Early Tests Say SP3 Speeds Windows XP

The beta service pack released last week boosts performance as much as 10%, evaluator says.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), the update scheduled to release next year, runs Microsoft Corp.’s Office suite 10% faster than XP SP2, a performance testing software developer reported Friday.

Devil Mountain Software, which earlier in the week claimed Windows Vista SP1 was no faster than the original, repeated some of the same tests on the release candidate of Windows XP SP3, the service pack recently issued to about 15,000 testers.

“We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP SP3 delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS,” said Craig Barth, Devil Mountain’s chief technology officer, in a post to a company blog Friday.

Full article: pcworld.com