Does Windows SP2 slow you down?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 18, 2004, 9:24 pm

Here's a decent comparison between Windows XP with SP1 and SP2.

It appears there is a very slight advantage for SP1. Not enough for me to switch back though:

http://kama.sarcnet.com/xpsp1vsxpsp2_page1.html

Conclusions Page:

http://kama.sarcnet.com/xpsp1vsxpsp2_page6.html

Avryce · Post by **Avryce** » October 19, 2004, 10:40 am

Can't follow links since my work firewall is selective but isn't it to be expected that SP2 would slow the system down some what? Afterall it's mostly security updates and firewall etc.

Basically you're adding new things into the system not streamlining.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » October 19, 2004, 10:51 am

Avryce wrote:Can't follow links since my work firewall is selective but isn't it to be expected that SP2 would slow the system down some what? Afterall it's mostly security updates and firewall etc.

Basically you're adding new things into the system not streamlining.

Of the 3 PC's that I've installed it on for testing, the speed difference was very noticable. Gaming, applications, everything. As said before, SP2 can kiss my arse. There's nothing in it that I need.

Where oh where has my Desqview gone.. Where oh where could OS/2 be?

Canoe · Post by **Canoe** » October 19, 2004, 10:58 am

I've seen a significant decline in performance since SP2 - especially initial start up. It might be coincidence - but from what I'm hearing a lot of people are noticing the same.

Avryce · Post by **Avryce** » October 19, 2004, 12:17 pm

Personally I've noticed a slight performance increase... could be the fact that all the spyware I uninstall is staying uninstalled though.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » October 19, 2004, 1:13 pm

I haven't noticed any slowdown. Installed it on two PCs.

Llaffer · Post by **Llaffer** » October 19, 2004, 6:30 pm

Siji wrote: Where oh where has my Desqview gone

that brings back memories

I used to run a BBS with Desqview running so I could log in simutaneously with my one modem caller

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » October 19, 2004, 6:45 pm

MS-DOS 6.0 shell task switcher > all

OS/2 is just prehistoric NT (XP?)

hell if you really want to go back, I coded comms routines in Pascal on a TRS-80

noel · Post by **noel** » October 19, 2004, 6:49 pm

I've noticed no slowing and have it installed on over 7 PCs including 3 personal PCs.

Clearly there is some issue, because enough people are complaining about it. It's most likely that these people are running PCs with inferior hardware. I'm not saying you specifically, but some of the people complaining. As an example, some people don't like running Zone Alarm personal firewall because of the performance hit from additional processing. It's the same with Virus checking software.

All of my PCs have a minimum of 1GB of RAM, and minimum of 2.6Ghz P4s.

Neost · Post by **Neost** » October 19, 2004, 6:53 pm

CP/M anyone?

Spang · Post by **Spang** » October 19, 2004, 7:08 pm

my PC's performance got better after SP2.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 19, 2004, 7:11 pm

Siji · Post by **Siji** » October 20, 2004, 10:33 am

noel wrote:Clearly there is some issue, because enough people are complaining about it. It's most likely that these people are running PCs with inferior hardware.

Having tried it on my amd 3000+, abit an7 mb w/1 gig of Corsair memory and noticing the performance decrease - I'll say inferior h/w wasn't my issue, inferior software was.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » October 20, 2004, 10:38 am

Siji wrote:
noel wrote:Clearly there is some issue, because enough people are complaining about it. It's most likely that these people are running PCs with inferior hardware.
Having tried it on my amd 3000+, abit an7 mb w/1 gig of Corsair memory and noticing the performance decrease - I'll say inferior h/w wasn't my issue, inferior software was.

Wait a minute.. You said Abit.. So you may want to back up on that non-inferior statement!

noel · Post by **noel** » October 20, 2004, 12:06 pm

You also stated that you had an AMD processor. All of my CPUs are Intel. I have nothing against AMD, and I have a lot of friends that run them, but back in the day, when Cyrix, AMD, and another vendor who's name I can't recall were making clones of Intel processors that were supposed to be 100% compatible, I got burnt a few times on compatibility issues. For that reason, I pay a bit more and get the Intel CPUs. If I were building a Linux box, I'd wouldn't hesitate to use an AMD.

There is a reason why, you are saying that SP2 [horribly] slows down all of your computers and why I'm saying I've seen no performance change at all, and it has nothing to do with MICROSOFT IS EVIL or MICROSOFT DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO CODE. It is of no benefit to Microsoft to release service packs that slow down people's PCs.

Another potential reason a PC could slow down: Prior to the install of SP2, said PC was infected with spyware/malware/viruses. Those applications are suddenly blocked by the SP2 firewall. The SP2 firewall requires additional processing. Considering I've run sniffer traces showing a single infected PC generating nearly 10,000 connections per second, it's not out of the realm of possibility to think that an infected PC could cause the FW to have to look at that many frames every second in addition to whatever other processing is being asked of it.

I'd say the most likely reasons for SP2 to slow down a PC would be (in order):

1. Shitty hardware.
2. Old Drivers.
3. Shitty software installed and/or viruses/malware/spyware installed.

I've seen it on enough of a variance of PCs to tell you with some certainty that if SP2 slows down a PC, the speed decrease is negligible as shown in Winnow's posted article.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 20, 2004, 1:10 pm

Siji wrote:
noel wrote:Clearly there is some issue, because enough people are complaining about it. It's most likely that these people are running PCs with inferior hardware.
Having tried it on my amd 3000+, abit an7 mb w/1 gig of Corsair memory and noticing the performance decrease - I'll say inferior h/w wasn't my issue, inferior software was.

That would be a case of an inferior person using non inferior equipment.

