Gaming on Win8 DP/CP

[The_Observer]

ATI Radeon HD 4850 owner, and I can't even play Unreal Tournament '99 because I lack proper drivers - tried with both WU and dedicated WIn7 drivers from the AMD website, every game I tried so far crashed on me in one way or another.

And apparently the Win8 CP AMD drivers are dedicated towards HD 5xxx onwards... I've installed them and still nothing works.

yea thats about right. you need a HD 5xxx and above to use those drivers. Guess its upgrade or reinstall time.

[NiGhtPiSH]

Tried StarCraft II and it ran a little bit smoother (+1 or 2 FPS) as normally on Windows 7 SP1 x86. (My laptop's not packing a punch at all)

[Descartes]

yea thats about right. you need a HD 5xxx and above to use those drivers. Guess its upgrade or reinstall time.

I'm not that determined to use the CP now, so I'm just going back to Windows 7. I just hope that I'll get proper drivers by the time Windows 8 goes gold.

[marc2003]

I remember having Punkbuster driver issues on the DP. Then again those might've been fixed in the meantime.

i've got punkbuster installed with the steam version of crysis (original) and it works fine.

i've also tested GTA4 and i can't sign into live -it just crashes to desktop. if i bypass it with xliveless, then the game itself works fine. and if anything, it seems a bit smoother.

[c3ntury]

Anyone fancy doing a Fraps test or a blind one so we know these aren't just placebos? ;)

[marc2003]

that's why i used the word seems. it could well be placebo but i have no way of testing since i nuked my windows 7 install.

edit: i've just been browsing some old backups and i've found a benchmark log for GTA4 that i took awhile ago. i'll do a bench on windows 8 in a bit and report back.

edit2: it's basically the same - less than 1 FPS in it.

[notuptome2004]

i've got punkbuster installed with the steam version of crysis (original) and it works fine.

i've also tested GTA4 and i can't sign into live -it just crashes to desktop. if i bypass it with xliveless, then the game itself works fine. and if anything, it seems a bit smoother.

GTA 4 with live works for me but course i did a upgrade option from windows 7 so everything just works without issues

my system is a 2600k with GTX 470 running windows 8 drivers 64bit this is the games i have tested i own and run and have instaled right now

GTA 4 8FPS more then windows 7

Alan Wake 7 to 12 FPS more

Rage same

Skyrim 6FPS more

Crysis Same

crysis 2 10 FPS more

LA Noire 4FPs more then windows 7

Farcry 2 7FPS more then windows 7

[Aergan]

Hardware: Dell XPS 1702X (Intel i7 2670QM, Nvidia GT555M Optimus / Intel HD 3000, 6GB RAM)

Games tried

Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY (Steam) - Requires manual GFWL update (Supplied version for game fails) and Windows Update for the Visual C++ redistributables to be patched to the latest versions.

Flatout 2 (Steam) - No issues

Portal (Steam) - No issues, Nvidia Optimus working ok.

Portal 2 (Steam) - No issues, Nvidia Optimus working ok.

Flatout Ultimate Carnage (Steam) - Unable to detect Nvidia GT 555M, fails unless running on LCD display only and can't use Nvidia hardware - probably Intel driver related.

Red Faction - Unable to select items on the main menu via keyboard or mouse, therefore, unplayable.

Sonic Generations (Steam) - Not picking up Nvidia GT 555M, only Intel HD 3000 (Requires updated Intel HD driver which can't install on Windows 8 as it's been signed / hard written not to).

Emulators Tried

Fusion - No issues, works same as on Windows 7, perfect.

ePSXe - Some plugin issues for sound, requires some version changes to get it to cope with the Windows 8 audio stack.

PCSX2 - No issues found so far

ZSNES - Some mouse tracking issues but emulation is still perfect.

[Muhammad Farrukh]

Original Mass Effect isn't working :(

[migo]

I just upgraded from 2GB to 8GB of RAM, and went from 32-bit to 64-bit, so it's really not a fair comparison, but Mirror's Edge runs great at 1280x800 with Medium Detail and Textures, 4X-AA and PhysX. (2nd Gen Core 2 Duo @ 2GHz, GeForce 9400M, DDR3 RAM). It's certainly no worse than 7.

[migo]

Never mind, system heated up and froze a while later. That's going to be rather annoying until all the drivers work properly.

