Modern gaming - windows XP or windows 7?

[kingius]

If you were going to get a gaming machine for today and the future... which OS would you pick?

I've been someone out of PC gaming for a while now, preferring to play older games on a Netbook that has served me well. However, it just isn't powerful enough to play some of the games that I'd like to play, such as the sequals to the X franchise and so I'm looking at picking up a new PC in the future with gaming in mind. And not just older titles, I'd like it to be powerful enough to run any game today.

This is largely a hardware issue, granted, but the OS itself will come into it. Is windows XP still supported on new games releases? A quick web search on Dungeon Siege 3 shows that game supports it (I'm fond of the original Dungeon Siege and still have that). Or do other forum members swear by Windows 7?

[Nikv]

If you were going to get a gaming machine for today and the future... which OS would you pick?

I've been someone out of PC gaming for a while now, preferring to play older games on a Netbook that has served me well. However, it just isn't powerful enough to play some of the games that I'd like to play, such as the sequals to the X franchise and so I'm looking at picking up a new PC in the future with gaming in mind. And not just older titles, I'd like it to be powerful enough to run any game today.

This is largely a hardware issue, granted, but the OS itself will come into it. Is windows XP still supported on new games releases? A quick web search on Dungeon Siege 3 shows that game supports it (I'm fond of the original Dungeon Siege and still have that). Or do other forum members swear by Windows 7?

Games will be supported by XP for quite a while i imagine

It's the direct x 11(?) that's the problem.

[neufuse Veteran]

I don't know why anyone at this point would want windows xp for gaming

[daniel_rh]

If your talk about modern, Windows 7, and W7 is as good on gaming as XP

[Slammers]

7 all the way. I see no reason whatsoever for XP.

The fact that xp doesn't support DX 10 or 11 should be enough in itself. Your gonna want them more and more in the future especially if your getting quite a powerfull system.

[Jen Smith]

If you're building a system with the future in mind, installing a legacy OS that's 10 years old is just silly, especially when it's end of life is rapidly approaching. Windows 7, its a no brainer. Usually better performance and always better features. "Modern" and "XP" shouldn't even be in the same sentence.

[Siddharth Prabhu]

Modern gaming demands a modern OS. Why would you ever want to use Windows XP as your primary OS today?

[Packet1009]

At some point, supporting an older os is more than its worth.

7 x64, to its credit, supports older games very well - even games from 1997 (Total Annihilation and Jane's WW2 Fighters come to mind immediately as personal examples)

[MFH]

Win 7!

XP is a decade old and is on life supprt? XP can't even utilize modern hardware as efficient as Vista for that matter?

[kingius]

Win 7!

XP is a decade old and is on life supprt? XP can't even utilize modern hardware as efficient as Vista for that matter?

Thanks for the replies, you're helping to push me towards Windows 7, which I know has a good reputation. I'm a fan of Windows XP - the third OS that Microsoft really got right in my experience (the other two being Windows 95* and Windows 2000) - and continue to run it to this day.

I really appreciate the advice from everyone here, so a big thanks.

*Messing about with config.sys and autoexec.bat and custom startup disks to get Moonstone - and others - working - excepted!

[Teebor]

If you are going old enough for games like moonstone (which is a great game)

Get a VM pc with XP running or if they are REALLY old use Dosbox

[n_K]

Windows XP is supriorlly faster then W7 (Anyone that tells you otherwise is an IDIOT as W7 has much more processing, more security etc.) but Windows XP has less security, less multi-thread/core compatibility, no DirectX 10 or 11 support, and drivers aren't designed to be optimised for XP anymore, plus it's old, go with W7 and dual boot XP if you need it for old games like dungeon keeper, etc.

[AnotherITguy]

Or you could be smart about it and buy WINDOWS 7 PRO which comes with XP MODE which essentially is a free copy of XP inside a virtual machine.

P.S: To the guy above, XP in no way shape or form is faster than 7 ive done the testing and its not even close.

[Max Norris]

Windows 7. I've not run into a game that doesn't run under it, and typically get a faster framerate than XP too. XP might clock in a hair faster than 7 in raw CPU performance on a synthetic benchmark just because 7 is doing more under the hood.. real world/gaming using XP is noticably slower. Even old stuff from the Windows 95 era runs, and for the really old stuff there's DOSBox. No dual booting required, zero need for XP. For the new features there's no point even considering XP anymore as it just won't run on XP.

[n_K]

Or you could be smart about it and buy WINDOWS 7 PRO which comes with XP MODE which essentially is a free copy of XP inside a virtual machine.

