Modern gaming - windows XP or windows 7?

[Blackhearted]

I don't know what's more surprising. Having to ask which os, between XP and 7, to use on a modern gaming pc. Or the fact that there's STILL people crazy enough to defend XP (apparently) to the death.

[Azies]

Windows XP, so long as your game doesn't support DX10, or DX11, modern gaming benefits from the lower overhead that XP offers, however, Windows 7 might make up for it for easier x64 support, DX10, DX11, better performance due to better memory management, better disk management, as well as better networking wirelessly. I say wirelessly because 7 still fails at wired LAN networking

I don't know what's more surprising. Having to ask which os, between XP and 7, to use on a modern gaming pc. Or the fact that there's STILL people crazy enough to defend XP (apparently) to the death.

Yeah god forbid someone wants to run an OS on THEIR computer. You all make it sound like he's asking what OS he should install on your PC. State the facts, not the fanboyism.

[ANON86364]

7 still fails at wired LAN networking

lolwut?

[Eric Veteran]

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.

Are you referring to the Alky Project? Have you tried it? It doesn't work. You cannot run an DX10/11 game on XP. The driver model doesn't support it.

[Blackhearted]

Yeah god forbid someone wants to run an OS on THEIR computer. You all make it sound like he's asking what OS he should install on your PC. State the facts, not the fanboyism.

Awww, what? Did i upset one of windows xp's crazy fans?

Seriously though, when it comes to a MODERN gaming pc(that's what the thread title is about btw), XP has no place. It's not a case of 'fanboyism', it's just a simple fact that anyone with their head pulled out of their own ass can see. If you need an example of why xp isn't an os for a MODERN gaming pc, look up BF3.

[beanboy89]

Windows 98 SE. If you wait a few months, I think Microsoft will be releasing Windows Whistler. Supposed to be combining Windows 9x and NT. Should be better for gaming than Windows Me or 2000.

Oh wait, I got the date wrong. Those darn 0s and 1s getting mixed up again. :pinch:

[kingius]

Once again, thanks for the replies people.

I'll be picking Windows 7, using DosBox on my old games (actually I do this today with Windows XP as it stands) and looking into the XP mode emulation for anything that I've got that has problems with Windows 7. It's a shame to hear that the Windows version of Dungeon Keeper doesn't run well on 7 as I still have that game. Funny to hear some of the youngsters on here talking about operating systems that are ten years old as though they are ancient.. I still have original DOS 6 floppy disks, but no actual floppy drive! Anyhow, back on topic....

Some people here have mentioned 64 bit for Windows 7, which now leaves me wondering, if the 64 bit version would cause problems with 32 bit games for games that would prefer to run an older 32 bit OS? Would gamers pick the 32 bit version or the 64 bit?

[Jen Smith]

Some people here have mentioned 64 bit for Windows 7, which now leaves me wondering, if the 64 bit version would cause problems with 32 bit games for games that would prefer to run an older 32 bit OS? Would gamers pick the 32 bit version or the 64 bit?

Personally, depends on "other uses". If this is primarily a gaming machine, I'd probably go x86 just for maximum compatibility. Most games run just fine under x64, but there's a couple that have problems. Extremely old games are out of the question without a virtual machine as x64 cannot run 16 bit code, although VirtualBox for example runs old games very well, complete with hardware Direct3D. Performance differences are plus or minus, and usually pretty minimal at that. Drivers can be an issue for older systems, but since this is a new build, this shouldn't be a problem. You're limited to 4GB memory, but for a gaming only machine this typically is a non-issue.

Now if you're going to be doing a lot of other things with the machine as well, then I'd definitely give x64 a closer look. There's a few x64 games, but a lot more x64 applications are out there (some x64 only, the latest Adobe Premiere for example), plus your maximum memory is significantly higher than x86. My one development system for example typically has Visual Studio 2010 Enterprise, a virtual machine or two, an X server plus a few sessions, a browser, Guild Wars for waiting out a long build, and a bunch of other support apps running at the same time.. I wouldn't want to try that with under 8GB memory. Painful.

