Vista SP1 benchmarks disappoint

Though it doesn't exactly come as a surprise, the first Vista SP1 benchmarks are starting to trickle in from early testers and it turns out that the service pack isn't exactly a speed demon. Crave is reporting that most of SP1's performance enhancements are driver related, which means that systems that have been regularly updated will see only a minimal speed increase. Even worse, some tasks, like copying files to an external drive over USB 2.0, have actually gotten slower--by around 50 percent.

Meanwhile, ZDnet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes decided to benchmark both Vista SP1 and XP SP2 and compare the results. Again, his final conclusion is anything but surprising. "Looking at the data there's only one conclusion that can be drawn - Windows XP SP2 is faster than Windows Vista SP1.  End of story.  Out of the fifteen tests carried out, XP SP2 beat Vista SP1 in eleven, Vista SP1 beat XP SP2 in two of the tests, and two of the tests resulted in a draw."

For more on Vista SP1's speed:
- see this Crave article
- and this ZDnet article