Traditionally, upgrading to a newer version of Windows on existing hardware meant a noticeable drop in performance. That’s because ‘new’ in the software world usually means ‘uses more memory and other hardware resources’. Is that the case with Windows 8?

Ars Technica ran some benchmarks, comparing the performance of Windows 8 with Windows 7 on the same hardware. Given the amount of hype out there about Windows 8’s improved boot times, I was curious what a real world test would show.

Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that although boot times have improved with Windows 8, the difference isn’t as large as we’ve been led to believe. The good news is that Windows 8 doesn’t appear to be any slower than Windows 7. In fact, in most tests, Windows 8 is about the same or slightly faster than Windows 7. Of course, that really just emphasizes a point that Microsoft has been making: that Windows 8 is – at its core – the same as Windows 7.