Windows Vista SP1 has been compared to Vista RTM and Vista RTM with all updates installed and some interesting results popped up.

Windows Vista RTM with updates installed was found to be 12.8% faster than a fresh RTM install, while Music and Communications droped by 1.6% and 6.5% while productivity increased by 5.25%.

Onto Windows Vista SP1, SP1 was found to be 1.5% faster than RTM with updates and 14.5% faster than RTM. Music and Communications were 4% and 12.8% higher than RTM. With Productivity being 9.8% faster than RTM. Windows Vista SP1 had a 86% file copy and write improvement over RTM also, with a reduction from 9 mins to 2 mins with large files.