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Microsoft Windows 7 Test Drive, Part 2

Dec 28, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer

           

Figure 3. The AVCHD-based Sony Creative Software Vegas Pro test project.

Sony Creative Software Vegas Pro tests

I tested the 64-bit version of Vegas Pro with an AVCHD-based synthetic test about 6 minutes long. As with the Premiere Pro projects, the project had two tracks: one static base track and a half-sized PIP that panned from the lower left hand corner to the upper right hand corner with a 360-degree rotation thrown in for good measure. Effects applied to the base clips included color correction, Gaussian blur, light rays, and film grain, with a millimeter logo overlay and timecode insertion atop.

Table 4. Sony Creative Software Vegas Pro synthetic tests.

I rendered using the output presets shown in Table 4. As you can see, Windows 7 was actually slower in the first two tests, though not by much, while proving 12 percent faster in the Windows Media tests. Unless you're a heavy Windows Media producer, there's little performance-based reason to prompt a Vegas user to upgrade to Windows 7.

Analysis

The last time I benchmarked Vista performance, it was with Microsoft's initial release, and it proved 25 percent slower than XP. Here, I tested with Vista SP2. I have no idea whether it's faster than the original release, though you would suspect that it would have to be. Either way, it appears that Microsoft has avoided the same type of performance drop with the Vista-to-Windows 7 migration, though producers looking for a significant, across-the-board performance boost will be disappointed.

Come back soon to see how Vista SP2 and Windows 7 compare to 64-bit Windows XP.