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Windows 7 is not that much faster than Vista
Benchmarking RC 1
Benchmarking results on Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 seem to show that it is only marginally better than Vista.
The blokes at Gizmodo have had a play with RC1 to see how it fared against Vista. They show that while everything in Window 7 feels better than Vista the benchmarking figures don't bare this out much. The 32-bit versions of both Vista and Windows 7 were tested on the same machine with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM and a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT.
Vista did well on two 'everyday' tests including applying a filter to a 16.6MB (9764x3720 pixel) photo in Adobe Photoshop CS4 with more haste. It also played a computer game at a slightly better frame rate. Using more traditional benchmarking from PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage, Windows 7 came out ahead, only losing to Vista on a single test in 3DMark.
Gizmodo was at a loss to explain why Windows 7 felt faster even though the figures suggested it was not that good. Perhaps it was because people felt that it was not Vista and therefore should feel better.