Windows 7 php + Symfony2 terribly slow

Update:

Since PHP 5.5 has now integrated the PHP OPCache, this speeds up the execution time. In my setup a full request with database access takes 180ms now.

Steps:

1. Update to the latest php version
2. Enable OPCache
3. Disable xdebug
4. Set realpath_cache_size = 2M as DemonTPx mentioned

php.ini settings:

realpath_cache_size = 2M
[XDebug]
xdebug.profiler_enable = 0
xdebug.remote_enable = 0
[opcache]
zend_extension = "C:\xampp18\php\ext\php_opcache.dll"
opcache.enable = 1
opcache.enable_cli = 0
opcache.memory_consumption = 128
opcache.interned_strings_buffer = 8
opcache.max_accelerated_files = 4000

Why is Windows slower than Unix?

As discussed here, PHP is very slow in file_exists, and filemtime() on Windows. since Symfony2 is using these functions in dev mode a lot. we won't get under 700ms (in <= 5.4) on Windows. PHP 5.5 allows now 180ms.

A solution could be WinCache which was developed by microsoft to solve this problem on IIS. But as it only works on several Windows versions and also only with IIS it's no solution for me.

Alternative

Also a nice solution I can recommend is to have a Linux Virtual Machine on Virtualbox. This is easy to setup and is also more like the production environment.

I have the exact same problem. Setting the following in php.ini increased the performance for me from ~800ms to ~300ms:

php.ini:

realpath_cache_size = 2M

Still not the ~100ms I get from a unix machine, but it makes a difference at least