Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate

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Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate (RC) Available for Download

- But just a Preview


By: Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor

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Making headway with the development of the first service pack for Windows Vista, Microsoft has made available for download a new testing milestone of the refresh. On November 14, 2007, the upcoming service pack for Vista evolved into the Release Candidate phase. However, as the label of the testing build indicates, the fully fledged RC is yet to come, as Microsoft is offering just a taste of the Vista SP1 Release Candidate. While initial reports related to the development of Vista SP1 pointed to the availability of a public version concomitantly with the first Release Candidate stage, this is not the case. But Microsoft did expand the testing pool in comparison to the
beta launched in the last week of September.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate is build 6001.17042. Vista SP1 RC is up for grabs for over 15,000 testers. The first beta for the service pack was dropped into the laps of in excess of 12,000 testers, on September 24. Vista SP1 Beta Build 6001.16659 shipped only to participants in the testing process of the development milestones of Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP Service Pack 3. Vista SP1 RC can also be accessed exclusively via Microsoft Connect, although the Redmond company did slip up and produced signs indicating that the build would be opened to all MSDN subscribers.

The Redmond company failed to provide any additional details related to Windows Vista SP1 Release Candidate Preview Build 6001.17042. Still, at this point in time, judging by the frequency at which test versions of the service pack have been progressively released, Microsoft is advancing at fast pace toward the final Vista SP1 planned for the first quarter of 2008, in tandem with Windows Server 2008. A public build of a pre-final version of Windows Vista SP1 remains but a promise from Microsoft, without any substance as of yet.

While it is clear that the service pack will eventually hit MSDN, it is still unclear if the company will open up a future test build of Vista SP1 to a much broader audience. Simultaneously with the drop of Vista SP1 RC, Microsoft declined to comment in any manner on the possibility of a public pre-final Vista SP1 (according to Mary Jo Foley), or a timetable for its availability.

Vista SP1 a Performance Dud

With the initial performance characteristics of Windows Vista leaving much to be desired (see our previous post on the subject), many IT organizations have put off deploying the new OS until the first service pack (SP1) is released by Microsoft early next year. The thinking goes that SP1 will address all of these early performance issues and somehow bring Windows Vista on par with - or at least closer to - Windows XP in terms of runtime performance.
Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. Extensive testing by the exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) research staff shows that SP1 provides no measurable relief to users saddled with sub-par performance under Vista.
How We Tested
The above conclusion is based on an analysis of the RC0 (v.658) build of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. Testing was conducted on a dual-core Dell notebook with 1GB of RAM. The staff ran a variety of test scenarios against both "before" (RTM w/no updated) and "after" (RTM w/SP1 installed) configurations, using the DMS Clarity Studio testing framework to capture scenario scoring and metrics data for upload to the exo.repository.

• During office productivity testing, the staff used the DMS Clarity Studio OfficeBench test script to drive Microsoft Office 2007 through a scripted set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentations materials.
• To test multitasking performance, the staff used the ADO, MAPI and WMP Stress modules - all part of DMS Clarity Studio - to generate a multi-process workload scenario involving client/server database, workflow and streaming media tasks.

Note: DMS Clarity Studio is available as a free download from the exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) site. Simply register for your free DMS Clarity Analysis Portal account to access these and other free tools from xpnet.
Test Results
During OfficeBench testing we noted a statistically insignificant delta (~2%) in favor of the SP1-patched configuration. CPU Saturation, Memory Pressure and I/O Contention factors were all comparable, as were process specific metrics - including the Thread Utilization and Thread Growth Potential Indices.

Figure 1 - OfficeBench Completion Times (Seconds)
The multitasking scenario was also comparable, with the ADO and MAPI Stress workloads showing a delta of less than 1% in favor of the SP1-patched configuration. As with the OfficeBench test scenario, system and process metrics for CPU, Memory and I/O were all nearly identical between the two configurations.

Figure 2 - ADO and MAPI Avg. Transaction Times (Seconds)
Note: For more information on the various system and process metrics employed in this article, please login to your private DMS Clarity Analysis Portal site and refer to the Glossary section of the Online Help
Not yet a member of the exo.performance.network? Sign up today! It's free, and you'll be helping us to build the world's first global repository of computer performance-related knowledge and data.
Conclusions
After extensive testing of both RTM and SP1-patched versions of Windows Vista, it seems clear that the hoped-for performance fixes that Microsoft has been hinting at never materialized. Vista + SP1 is no faster than Vista from the RTM image.
Bottom Line: If you've been disappointed with the performance of Windows Vista to date, get used to it. SP1 is simply not the panacea that many predicted. In the end, it's Vista's architecture - not a lack of tuning or bug fixes - that makes it perform so poorly on systems that were "barn-burners" under Windows XP.

Posted by Research Staff at 9:48 PM