Most reviews of Windows 10 agree that it's a great update from Windows 8.1, at least in terms of the user interface. But how does it compare performance-wise?
TechSpot put the new operating system to the test, running benchmark tests on the same system with all three operating systems (Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10) freshly installed and updates applied. The machine used for testing had an Intel Core i5 process, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB drive, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 graphics card.
Results are a bit mixed. Synthetic benchmarks like Cinebench R15 and Futuremark PCMark 7 show Windows 10 consistently faster than Windows 8.1, which was faster than Windows 7.
TechSpot In other tests, such as booting, Windows 8.1 was the fastest--booting two seconds faster than Windows 10. Performance in specific applications, such as Photoshop and Chrome browser performance were also a bit slower in Windows 10.
On the other hand, Windows 10 woke from sleep and hibernation two seconds faster than Windows 8.1 and an impressive seven seconds faster than sleepyhead Windows 7.
For the most part, the benchmarking tests show Windows 10 performing pretty similarly to the previous versions of Windows--sometimes a bit faster and sometimes a bit slower.
So what does this mean? The report concludes that if you're considering upgrading to Windows 10, you don't have to worry about a significant drop in performance or issues running Windows 10 on any semi-modern hardware that can run Windows 7 or above adequately. It's not as good news as saying that Windows 10 offers a huge performance boost, but so far Windows 10 has been working pretty well. Check out the TechSpot review for the full test details.
This story, "Windows 10 vs Windows 8 vs Windows 7: A performance comparison" was originally published by ITworld.