Vista's first huge Service Pack is just days away from being released to the public. It includes all of the updates that have been released since going retail last year, but also promises some performance benefit over the original retail version.

For many people, this might be exactly what they have waited for. After all, Vista has the reputation for being slower than XP, and unnecessarily bloated.

We tested a plethora of real world software under SP1, including all of the integrated programs as well as 3rd party applications. We also tested file copying performance, with a various file sizes.

If you are a Vista user who is sitting on the fence about installing SP1, or an XP user who was reluctant to make the switch (after all, Vista only holds about 12% of the OS market share), you should have a far clearer view after reading our 8 pages of performance analysis.

We tested the following applications, and were able to come to a conclusion about exactly how much SP1 improves performance:

Integrated Vista components:

* Windows Photo Gallery
* Windows Movie Maker
* Windows Media Center
* Internet Explorer 7
* Windows Media Player 11
* Windows Defender
* Windows Live Messenger
* Windows Mail
* Windows Contacts
* WordPad
* Vista's integrated compression API (FSCTL_SET_COMPRESSION)
* Vista's integrated decompression API (LZRead)
* Vista's integrated cryptography API (Next Generation)

External Applications:

* Microsoft Word 2007
* Adobe Photoshop CS2
* Microsoft Outlook 2007
* Adobe After Effects 7
* Adobe Illustrator CS2
* Adobe Photoshop CS2
* AutoDesk 3ds Max 8
* Macromedia Flash 8
* Microsoft Excel 2003
* Microsoft Outlook 2003
* Microsoft PowerPoint 2003
* Microsoft Word 2003
* Microsoft Project 2003
* Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 series
* Sony Vegas 7
* SketchUp 5
* WinZip 10.0
* dbPowerAmp
* LAME MP3 Audio Codec
* WMA 9.2 Audio Codec
* WMA 10 Professional Audio Codec
* VirtualDub
* DivX 6.8 Video Codec
* XviD 1.1.3 Video Codec
* CineBench R10
* Call of Duty 4
* Crysis
* Unreal Tournament 3

We saw some performance double with SP1, but also saw some huge drops in a few select tests. Read the full report to learn more!