Despite faster CPUs, RAM and storage, today’s Windows experience doesn’t feel noticeably different from back in the 2000s when XP and later Windows 7 ruled the roost. To quantify this feeling, [TrigrZolt] decided to run a series of benchmarks on a range of Windows versions.
Covering Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, 10 and 11, the Pro version of each with the latest service packs and updates was installed on the same laptop: a Lenovo ThinkPad X220. It features an Intel i5 2520M CPU, 8 GB of RAM, built-in Intel HD Graphics 3000 and a 256 GB HDD.
For start-up, Windows 8.1 won the race, probably due to having the Fast Boot feature, while Windows 11 came in dead last as it showed the desktop, but struggled to show the task bar. Windows XP’s install size was the smallest and also had the lowest RAM usage with nothing loaded at 800 MB versus 3.3 GB for Windows 11 in last place.
Using the Chrome-based Supermium browser, memory management was tested, with XP performing as poorly as Windows 11, while Windows 7 and 8.1 took home the gold at over two-hundred tabs open before hitting the total RAM usage limit of 5 GB. That XP performed so poorly was however due to an issue with virtual memory and not hitting the RAM limit, which means that Windows 11 is the real dunce here.
This is a pattern that keeps repeating: Windows 11 was last in the battery test, took longer to render a video project in OpenShot, took its sweet time opening the File Explorer window, and opening built-in applications like MS Paint left enough time to fetch a fresh cup of coffee. Not to mention Windows 11 taking the longest to open websites and scoring worst of all in single-threaded CPU-Z.
Much seems to be due to the new code in Windows 11, as Microsoft has opted to start doing major rewrites since Windows 7, hitting a crescendo with Windows 11. Although there’s the unhelpful fact that Windows 11 by default encrypts the storage with the very slow software-based BitLocker, its massive RAM usage and general sluggishness are such a big deal that even Microsoft has acknowledged this and added workarounds for the slow File Explorer in Windows 11 by preloading components into RAM.
All of this appears to be part of the same trend in software development, where more resources are pointlessly used due to developing for the hardware, and performance increasingly takes a backseat to abstractions and indirections that effectively add bloat and latency.