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Like Windows 7, Windows 8 will run faster on existing PCs. Thanks to changes under the hood like making background processes wake the processor up at the same time rather than one after another and using GPU acceleration for a lot more tasks, plus changing the way shutdown works to make it more like hibernation, Windows 8 boots more quickly, runs some tasks – especially multimedia, transcoding and anything using DirectX – faster and delivers longer battery life.
Booting and shutting down Windows 8 is faster than Windows 7; twice as fast in some of our tests on a mid-range second generation Core i5 notebook (upgraded to a fast SSD, but we saw even bigger improvements on a hard drive system). Hibernating and resuming speeds improved as well, but not by as much.
The real difference is that shutting down actually hibernates an image of the core Windows system and booting reloads that (checking that device drivers are working correctly in case that's why you restarted).
Startup and shutdown speeds
Startup
Windows 7
45s
Windows 8
21s
Shutdown
Windows 7
13s
Windows 8
7s
Resume
Windows 7
25s
Windows 8
16s
Hibernate
Windows 7
16s
Windows 8
7s
Browser speeds
Canvas speed
Windows 7
50fps
Windows 8
60fps
Webvizbench
Windows 7
4180
Windows 8
5190
Webvizbench fps
Windows 7
17fps
Windows 8
27fps
Speedreading
Windows 7
12s
Windows 8
7s
Speedreading fps
Windows 7
55fps
Windows 8
60fps
The hardware-accelerated Chakra engine in IE10 continues to get faster and not just for JavaScript; it accelerates everything from rendering text to SVG to Canvas drawing to the multimedia tests that make up Webvizbench to the mix of tasks in the IE9 Speedreading benchmark. When IE10 comes out for Windows 7 we'll be able to see how much of the speed is underlying Windows 8 performance and how much is the browser, but whichever it is, it's faster.
PCMark 7
Windows 7
2478
Windows 8
2915
This is a definite improvement in the mix of 'real world' tasks in PCMark like multimedia, browsing, and other common activities. Much of the speedup is in multimedia and DirectX but this reflects an overall speedup. One of the things might be the faster file handling, which beats Windows 7 file copy speeds. Copying a random selection of files (documents, images, videos, MP3s, ZIP and EXE files) sped up much more than we expected in Windows 8.
Copy 2.5GB of files over USB 2
Windows 7
3.05
Windows 8
2.48
Often the first graphics drivers for a new OS deliver low frame rates for games and then improve to match the previous OS and then beat it. Even on a notebook with unimpressive integrated Intel graphics, the frame rates for DirectX 11 games are slightly better than Windows 7 already.
Gaming speeds
Heaven DX9
Windows 7
109
Windows 8
111
Heaven DX9 fps
Windows 7
4.3fps
Windows 8
4.6fps
Give an old PC a new lease of life
We also ran some of our benchmarks on an older notebook, the HP EliteBook 2730p Centrino 2 model from 2008 which has a 5400prm 1.8-inch HDD rather than an SSD. While some things remain slow and the Intel integrated graphics still struggle, we saw huge improvements in startup times and some browser tests.
Startup and shutdown speeds
Startup
Windows 7
1m 19s
Windows 8
38s
Shutdown
Windows 7
41s
Windows 8
19s
Resume
Windows 7
26s
Windows 8
26s
Hibernate
Windows 7
33s
Windows 8
13s
Hate how long you're waiting for your PC to start? Windows 8 will speed it up. The only test where we didn't see significant improvement was resuming from hibernation; the 5400rpm hard drive is probably maxed out loading files.
Browser speeds
V8
Windows 7
1594
Windows 8
2581
Canvas speed
Windows 7
22fps
Windows 8
52
Webvizbench
Windows 7
3030
Windows 8
4230
Webvizbench fps
Windows 7
5.89fps
Windows 8
13.64fps
Again, bigger is better in all these tests; JavaScript speed, canvas rendering and the multimedia tasks in Webvizbench are all significantly faster. You'll notice the difference when browsing complex websites.
PCMark 7
Windows 7
1038
Windows 8
1091
The improvements here are in the 'creativity' section of the benchmark, which looks at multimedia and DirectX tasks. You might not notice a difference in Word but processing photos will be faster.
Gaming speeds
Heaven DX9
Windows 7
46
Windows 8
47
Heaven DX9 fps
Windows 7
1.8fps
Windows 8
1.9fps
This old system and the integrated Intel graphics struggle with anything more than casual games and we saw rendering issues galore but DirectX 9 was definitely faster with Windows 8 and the benchmark ran visibly more smoothly.
