win8 Win 8 RTM gaming performance

[Jojo81]

For anyone who has or will have early access has the gaming performance improved over the preview? I felt it was somewhat behind windows 7 on the test build even though the Nvidia drivers are now unified (same version).

Edited August 3, 2012 by SHoTTa35
Moved and tagged

[Guest]

Couldn't say on my system, AMD's RP drivers don't seem to install properly.

[Artins90]

I also would like to see some benchmarks to decide whether to keep using Win 7 or upgrade, the DPC latency was horrible in the RP I would like to know if they fixed it

[nytiger73]

I also would like to see some benchmarks to decide whether to keep using Win 7 or upgrade, the DPC latency was horrible in the RP I would like to know if they fixed it

A friend of mine has a copy and he said that the DPC latency is MUCH MUCH better. So it should be a pretty good experience. I'll know more tomorrow when I see him at work to get the full review.

[Guest]

I also would like to see some benchmarks to decide whether to keep using Win 7 or upgrade, the DPC latency was horrible in the RP I would like to know if they fixed it

I get a fairly consistent 1060?s on my system

[Jojo81]

what does the dpc latency do?

[Jub]

What are you testing your DPC latency with? Because DPC Latency Checker doesn't report accurate results under Windows 8. Try TimerTiming for example. The DPC latency is no worse than it was before.

[Anthonyd]

I also would like to see some benchmarks to decide whether to keep using Win 7 or upgrade, the DPC latency was horrible in the RP I would like to know if they fixed it

This is related to the drivers, not the OS.

So you might want to upgrade in a couple of month (ex: in october because OEM just received the RTM, give them time to build the drivers on top of it).

[Artins90]

What are you testing your DPC latency with? Because DPC Latency Checker doesn't report accurate results under Windows 8. Try TimerTiming for example. The DPC latency is no worse than it was before.

I googled it but I can't find it :(

This is related to the drivers, not the OS.

So you might want to upgrade in a couple of month (ex: in october because OEM just received the RTM, give them time to build the drivers on top of it).

My Gene-z gen 3 has all the drivers compatible with windows 8 available for download from the asus site I'm very tempted to test the RTM myself but AMD hasn't released any driver for the RTM yet and my system runs like a charm, I would have to do a lot of performance tweaks if I had to go back to 7.

[PGHammer]

I googled it but I can't find it :(

My Gene-z gen 3 has all the drivers compatible with windows 8 available for download from the asus site I'm very tempted to test the RTM myself but AMD hasn't released any driver for the RTM yet and my system runs like a charm, I would have to do a lot of performance tweaks if I had to go back to 7.

I noticed that with the Release Preview - though I have been testing the Catalyst Preview drivers, if your GPU is supported out of the box (which was the case with HD4xxx up in the Consumer and Release Previews, and is the case at the minimum with the leak of Enterprise-N), the AMD-sourced drivers perform no better than the included drivers. Unless you absolutely need/use a specific feature in Catalyst (such as the transcoding feature) you likely won't miss them from a performance standpoint (or a gaming standpoint either). I'm getting ready to throw a game I've been thrashing in 8 RP at the RTM to see if the surprising trend I've been noticing (better performance) holds up in gaming as much as it's held up in applications.

[xendrome]

DPC latency is 99% of the time related to hardware drivers....

[_neutrino Veteran]

I think the true test of gaming will have to wait a few months so that Driver manufacturers can get better drivers out there for gaming hardware.

[Guest]

I noticed that with the Release Preview - though I have been testing the Catalyst Preview drivers, if your GPU is supported out of the box (which was the case with HD4xxx up in the Consumer and Release Previews, and is the case at the minimum with the leak of Enterprise-N), the AMD-sourced drivers perform no better than the included drivers. Unless you absolutely need/use a specific feature in Catalyst (such as the transcoding feature) you likely won't miss them from a performance standpoint (or a gaming standpoint either). I'm getting ready to throw a game I've been thrashing in 8 RP at the RTM to see if the surprising trend I've been noticing (better performance) holds up in gaming as much as it's held up in applications.

Does it support openGL out of the box? A lot of the included drivers don't...

[ObiWanToby]

I think Nvidia might be in a better position now that their drivers are on a unified release schedule with 7.

[Guest]

Surely even if performance is better/worse, it'll only be a few fps either way, right? I would have thought the OS had very little to play in overall performance. Mainly hardware and drivers!

