Windows Vista vs. Windows 7 speed

[CalmCreeper360]

I have heard people saying that Windows Vista is actually faster than 7 in terms of over all performance.
Is that true?
I know for sure that Windows Vista boots much faster than Windows 7 but other than that i cant confirm if Vista is over all faster than 7.
Can anyone here bring some clarity to this topic?

[legacyfan]

for me at least windows 7 is much faster then windows vista or at least on my e6430 it is i haven't tested it on other hardware to see if its any better but for me vista is really slow-legacyfan

[i430VX]

It depends, really. I have seen one be faster than the other, going both ways.

[Win10-Hater]

for me at least windows 7 is much faster then windows vista or at least on my e6430 it is i haven't tested it on other hardware to see if its any better but for me vista is really slow-legacyfan

That's because you have a bad HDD. Vista hates bad HDDs, especially Seagate HDDs. I'm speaking from experience.
But I don't understand how Win7 can be "much faster" than Vista on an HDD with bad sectors. Win7 is actually slower in that case, if superfetch is enabled, from what I have experienced.

[K4sum1]

Vista appears to boot slower on my laptop, but I don't think I'll find any other differences unless I timed the two.

[Kouto]

Vista SP2 wins out in the end over Windows 7 if we're going by a fully updated system, due to the bloat introduced with later updates making less of a sneak into NT 6.0.

Going by the stock (no updates, no Internet connection) the performance difference is negligible however. Vista tends to use resources more efficiently particularly when it comes to RAM. There's a reason it seems to like RAM more than 7: it was built more on the 'unused RAM is wasted RAM' philosophy which is certainly feasible on higher end devices especially now, though at the time Vista came out most people were stuck on 768MB/1GB single core econoboxes and couldn't make much use of it.

[K4sum1]

There's a reason it seems to like RAM more than 7: it was built more on the 'unused RAM is wasted RAM' philosophy which is certainly feasible on higher end devices especially now, though at the time Vista came out most people were stuck on 768MB/1GB single core econoboxes and couldn't make much use of it.

I dislike that philosophy, developers going with it is why I've had to stick 48GB of RAM in my main PC, and 32GB of RAM in my laptop.

How I think of of RAM is like a bucket, you're not wasting a big bucket if you only need a small amount of items in it. You're prepared if you ever need the space the big bucket offers.

[Kouto]

A bucket also tends to hold things only temporarily too (like water) so that analogy makes sense. I like it