Florida-based Devil Mountain Software has posted the results from its testing with OfficeBench and the latest versions of Windows XP and Vista. They ran the test with Vista (RTM), Vista SP1, Windows XP SP2 and the (hopefully) soon to be released Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. While we’ve known for some time that the SP1 for Vista resulted in little to no performance gains, Service Pack 3 for Windows XP seems to add quite a punch to the already fast operating system. Bare Vista and Vista SP1 needed 90 seconds to complete the test, while Windows XP SP2 finished the test in just 40 seconds. Windows XP SP3 completed the test in 36 seconds.
The test system in question was a Dell XPS M1710 with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo, 1GB of RAM and an integrated GeForce Go 7900GS video.
Several version of Windows XP Service Pack 3 have been available to pirates for some time and the underground talk is stating something similar. SP3 will make Windows XP even faster, which is certainly a good thing, but one is certainly wondering if this is good for Microsoft as the sluggish Vista is far from impressively fast at the moment.