Siji · Post by **Siji** » October 20, 2004, 3:54 pm

noel wrote:You also stated that you had an AMD processor. All of my CPUs are Intel. I have nothing against AMD, and I have a lot of friends that run them, but back in the day, when Cyrix, AMD, and another vendor who's name I can't recall were making clones of Intel processors that were supposed to be 100% compatible, I got burnt a few times on compatibility issues.

With the number of AMD processors out there and in use these days (including EVERY major computer manufacturer), if Microsoft isn't coding to avoid issues on them then they're simply being silly. It's not like AMD is some unknown 3rd world processor anymore like it was 'back in the day'. I remember those days as well and the compatibility issues that went with them. But these days it's like saying tires on a Chevy are less compatible than Ford because Ford came first.

If SP2 works for ya, great! The question was whether anyone noticed a performance decrease. The answer to that is yes. I don't recall this many issues when SP1 came out, or seeing my IT department (supposedly) getting Microsoft to implement a block so that people from our company couldn't get SP2 from the auto-update process because of problems.

noel · Post by **noel** » October 20, 2004, 4:03 pm

I already acknowledged that there is a performance hit that some people are seeing.

Once again, blaming it all on Microsoft is fucking stupid.

We can do one of two things. We can attempt to ascertain the cause of the slowness or we can whine about it. If we're going to do the latter, I'm done with this thread.

Canoe · Post by **Canoe** » October 20, 2004, 4:24 pm

1 Gig Ram - 2.4 mhz intel, No spyware/viruses that i can find (I consistently check it with multiple programs) and all my drivers are updated as of last week.

Definately slower since SP2 - i'm not saying i've gone down to a snails pace, but it's a noticable difference on my end.

noel · Post by **noel** » October 20, 2004, 4:28 pm

Does it seem to be slower when running (highly?) graphical applications, when performing network operations, or during disk access?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 20, 2004, 4:38 pm

Were any of the tricks to speed up windows reset when SP2 was installed? Things like shadowed menus, fading in and out menus etc?

noel · Post by **noel** » October 20, 2004, 5:00 pm

Something as simple as running a file sharing application (which scans lots of IPs/port numbers in quick succession) in the background while running an application will cause additional processing. Prior to SP2, there was no additional processing because there was no firewall looking at every single frame. With XP, the firewall potentially needs to examine and allow every single frame.

masteen · Post by **masteen** » October 21, 2004, 4:38 pm

I've seen the performance hit on 4 different machines, 2 older, 2 very new. The application where it was noticible was COH.

My machine: 1.9 GHz Athlon, 1 GB 100MHz RAM, GF4 4600, ASUS mobo
Flameingo's: 1.5(?) GHz P4(?), 384 MB RAM, GF MX 4400, unk mobo
Lee Chan's: 2.8 GHz P4(HT), 1GB PC3200 RAM, Radeon 9800XT, MSI Neo2 mobo
Crank Mechanic's: 2.4 GHz P4(HT), 1GB PC3200 RAM, Radeon 9800Pro, MSI Neo 2 mobo

Everyone noticed that after SP2, COH turned into a slideshow during battles, at the train stations, ect. The 2 higher end machines had been getting consistent framerates of 50 during the biggest task force battles, and over 100 fps flying through zones, but post SP2 would not get more than 30 fps ANYWHERE. My machine was so lagged during missions that people were dying before I even saw them taking damage.

Just to be sure, I did a clean install on both my and Crank's machines, did a baseline test in COH once all drivers and updates minus SP2 were in. Both machines performed as expected. I put SP2 on, and did the testing in-game again, with the same bad performance as before. Remove SP2 again, and BAM, no more problems.

I'm just going to hazard a guess that some of the changes that MS made to the IP stack files fuck with the netcode used by COH, but I also noticed that my bittorrent pron downloads were a little slower, but I didn't do any concrete testing.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » October 21, 2004, 5:24 pm

masteen wrote: but I also noticed that my bittorrent pron downloads were a little slower, but I didn't do any concrete testing.

I'll go ahead and dispell this rumor. Bittorrent pr0n, or any other bittorent, is not slowed down by SP2! I was averaging 400kb/sec last night using Azureus to pull down a horrible copy of Team America: World Police.

Great Torrent app:

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

noel · Post by **noel** » October 21, 2004, 5:36 pm

Out of curiosity, what kind of NIC are you using? Is it built-in, or a PCI card? What brand, etc.?

masteen · Post by **masteen** » October 21, 2004, 6:42 pm

My machine uses a netgear NIC (yes it sucks, I know), the rest are integrated onto the mobos.

Imster · Post by **Imster** » October 24, 2004, 5:26 am

My only problem is with fixed disk performance, it's definately taken a hit. Bootup times have almost doubled, as has hibernation.

I'm pretty sure the problem isn't hardware related; my setup is a 3.0GHz P4, 512MB RAM, Seagate SATA HDD.

I'm planning to do a clean install and applying SP2 immediately after, that *should* fix my performance issues.

Aabidano · Post by **Aabidano** » October 24, 2004, 9:16 am

Startup and shutdown taking a bit longer are the only changes I've seen with SP2 on my home machine. From talking to folks at work (with teenage kids), if your machine has spyware, trojans, etc.. it can make you system grind to a halt. A clean install with SP2, antivirus and spybot before anything else fixed the problems they had.

We had some initial application oddness at work, that was fixable though. No problems or slowdowns across a fairly wide range of hardware.

Once again, blaming it all on Microsoft is fucking stupid.

They wrote the bloated, overcomplicated OS didn't they? SP2 is much like fixing a hole in your roof with duct tape. Yes it works, and was a big improvement over what they had, but doesn't resolve the root of the problem. Adding yet another layer of complexity on top wasn't what they needed to do.