In September, when Microsoft released the Developer Version of Windows 8, the company said that boot times would be much faster than previous Windows versions. Later it was discovered that the boot times for Windows 8 could be so fast, there may not be any time to press the F2/F8 keys to go to the setup screen.
Now, PCMag.com is putting the boot up time, along with other features, of the 64-bt Windows 8 Release Preview to the test and comparing them to a clean install of a PC with the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate on the same Toshiba Portege R835-P88 laptop. The results from their testing show that a PC with Windows 8 Release Preview boots up in 17 seconds, compared to 38 seconds for the Windows 7 PC. Yes, that means the Windows 8 PC took less than half the time to boot up next to a Windows 7 PC.
Other tests performed by PCMag showed that Windows 8 Release Preview had better performance than Windows 7 in nearly all aspects, including video rendering, web browsers and more. There was one place where Windows 8 was slower, which was the time it took to move files from a USB 2.0 Flash drive to the PC. The article states:
Though these tests didn"t show a speed improvement (presumably because it"s a hardware-constrained test), when I tried copying the same files to another folder, it was nearly instant, whereas in Windows 7 I had to wait the same time for the file to move again.
Source: PCMag.com