Hands On: Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and networks

There’s been a lot written about the forthcoming Service Pack 1 (SP1) update for Windows Vista.

Some beta testers claim significant performance increases, especially when it comes to handling network files.

Others, however, have reported hardly any improvements at all, so I thought I’d run a few quick tests myself to see who was right.

Nothing exhaustive mind, just a few network file copies with and without SP1 installed to see what effect, if any, the update might have.

Fortunately, I had a Windows Vista PC in for review at the time and, having finished benchmarking it, was able to use that for my tests.

The PC in question was from HP and nicely specified with a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 6750 processor with a couple of gigabytes of memory and running Windows Vista Business.

It also had a gigabit Ethernet interface, which was important as it meant I didn’t have to worry about bandwidth issues.

To this end I ran tests copying files from a network-attached storage (Nas) server, which was also equipped with a gigabit Ethernet port, with a gigabit switch in between.

I performed two tests. The first involved copying large files from the Nas server to the PC hard disk (a 3.0Gbits/sec Sata drive), for which I used some CD-Rom images, with three of the files involved totalling 1.3GB. For the second test I used a collection of much smaller files, involving some 300 digital photographs, which together totalled 368MB.

The tests were automated and the times recorded, with each run several times to make sure the results were repeatable. I also rebooted both the PC and Nas server between tests to eliminate any cache effects which might otherwise have skewed the results.

I ran the tests first using the PC with Vista as it was delivered and with all the latest updates installed. I then downloaded the public beta of the Vista SP1 release candidate, installed it on the PC (a lengthy process, about which more later), and reran the tests several times. The results are in the graph above.

Note that I’ve simply graphed the raw times for each transfer, so the shorter the bars the better and, as you can see, there was a significant reduction in the time taken once the Vista SP1 update had been applied. This was most obvious when copying the big files, with a reduction of around about a third. That wasn’t carried over to the small files, but that was to be expected and the impact was still noticeable.

I’m not claiming to have produced anything definitive here. The Nas server I used was a Linux box running Samba and the results with a Windows server might be completely different ­ according to some reports I’ve seen they should be even better.

It’s also worth noting that when I ran the tests in the opposite direction, copying files from the PC to the server, there was no measurable change once SP1 had been applied. There have also been changes to the SP1 software since I downloaded my copy, which may have an impact on your own results.

Installing the Service Pack
Bearing all that in mind, these results do demonstrate a measurable effect, and it’s fair to say that anyone who installs Vista SP1 can look forward to enhanced network performance. I do, though, just want to share my Vista SP1 upgrade experience with you, as it wasn’t what I was expecting.

Indeed, having installed lots of Service Packs over the years, on Windows XP and before that on Windows 2000, I thought it would be a fairly quick and painless process. It wasn’t.

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