[Aergan]

The latest Nvidia 296.17 drivers have resolved any gaming issues for me now (Sonic Generations, FlatOut Ultimate Carnage, etc).

It's all good now.

[Wyn6]

Original Mass Effect isn't working :(

Playing the original Mass Effect on 8 now. Well, not now now. I got the original Dragon Age disk in now. Two year old hardware except my Mobo which is a year old.

System is:

MoBo - AS Rock 890 GFX Extreme 4

CPU - AMD Phenom II 820 X4 - OC'd to 3.2ghz

GPU - Radeon 4870

12 gigs of Gskill Ripjaw DDR3 1600

What are your system specs?

[Denis W. Veteran]

Hoping there is some way to force WinRT games to use the Nvidia GPU. For now they run on the Intel chip and thus perform poorly (the Pinball game is an example).

edit: now it doesn't if I install the Intel drivers provided by Alienware. Still would like an Optimus option though.

[Muhammad Farrukh]

Wyn6, I have played almost all of the games on my PC, including Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, but Mass Effect isn't working.

And my PC is older than yours. You don't wanna know the specs :cry:

I only once logged into 7, just to check if actually there was a problem with Mass Effect, but it played perfectly

[migo]

The latest Nvidia 296.17 drivers have resolved any gaming issues for me now (Sonic Generations, FlatOut Ultimate Carnage, etc).

It's all good now.

Time to see if they resolve my general crash issues too.

Hoping there is some way to force WinRT games to use the Nvidia GPU. For now they run on the Intel chip and thus perform poorly (the Pinball game is an example).

edit: now it doesn't if I install the Intel drivers provided by Alienware. Still would like an Optimus option though.

Not surprised that Optimus is one of the things not working in the CP.

[spaceelf]

Personally I only have a few games refusing to run full screen. One (Saints Row 3) won't open at all.

(6870)

But when they do run, they run smoother. I'm fairly impressed overall.

[spaceelf]

Forgot to mention I had to put Sims 3 in win7 compatibility mode, heh

[Denis W. Veteran]

Not surprised that Optimus is one of the things not working in the CP.

Optimus does work; I confirmed this by forcing Chrome to run on the Nvidia GPU, and opening a WebGL demo. (IE10, on the other hand, refuses to run on the Nvidia GPU.) My request is somehow getting Optimus to work for all Metro apps, if possible. Currently you can't change the DWM to run on the Nvidia chip. However, it might be possible to force it for the process that hosts Metro apps?

[Eric Veteran]

Original Mass Effect isn't working :(

If you've got the Steam version, right-click on the game in the Steam client, select Properties>Local Files and verify the game cache. It worked for me.

EDIT: Many Steam games can be fixed in this manner, especially if you copied your game install folder from your old Windows install. Some, of course, are not going to be compatible. (Haven't found any yet though!)

[Muhammad Farrukh]

Thanks a bunch GreyWolf. It worked (Y)

[Jojo81]

Low resource games run without issues (Cave Story, Minecraft, Terraria, etc.), and Lineage II runs at a higher framerate than it did before. Same thing for Aion and other high-resource games. Also, for any gpu driver issues, simply install the appropriate Windows 7 version of the driver.

I was excited after reading this but Aion runs like crap for me in comparison to Win 7, any time there is action on the screen the fps dips way down and almost makes pvp unplayable.

[Jojo81]

I was excited after reading this but Aion runs like crap for me in comparison to Win 7, any time there is action on the screen the fps dips way down and almost makes pvp unplayable.

lol actually the new Nvidia driver fixes everything, performance feels pretty much identical to on Win 7 now. I found it earlier right after posting.

[Jub]

An interesting read for those interested in gaming on Windows 8: http://benchmark3d.com/amd-catalyst-8-93-7-windows-8-benchmark/4

That said, I haven't tried myself yet, but judging from that article it looks like we should stick to Windows 7 drivers for now.

[satukoro]

I was excited after reading this but Aion runs like crap for me in comparison to Win 7, any time there is action on the screen the fps dips way down and almost makes pvp unplayable.

What kind of graphics card do you have? If it's an intel graphics card, Windows 8 auto installs a basic driver, but it isn't the right one. I ended up modifying the Win7 x64 GMA 4500mhd driver and installing that. I'm getting a ~+10 fps boost over Windows 7 in most of the games I play.