Vista SP1 performance - Will SP1 and Windows 2008 come out tomorrow?

Robert McLaws ran a performance test with the refresh of Vista SP1 RC which I blogged about yesterday. He compared the performance with a patched Vista RTM using PCMark Vantage. This benchmarking program leverages specific Windows features such as Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Media Player, etc.). McLaws run this benchmark on systems with Vista x86 and Vista x64. The results are quite interesting.

On the 64-bit machine, he measured a 15% performance increase and on the 32-bit computer 11%. Considering that there have already been a couple of patches that are supposed to improve performance, this is not too bad. He mentioned the machines (Dell XPs 410 / Samsung Q1 Ultra), but doesn’t say anything about their hardware equipment. I am pretty sure that you won’t see the same improvements on every PC. However, I think it is a hint that Vista SP1 might perform a little better than Vista RTM.

At the peril of being accused again as a Vista fan boy, I have to say that I had no performance issues with Vista so far. Of course, I am running it only on hardware that is powerful enough. That is, all my Vista machines have at least 2GB RAM. Only when I test it under VMware Workstation, I work with 1GB which is enough if you only run a tool or 2 simultaneously.

McLaws also seem to have information that Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 will go to RTM tomorrow. Peder linked to an article over at Bink.nu mentioning the same release date (Jan. 16). It was already published 11 days ago. I am still a bit skeptic, but it would certainly be great if Microsoft releases these two products earlier than planned.

Update: McLaws just removed the article. Was it because he mentioned the release dates?