[kingius]

Personally, depends on "other uses". If this is primarily a gaming machine, I'd probably go x86 just for maximum compatibility. Most games run just fine under x64, but there's a couple that have problems. Extremely old games are out of the question without a virtual machine as x64 cannot run 16 bit code, although VirtualBox for example runs old games very well, complete with hardware Direct3D. Performance differences are plus or minus, and usually pretty minimal at that. Drivers can be an issue for older systems, but since this is a new build, this shouldn't be a problem. You're limited to 4GB memory, but for a gaming only machine this typically is a non-issue.

Now if you're going to be doing a lot of other things with the machine as well, then I'd definitely give x64 a closer look. There's a few x64 games, but a lot more x64 applications are out there (some x64 only, the latest Adobe Premiere for example), plus your maximum memory is significantly higher than x86. My one development system for example typically has Visual Studio 2010 Enterprise, a virtual machine or two, an X server plus a few sessions, a browser, Guild Wars for waiting out a long build, and a bunch of other support apps running at the same time.. I wouldn't want to try that with under 8GB memory. Painful.

Interesting and still leaves me a little conflicted. While at work, I use Visual Studio 2008, I don't generally require anything like this for development at home, preferring to develop games in Director MX 2004 in my spare time and use Eclipse + FDT for any Actionscript and Flash work. For HTML and .Net, web based work, I'll use anything while at home, including notepad + FTP. Visual Studio is a terrific IDE, I've been using it since Visual Interdev was around for classic ASP. Many cores on a gaming machine could be useful the little 3D rendering I do from Daz Studio and Cinema 4D for games that I make at home. Perhaps x64 is the way to go, but I probably wouldn't dual boot x64 Windows 7 with 32 bit Windows 7 for games compatibility; if I was going to dual boot it would actually be with XP I think. I'm still thinking of the machine as primarily for gaming but you've hit on something with this: it would far outperform what I currently have and I bet I'd end up using it for anything that takes time (like compiling code, as you've mentioned).

[Jen Smith]

Many cores on a gaming machine could be useful the little 3D rendering I do from Daz Studio and Cinema 4D for games that I make at home. Perhaps x64 is the way to go, but I probably wouldn't dual boot x64 Windows 7 with 32 bit Windows 7 for games compatibility; if I was going to dual boot it would actually be with XP I think. I'm still thinking of the machine as primarily for gaming but you've hit on something with this: it would far outperform what I currently have and I bet I'd end up using it for anything that takes time (like compiling code, as you've mentioned).

For that sort of thing, yea you'd be better off with x64. Both Daz Studio and Cinema 4D have x64 builds, that's the sort of application that would really benefit from it, and as you say, there's always a dual-boot scenario for any troublemakers. You might not even need/use it, the number of games that have problems under x64 is pretty small, minus the dinosaurs of course, and they can run in a VM usually perfectly. (DOSBox or VirtualBox.) I only mentioned x86 for pure compatibility as a primary gaming machine, if you're doing multimedia work as well, x64 is a much better choice. Just don't go cheap with the memory.. x64 with 2GB is just silly. ;)

[Ve7878]

I've been using x64 versions of Windows since Vista came out and what I've done recently for older games is set up an XP Virtual Machine in VMWare. VMWare does 3D accelerated stuff really good so it should be good enough for for the games which you want to play which 7 won't run, Midnight Club 2 for example which Steam says won't run properly on 7 works great on XP running under VMWare player.

[Skyfrog]

Modern Gaming - RCA Studio II or Xbox 360?

[togerland]

I'd go with 32bit nothing uses 4gb

[The King of GnG]

Well, for my next format I plan to setup at least four primary partitions on the HDD, one for MS-DOS 6.22 and three for Windows NT-class systems (XP, Vista, 7). I'd even like to try and install Windows 98-ME on my laptop via hacks/modifications, just to be sure to get all the PC gaming of the past, present and future on a single machine :D

[John S. Veteran]