Benchmarks: Budget System Specs

We also ran a few select tests on a lower-end system. This configuration uses the AMD Athlon II X4 645 processor with 4GB of memory and a Radeon HD 6570 graphics card.

Whereas previously Windows 8 with Excel 2013 was 10% faster than Windows 7 using Excel 2010, we found that with lower-end hardware this margin increased, Windows 8/Excel 2013 is now 15% faster.

The performance margin in the first pass test has increased from 6% in favor of Windows 8 when using the high-end hardware to 9% using our budget system.

The 3Dmark 11 margin remained the same, with Windows 8 trailing behind Windows 7 by a very small margin.

The PCmark 7 benchmark favored Windows 8 by a 10% margin when using the low-end system, about the same as the 9% margin we observed when we tested on the faster Core i7 system.

There's little to no difference on gaming performance between the two operating systems.

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