[ObiWanToby]

Surely even if performance is better/worse, it'll only be a few fps either way, right? I would have thought the OS had very little to play in overall performance. Mainly hardware and drivers!

Windows 8 has had some pretty darn good gains.

http://www.reddit.com/r/battlefield3/comments/qc6y0/bf3_on_windows_8_preview_build/

[patseguin Global Moderator]

Diablo 3 seems to perform not as well as on 7 but I haven't run any numbers. I also discovered SLI wasn't enabled for who knows how long lol. Why can't the driver install just enable it if it detects 2 or more cards?

[theyarecomingforyou]

I've found gaming performance to be excellent on the Release Preview, so I imagine the final version will only improve on that. However, I came across some compatibility issues with certain games (LA Noire, Crysis 2) and that is simply unacceptable to me. I blame the games developers, as the vast majority of games run without issue.

As drivers mature I have no doubt that Windows 8 will be the faster operating system, just as Windows 7 improved over Vista and Vista improved over XP (yes, benchmarks confirmed it was faster in most games despite people's perceptions).

@patseguin - SLI is always disabled by default and with driver updates, which to me seems counter-intuitive.

[PGHammer]

I've found gaming performance to be excellent on the Release Preview, so I imagine the final version will only improve on that. However, I came across some compatibility issues with certain games (LA Noire, Crysis 2) and that is simply unacceptable to me. I blame the games developers, as the vast majority of games run without issue.

As drivers mature I have no doubt that Windows 8 will be the faster operating system, just as Windows 7 improved over Vista and Vista improved over XP (yes, benchmarks confirmed it was faster in most games despite people's perceptions).

@patseguin - SLI is always disabled by default and with driver updates, which to me seems counter-intuitive.

Considering that the issues with Crysis 2 and Windows 8 are entirely in DX11 (with DX9, which is the default, 8RP smoked 7 rather badly), I'd wager that it has to do with one of two issues; either Crytek had an OS-ism in the DX11 code (which is utterly inexcusable) or there is an issue with the runtimes (specifically, those for DX 11). I'm thinking that the former (not the latter) is the issue (as other games that support both DX9 and DX11 don't have the issues Crysis 2 does).

[veternan]

what does the dpc latency do?

Falcon4 @technet:

DPC latency, which (for the uninitiated) basically is how fast the "needs to be processed as fast as possible" tasks in a PC are run. Deferred procedure calls (DPCs) allow programs to "queue" actions to be done quickly in the processor scheduler, and they hang the whole computer until they get processed. For example, drawing a video frame on a screen needs to be done as soon as the data is ready and the frame time is reached. Playing music needs to keep the audio buffer filled in real-time. Moving the cursor is done in real-time as well - the mouse driver uses a DPC to move the cursor around.

That's why DPC latency is important. If there's a hardware driver using a DPC outside of MS's specs for drivers (which say that the DPC shouldn't be used to transfer data, and to return as quickly as possible - e.g. to signal "hey, go get the data")., DPC latency spikes can cause laggy, slow performance, audio glitches/stuttering, etc.

[DeadEndAccount]

Does it support openGL out of the box? A lot of the included drivers don't...

Microsoft does not provide OpenGL functionality - OpenGL functionality is vendor dependent hence if there is no OpenGL provided by said vendor then I'm sorry you're not going to get OpenGL support.

[George P Global Moderator]

For the most part drivers play a key in performance by optimizing the OS and cutting any overhead (because while you game the OS is still in the background and other things are still going on, then it will only help performance in the end. Win8 is out of the box lighter and faster than Win7, there might be some minor changes to the WDDM, i dunno the details for sure, but that could be why current drivers don't show much change over Win7.

Also doesn't Win8 ship with DX11.1 which is basically a even more tweaked and faster version of DX11 iirc. We just need more games to finally ditch DX9 and go full on with DX10/11 so we can see more of the benefits.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Since this not discussing a beta product:

Moved to Windows Discussion & Support

[Jojo81]

yeah the games I played on the release preview felt like they were stuttering even though the overall fps was good so I guess that was a dpc latency issue.

[spaceelf]

Couldn't say on my system, AMD's RP drivers don't seem to install properly.

I assume they're blocked as the release drivers are newer. I don't have it so can't verify, but it seems logical.