible for eating up over 100MB of ram. The OS in general is quite bulky, especially the Ultimate, which makes people wonder how they are supposed to run it at release. After a fresh WinXP install, you can usually expect near 30 processes to be running, but in Vista, that number skyrockets to 40+. Not only are there more processes though, but each one takes a significant amount of ram.

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