The new Windows architecture delivers enhanced performance, but as BYTE testing reveals, there are strings attached
Stanford Diehl
The wait is not yet over for Windows 95. Yes, it has finally shipped, but we still don't have applications that take full advantage of its 32-bit, multithreaded architecture. In extensive testing of the shipping Windows 95 code, we came to a few solid conclusions:
--
You won't see a dramatic performance improvement when running your existing 16-bit applications under Windows 95.
--
Those 32-bit applications that are not fully optimized for Windows 95 will realize only marginal performance enhancements under the new platform.
--
Applications that load large files (e.g., multimedia, imaging, and databases
) take full advantage of 32-bit data paths and display the greatest performance gains.
--
The Windows 95 environment multitasks applications much more smoothly and with greater stability than Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (WfWG) does.
--
Windows 95 requires more memory than previous versions of Windows to run optimally, but for most office applications, the performance gains level off at 16 MB.
The graph of indexed performance
charts the big picture.
Office applications
(i.e., Word and Excel) display no speed enhancement on the new platform, even when tested with the shipping 32-bit applications. The speed improvements stand out on the tests that take advantage of 32-bit data paths.
Required RAM
Don't even try to deploy Windows 95 on systems that pack less than 8 MB of RAM. And if you can afford the upgrade to 16 MB, you will appreciate the improved performance.
Of course
, if your applications require a large memory footprint, then 16 MB of RAM may not hack it; but for most office applications, 16 MB is sufficient. Upgrading beyond that level won't buy you much additional speed. For testing
memory configurations
, NSTL used a Digital Equipment Celebris SL 590 (a 90-MHz Pentium); all other tests in this report were run at BYTE on a Gateway 2000 486DX2/66 with 16 MB of RAM.
32 Bits Is Not Enough
The performance of 32-bit Office 95 applications is disappointing, but this is not the best indicator of overall Windows 95 performance enhancements. Once Microsoft turns its attention to 32-bit optimization for its suite, the performance numbers should improve. "Microsoft has optimized the Office applications like crazy for the 16-bit architecture of Windows 3.1," Andrew Hudson points out. He is president of North Coast Software, an imaging company that develops extensively for Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and multiple NT platforms, incl
uding PowerPC. "They just haven't had the time to do the same optimizations for Windows 95," he adds.
Even with the current Office 95 release, you should notice snappier operation because of improved multitasking and features such as on-the-fly spell-checking and threaded print services. In future Office releases, Microsoft plans to move additional processes into independent threads. These enhancements, along with aggressive optimization, are the kinds of improvements that applications vendors will have to make to boost performance. The OS alone won't do the trick.
Imaging and Multimedia
The most striking performance gains of Windows 95 came in our
imaging
and
multimedia tests
. Picture Publisher 6.0 not only supports 32-bit data paths but also spawns threads for each image loaded, letting you resume work more quickly. When we loaded five 24-bit images with Picture Publisher 6.0, the mouse was free after just 8 seconds, giving us
control of the system to multitask. Under the same scenario using WfWG and Picture Publisher 5.0, we didn't get mouse control for over 2 minutes. In another show of stability, Windows 95 had no trouble running the posterize test with the five images loaded, but WfWG froze the system each time we tried to run the same test.
PhotoMorph displayed the most dramatic speed improvements when it was upgraded to the Windows 95 version. The video-effects creation tool uses extensive 32-bit moves and floating-point calculations (an area Microsoft reportedly focused on in Windows 95 after the Pentium bug was revealed).
Multitasking: The Big Win
Anyone who has ever experienced an "application is not responding" crash under Windows will appreciate the improved multitasking of Windows 95. Our multitasking tests show only a marginal improvement in the speed of multiple applications running under Windows 95; but the new environment, with its preemptive multitasking architecture, is clearl
y more stable.
For our first
multitasking suite
, we loaded three Word documents, seven linked Excel spreadsheets, and three 24-bit images. We formatted one of the Word documents and saved it while recalculating the linked spreadsheets. WfWG froze each time we ran the suite, crashing one of the three loaded applications in each case. We reran the test with two images loaded (instead of three) and still could not complete the test under WfWG. WfWG finally ran the suite with a single 24-bit image loaded; the timings are recorded as suite 2.
For suite 3, we copied approximately 20 MB of files from a double-speed CD-ROM drive to the hard disk while compiling a video effect with PhotoMorph 2. Suite 4 included loading a document into Word and recalculating our linked Excel spreadsheets while building a 7-MB archive with WinZip.
Under both testing environments, we left 80 MB of disk space free and defragmented the disk before launching a multitasking test. We created the large
st permanent swap file that WfWG would allow and kept the default settings of Windows 95 to enable the new dynamic cache (see the sidebar "The Installable File System"). In all cases, we ran the WfWG tests and the Windows 95/16-bit tests with shipping 16-bit applications. The Windows 95/32-bit multitasking suites were run entirely with 32-bit applications (i.e., gold code of Word and Excel for Windows 95; beta code of PhotoMorph 2, Picture Publisher 6.0, and WinZip32).
If You Build It, They Will Come
With the right memory configuration and optimized applications, Windows 95 looks like a clear performance winner over Windows 3.1. The bigger win is stability, which has long been a sore point for all of us who do serious work with Windows. As developers start optimizing 32-bit code for Windows 95 and supporting multithreaded processes, the performance will only get better.
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Stanford Diehl is the director of BYTE product reviews. He has been testing and evaluating computer software and hardware for over 10 years. Before coming to BYTE, he developed computer-based training and database applications for a large industrial contractor. You can reach him on the Internet or BIX at
sdiehl@bix.com
.
Windows 95: The Numbers
