Modern gaming - windows XP or windows 7?

[Xenomorph]

Is this a joke thread? XP came out 10 years ago. You mention it and "modern" in the same thread title?

[xWhiplash]

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.

With that logic, Windows 3.1 will be much much faster than Windows XP. So install that instead. Oh wait, chances are you cannot. XP is getting to the point where you cannot install it without serious workarounds. I have seen BIOS not allow HDD mode to be switched, and sometimes an update fixes that. Otherwise, you will need to slipstream the drivers.

Windows 7 is in no way slower than Windows XP. My Windows 7 boots up much faster than my XP machine did, under 25 seconds. Not to mention with Aero enabled, CPU is actually being saved. Where as in XP it was all on the CPU I believe.

[Sadelwo]

Thank you for your help.

No problem, that's what Neowin is about after all.

[ANON86364]

I can understand the probable truth in the OP's question. What I don't understand is the idea which apparently still lingers that XP is in any way comparable to Windows 7. Seriously guys, step forward about 5 years. At XP's last days, before Vista even, XP was falling behind in regards to Hyper Threading and multi-core operations. I really can't believe this still has to be debated..

Want to talk about logic and common sense? Common sense and history will tell you that not everything in software that is newer is inherently slower. When put in such simple terms, does it still sound like it makes sense? It doesn't.

[Hum]

I'm sure current Windows is going to be better for current games.

At this point, you may as well wait for Windows 8. :laugh:

[n_K]

With that logic, Windows 3.1 will be much much faster than Windows XP. So install that instead. Oh wait, chances are you cannot. XP is getting to the point where you cannot install it without serious workarounds. I have seen BIOS not allow HDD mode to be switched, and sometimes an update fixes that. Otherwise, you will need to slipstream the drivers.

Windows 7 is in no way slower than Windows XP. My Windows 7 boots up much faster than my XP machine did, under 25 seconds. Not to mention with Aero enabled, CPU is actually being saved. Where as in XP it was all on the CPU I believe.

I've got an SSD, windows XP with GUI bootup loads much faster than windows 7 with GUI boot disabled.

Windows 3.11 IS faster than XP which was why it was still supported on embedded systems until a few years ago, or did you fail to see that headline breaking tech-related bit of news hmm?

XP DOES support more than 3GB of RAM, 32 bit without PAE supports upto 3.5GB which is exactly the same amount windows 7 32 bit supports, with PAE it can support more but very poorly, easy solution is windows XP 64 bit edition or windows 7 x64.

[Max Norris]

I've got an SSD, windows XP with GUI bootup loads much faster than windows 7 with GUI boot disabled.

Windows 3.11 IS faster than XP which was why it was still supported on embedded systems until a few years ago, or did you fail to see that headline breaking tech-related bit of news hmm?

Boot speed means absolutely jack when it comes to how the OS performs though, and as far as that goes, I guess it's subjective to the hardware. On my particular machine 7 clobbers XP in getting to the desktop and overall it's ready to go faster. Once it's up and running, games get higher and more consistent framerates too.

Comparing a pre-turn of the century OS is just silly too, may as well throw MSDOS in there while you're at it for all the good that would do you. If he wanted a lighter OS that didn't run anything he needs could just go with a Unix knockoff, at least it still gets security updates. Lightweight != better. Just less capabilities.

[Flawed]

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?

All new games will first and foremost support XP and DirectX 9.0. Some may offer additional support for for higher versions, but developers go where the users are, and that's currently XP.

Crysis 2 is a good example. It currently only supports DirectX 9.0, and 32bit. This trend is also reinforced by the desire of developers to target consoles.

[Flawed]

Boot speed means absolutely jack when it comes to how the OS performs though, and as far as that goes, I guess it's subjective to the hardware. On my particular machine 7 clobbers XP in getting to the desktop and overall it's ready to go faster.

On budget builds, or older machines, XP will always triumph 7. On newer high end hardware, that speed advantage has diminishing returns, because you simply wont notice the difference. The truth is though, the XP OS is still running faster, it's just that it's not perceptible any more.

