Performance Check: Windows 10 vs. Windows 8.1

Windows 10 is already around for some weeks, with all the talks and issues on security, collection of personal data, and a fair amount of performance tests, mainly on gaming hardware. Tests on mini PCs are harder to find, despite the fact that those small computers gain more and more popularity. They call themselves NUC, Gigabyte Brix or Zotac ZBox, and their small form factors make them an ideal choice for office and industrial applications. With this said it’s hightime to do a little performance check of my own.

Test Conditions

Performance measurements were carried out on a Gigabyte Brix Gaming GB-BXA8G-8890. The Brix Gaming comes with an AMD Richland APU A8-5557M and an AMD Radeon R9 M275X. It fits in a 59.6 x 128 x 115.4 mm case. The Hardware Setup is completed by 8.096 MB DDR3L and a 256 GB SSD. The system was run in the so-called Operation Mode (BIOS configuration).

First a fresh instance of Windows 8.1 with updated hardware drivers was installed. Performance was analysed using the 3DMark benchmarks. After that the System was upgraded to Windows 10 and latest graphics card drivers were installed. Then the benchmarks were run again. After that an optimization tool was run on, to clean up processes and do some tweaks in order to enhance overall system performance.

Results: Benchmark Comparison

The following table shows the results of the four benchmarks on the same mini PC hardware with different operation systems. Each of the benchmarks is designed for specific Hardware, i.e. Fire Strike is most useful to benchmark gaming PCs, Sky Diver targets gaming Notebooks and Cloud Gate custom notebooks. The following table Shows the results:

Conclusion

Performance of Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 on the test hardware is more or less in the same range regarding the relevant Benchmarks. Doing some system optimization helped improving the Sky Diver result. But to sum things up, performance should be no issue, when deciding whether to update or not.