A comprehensive benchmark of Windows XP through Windows 11 on a Lenovo ThinkPad X220 indicates significant performance disparities. Windows 8.1 emerged as the fastest version, while Windows 11 struggled with speed and efficiency.
Performance Comparison
Benchmarks were conducted using a Lenovo ThinkPad X220, featuring an Intel i5-2520M processor, 8 GB RAM, and a 256 GB HDD. Windows 8.1 showed the fastest startup times, largely due to the Fast Boot feature. In contrast, Windows 11 had the slowest startup and faced issues displaying the taskbar.
Windows XP excelled in minimal installation size and low idle RAM consumption (~800 MB) compared to around 3.3 GB for Windows 11. In browser memory tests, Windows 7 and 8.1 managed over 200 tabs efficiently, whereas Windows XP and 11 struggled.
Bottlenecks and Improvements
Windows 11 performed poorly in various metrics: it was last in battery life, slow in rendering video projects in OpenShot, and took longer to load File Explorer and web pages. The system's single-threaded CPU performance also lagged, based on CPU-Z scores.
The report attributes Windows 11's underperformance to major OS rewrites, increased abstraction layers, default storage encryption, and resultant system bloat and latency. Microsoft has acknowledged some issues, offering workarounds for slow File Explorer performance.
