There would not be much difference between M$ OSes since BOINC apps are not 64-bits. When same HW, difference might be more significant using FAT32 vs. NTFS, drivers used and available memory (swapping) which may be more intensive in Vista.
Agreed... cannot remember a choice for NTFS, but HDD was already formatted NTFS. I do *not* see much swapping; HDD use by BOINC is not even 20 MB out of 100+ GB.
One can't take all into account.
I would suggest that you pick up one aspect and measure (e.g. FAT32 vs. NTFS, i-RAM vs. software RAM drive).
Not sure how you deal with different BOINC projects. CPDN stress whole system I guess the most among all projects (CPU, RAM, HD), projects with a primitive code stress mainly CPU and it's cache (SZTAKI), some are somewhere between (Einstein?).
OK, one stat: % of time running BOINC = 100%, time work is allowed = 99,6298%, average CPU efficiency = 0,98373
I was curious how that compares to (say) WinXP, but I may need to reinstall WinXP & BOINC if I really really really want to know! (Idon't... not that much :-)!)
Thanks for your input!
Francis