Going by numbers ... Windows benchmarks

[PoBoy]

Windows Showdown: 8 Operating Systems in 6 Benchmarks | Overclockers

The Operating Systems : Server 2008 x64 | Server 2008 x32 | 7 x64 | 7 x32 | Vista x64 | Vista x32 | XP x64 | XP x32 all trimmed using nLite and vLite.

The Benchmarks : 3DMark03 – 3DMark05 – 3DMark06 – Aquamark3 – SuperPi 1M | wPrime 32M

Since its debut, Windows Vista has taken nothing but flak from almost every demographic ... Windows 7 on the other hand has been hailed as being noticeably better performing, and supposedly as light as XP ... Overall, the two most solid performers are Server 2008 32 and Vista 32. Both of these are at the top for the 3D benchmarks, and fare okay in the 2D benchmarks as well ...

 

[sanjeevgpc]

I consider benchmarks useless except you want to know how your system will perform for a perticular scenario. Say find benchmark of video encoding if you do it everyday.