Once it's up and running, games get higher and more consistent framerates too.

I'm sorry, but that's just incorrect. If anything benchmarks for DirectX 9.0c games are about the same if not higher on low-middle end machines using XP , due to less disk activity, less processes running, less memory consumption etc.

Comparing a pre-turn of the century OS is just silly too, may as well throw MSDOS in there while you're at it for all the good that would do you. If he wanted a lighter OS that didn't run anything he needs could just go with a Unix knockoff, at least it still gets security updates.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) was released to manufacturing on April 21, 2008, and to the public via both the Microsoft Download Center and Windows Update on May 6, 2008

Source

Not quite turn of the century as you suggest is it now?

Lightweight != better. Just less capabilities.

If you measure "better" in terms of efficiency of resources, then yes it is.

[Max Norris]

On budget builds, or older machines, XP will always triumph 7. On newer high end hardware, that speed advantage has diminishing returns, because you simply wont notice the difference. The truth is though, the XP OS is still running faster, it's just that it's not perceptible any more.

He's talking about a new build, not legacy hardware. And since XP is legacy too, and as you say the speed difference isn't perceptable, there's no reason to limit yourself. Plus as I mentioned before, plenty of gaming benchmarks put Win7 ahead of XP in performance. If this is a gaming machine, you'll want to go where the highest FPS is. XP isn't it.

I'm sorry, but that's just incorrect. If anything benchmarks for DirectX 9.0c games are about the same if not higher on low-middle end machines using XP , due to less disk activity, less processes running, less memory consumption etc.

Again, talking about new hardware. An idle Windows 7 machine is just as idle as an XP machine. If the machine in question is underpowered, then yea XP will put it into the "sucks less" category. On current hardware, see one paragraph up.

Not quite turn of the century as you suggest is it now?

Read the article again. Released 2001. Service packs are just that, not a new OS but a collection of updates. And my turn-of-the-century comment was directed at the comment about Windows 3.1 anyway, which is well before turn-of-the-century.

If you measure "better" in terms of efficiency of resources, then yes it is.

How is XP more efficient? It's doing less things, has less capabilities, ergo less of footprint. Having a machine with a ton of memory doing absolutely nothing but looking pretty in a sysinfo report is hardly efficient. It's wasted resources.

All new games will first and foremost support XP and DirectX 9.0. Some may offer additional support for for higher versions, but developers go where the users are, and that's currently XP.

Since he's talking about building for the future, limiting himself to a legacy version of the DirectX platform is hardly smart. If you're planning ahead, the last thing you want to do is limit yourself to things that are already ancient history, or are quickly being shown the door. Both XP and DX9 are firmly in that category. Why go with the old version when you can get the latest, which just so happens to support that older one anyway?

[BoredBozirini]

Windows XP no doubt.

[lalalawawawa]

Modern gaming, and yet you mention the word XP? What the ****?

[Flawed]

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

PAE or XP 64bit.

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

Why would XP be limited to 2TB?

And how many people have a single 2TB drive? Talk about poor performance. It's much better to have a few 300/500 GB drives instead and run them in a raid 0 configuration.

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

99% of games these days are targeting consoles/XP, which is why Crysis 2 on release, only had DirectX 9.0c support. This also assumes your GPU supports it.

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

Except that you can't because most games support 9.0c/XP/consoles first and foremost not 7.

[mad_onion]

Battlefield 3 won't run on XP because it doesn't support dx10/11. Battlefield 3 is as modern as it gets. End of.

[Ravensky]

Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with a DirectX 11 Video card FTW!!!

I use: EVGA FTW3 x58 Motherboard, I7-970 Processor @ 4Ghz, 6GB 2000 DDR3 Ram, 3x Nvidia GTX-470 Video Cards all running flawlessly with Windows 7 Ultimate x64. I have yet to see any game even lag or slow down a little :p

I love my gaming computer!!! I use it for streaming video, music, pictures out to the XBOX 360 in the living room and I have a Blue-Ray burner for burning all my Blue-Rays to mp4 files that I store on an external eStata drive.

