Comparison: Windows XP Service Pack 1, 2, and 3
01.06.08 - 08:28pm
Microsoft releases security patches and bandaids for Windows on a nearly daily basis but rarely do they roll out an entire Service Pack. Typically when I am benching I try to stick with a minimalistic installation in hopes that the fewer background processes will help create a more efficient platform. Last month I was informed that there was a Windows XP Service Pack 3 release-candidate available to the public so naturally I felt the urge to test out the new spin on Windows XP. Given the fact that XP will easily be with us for a very long time, it seems natural to check out what’s in store for us in advance.
To test if there were any performance differences between the various Service Packs I decided to play my favorite games, 3DMark and Super Pi. Sure, these aren’t very interactive games and I’m pretty certain you won’t find anyone else within a hundred mile radius of me that can claim these as their favorite games but they sure do react very swiftly to differences in performance. A prime example of this would be Super Pi 32M. Even a slight change in how an OS is configured can shave off a few seconds, seconds that are often the difference between first and tenth place. 3DMark is much more dependent upon DirectX rather than the base configuration of Windows but SP3 addresses and changes a few DirectX files so we may see an improvement there also.
Testbed and Tests
Today I’m using my current testbed which is fresh from my previous review of the MSI P35 Neo2-FR. Below is a list of the hardware used along with the important BIOS settings.
- CPU: Intel Q6600 G0 Stepping @ 3.6GHz
- Mobo: MSI P35 Neo2-FR on 1066 Strap
- RAM: 2×1GB Buffalo PC2-8000 Firestix
- PSU: 700w OCZ GameXStream
- HDD: 2x 300GB Seagate 7200.10 RAID0 128kb stripe, 60GB partition
- 3DMark 01, 03, 05, 06: Benchmarks that primarily stress GPU performance
- Super Pi 1M and 32M: Benchmarks that stress CPU and RAM performance
- FSB: 450MHz, stock 266MHz
- RAM: 1080MHZ on 5:6 divider
- Timings: 5-5-5-15 with tweaked sub-timings, shown below
Results
During the tests I took the best out of five SuperPi results and the best out of three 3DMark results. This ended up with roughly 8 hours of benching so if I’m a bit brief I hope you understand. While the performance differences that were measured are within what could be considered the margin for error, SuperPi consistently would hit the same time which is more important to me than the GPU-dependent 3DMark results which can jump a few hundred points seemingly at random.
Conclusion
Judging from the Super Pi results I’d have to say that SP3 is definitely worth installing for those few extra seconds saved. 3DMark across the board seems to improve by a few points between SP1 and SP3 with SP2 straddling the two. In the end if you are debating between installing SP3 or sitting with a patched SP2 I’d have to say just do it, from the results above you won’t see a drop in 3D or CPU performance while gaining the added security included in SP3. Now to see how well SP1 for Vista improved the slower, dumber brother of XP.
Very nice.. SP3 has improvements pretty much across the board.
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