P.S: To the guy above, XP in no way shape or form is faster than 7 ive done the testing and its not even close.

You do understand how code is executed on a processor right, in that, more code to run = takes more time?

Now then, compare the code that's in windows 7 to windows XP, windows 7 has MUCH more features which comes at a cost of execution code space increasing.

CPUs have things like 256KB L2 cache's for storing 256KB of instructions at a time, now, if you agree with physics, common sense and what we've been relying on for the whole of humanity, you too will agree that less executable code will execute faster than larger executable code thus making windows XP faster and quicker to run itself than windows 7.

Many thanks.

[Nerd Rage]

Windows XP is supriorlly faster then W7 (Anyone that tells you otherwise is an IDIOT as W7 has much more processing, more security etc.) but Windows XP has less security, less multi-thread/core compatibility, no DirectX 10 or 11 support, and drivers aren't designed to be optimised for XP anymore, plus it's old, go with W7 and dual boot XP if you need it for old games like dungeon keeper, etc.

Even if it takes more memory and processing power to run Windows 7, Win7 gaming will be faster based off of what you just said. Processor support, DirectX support, Driver support, etc etc etc. For modern gaming, Windows 7 is a faster OS.

[n_K]

Read my first post ?

[ahhell]

Windows XP is supriorlly faster then W7 (Anyone that tells you otherwise is an IDIOT as W7 has much more processing, more security etc.) but Windows XP has less security, less multi-thread/core compatibility, no DirectX 10 or 11 support, and drivers aren't designed to be optimised for XP anymore, plus it's old, go with W7 and dual boot XP if you need it for old games like dungeon keeper, etc.

Funny, you calling people idiots.

First you say that XP is "supriorlly" (whatever the **** that means) faster than Win7 then you go on to list how ****ty XP is compared to Win7 THEN you say go with Win7 because it's better.

WOW.

[n_K]

He talks about a netbook in his first post.

Windows XP's shell runs faster, it's got less features and a lot less security.

Going with either XP or 7 you make a choice, both have downsides, both have upsides.

[Sadelwo]

If you were going to get a gaming machine for today and the future... which OS would you pick?

Would you build a machine with less than 4GB of RAM?

Would you want to be limited to a 2TB HDD?

Would you want to miss DX10/11 feature thereby loosing alot of your graphics card potential?

I think Windows 7 is the better choice, you get the most out of your hardware, isn't that what a gamer wants?

[AnotherITguy]

Ok good argument but heres my reasoning, Windows 7 was optimized for the modern day multicore cpu, whereas XP barely did Hyperthreading and SMP, if you put windows 7 on a modern day quad core box and XP in the same box hands down XP gets smoked as the optimization in code alone would make the diffrence.

[kingius]

Would you build a machine with less than 4GB of RAM?

Would you want to be limited to a 2TB HDD?

Would you want to miss DX10/11 feature thereby loosing alot of your graphics card potential?

I think Windows 7 is the better choice, you get the most out of your hardware, isn't that what a gamer wants?

As you have asked me directly, here are the answers:

4GB of Ram is more than I currently have on my Netbook, which has 2GB of RAM. I'm not sure what program would require more than this, I don't currently run any that do. That said, I'm unfamiliar with the requirements for modern games, so they might have scaled to the point where anything less than 4GB is insufficient. I believe that about 8GB is not uncommon these days, but I don't know what it is being used for. Nothing that I have today needs anything like that much.

2TB of hard drive space is massive. I use a 40GB SSD (Mtron Mobi, very snappy hard drive) in my netbook and that limits me as things stand now with how many games I install.. and this is for older games. So less than 2TB would be fine be me, and anyway I'd pick SSD for quick access, which does limit storage space anyhow.

Not having DX10 or 11 could be killer though. This alone would push me towards Windows 7 and from what others have said here, it looks like the best choice for me.

[Alladaskill17]

Fail thread; you answered your own question in the topic's title - keyword: 'modern'.

XP not only lacks DX11 but also has restrictions to the amount of RAM that can be used (i.e 3GB iirc).

[Sadelwo]

As you have asked me directly, here are the answers:

In the opening post you stated you were looking towards building a new machine so i gave criteria which would help guide you. As far as your netbook is concerned its up to you but i would say Windows 7 as its optimized for SSD's.

[kingius]

In the opening post you stated you were looking towards building a new machine so i gave criteria which would help guide you. As far as your netbook is concerned its up to you but i would say Windows 7 as its optimized for SSD's.

Thank you for your help.