Windows 7 is the way to go!!! XP was good in it's day, but it's day is over...

[etempest]

Dealing with Bethsoft games (Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout, etc) with a lot of mods works better on XP.

If on Vista / 7, you typically have to disable UAC.

I also have games that never liked vista /7, or games that Creative Labs EAX works better in XP then via Alchemy in Vista / 7.

I'm mostly in Win7, however some games I do drop in to Windows XP.

[Jen Smith]

Except that you can't because most games support 9.0c/XP/consoles first and foremost not 7.

Recommending a legacy (and near out of support) operating system on a new build is just silly. The OP specifically mentions "modern gaming"... Windows XP? 2001. DirectX 9? 2002. That's not modern, it's legacy.

Besides, if it runs under XP, it'll run under 7. A few older ones may need a configuration adjustment, usually due to poor design. (Security restrictions and the like.) It does not work the other way around however; some games are primarily DX10+ preferred, sooner or later it's going to be DX10+ only. Sooner or later the hardware vendors are going to stop producing drivers for XP as well. Pretty much any graphics card you buy nowadays is going to support DX10+. Why limit yourself to an operating system that can't even take advantage of it? XP runs most things, Windows 7 runs everything. How is this a hard decision?

[ANON86364]

Flawed: Why? Why can't you let go??

[n_K]

Actually, yes, places DO still use MSDOS boards, I've got 2x i386dx based boards behind me running at 25MHz running DataLight DOS, all of McDonalds in the UK use a special version of DOS.

Besides, if it runs under XP, it'll run under 7. A few older ones may need a configuration adjustment, usually due to poor design.

Dungeon keeper does NOT run under windows 7 AT ALL but runs perfect on windows XP.

[ANON86364]

Actually, yes, places DO still use MSDOS boards, I've got 2x i386dx based boards behind me running at 25MHz running DataLight DOS, all of McDonalds in the UK use a special version of DOS.

Brool story co. Except once again, the OP and everyone else is talking about modern hardware and gaming. Not some old school legacy retail or inventory software or whatever.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

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.

yeah if youre trying to run Win7 on a Pentium 3...

[qdave]

Whywould anyway want to ask such question int he first place. in 2005 you werent thinking win 98 / 2000 or xp.

[Max Norris]

Dungeon keeper does NOT run under windows 7 AT ALL but runs perfect on windows XP.

Weird. It's running just fine here.

Again he was asking about modern gaming, not a game from 1997, but are there any others that are supposedly unplayable?

[Gabe3]

W7 all the way, BF3 won't even support XP. XP is probably faster on older hardware though, for example if you were using something like a P4, 1gb ram, and a 6600gt, I bet XP would perform better on it than W7 for gaming, for playing CS:S and other old games.

[Flawed]

Recommending a legacy (and near out of support) operating system on a new build is just silly. The OP specifically mentions "modern gaming"... Windows XP? 2001. DirectX 9? 2002. That's not modern, it's legacy.

Is Crysis 2 not a modern game? That was 9.0c only on release. Most popular games target consoles, thus there's little impetus to implement features that only a small minority can take advantage of. It's an afterthought at best.

By the way, XP SP3 was released in 2008. That added many features. And Directx is updated on a monthly basis (including 9.0c).

Besides, if it runs under XP, it'll run under 7.

There's no guarantee of that. Why do you think Microsoft went to all the trouble of including an XP mode in some editions?

Sooner or later the hardware vendors are going to stop producing drivers for XP as well.

As long as XP has over 50% of Windows users, and businesses continue to use it, there will be support, including from Microsoft.

Pretty much any graphics card you buy nowadays is going to support DX10+. Why limit yourself to an operating system that can't even take advantage of it? XP runs most things, Windows 7 runs everything. How is this a hard decision?

You can run DX10 on XP unofficially, but to be honest, there's little point at the moment because [game] support for it is limited.