win8 Win 8 RTM gaming performance

[Excelsis]

Got around to installing the RTM and decited to add my two cents to this; I have 2500k, 8Gigs of RAM and a 4890 and overall I get more or less the same performance except in BF3 where it's noticeably worse than in Windows 7.

Where I'd get about 60 frames per second in 7, it drops down easily to 40 in 8. I play on low/med settings at 1280x800.

I had the same experience in the RP and was hoping to see some improvement but it's the same.

Probably due to the fact AMD decided to drop continuous support for series 4000 and under. Shame since my 4890 can still hold its own in new games.

[Mannlich]

Using these on Win 8 Enterprise x64 with 7970s and 7870. Great performance so far. These were just released today.

Build info:

DriverVer=07/27/2012, 8.982.0.0000

8.982-120727a-144945C-ATI

Catalyst: 12.8

CCC: 2012.0806.1213.19931

D3D: 9.14.10.0924

OGL: 6.14.10.11762

OCL: 10.0.938.2

Sign date: August 11 (Microsoft WHQL)

AMD Catalyst 12.8 Win 8 | Win 7 | Vista (64-bit):

http://www2.ati.com/...8_64_dd_ccc.exe

AMD Catalyst 12.8 Win 8 | Win 7 | Vista (32-bit):

http://www2.ati.com/...8_32_dd_ccc.exe

AMD Catalyst Mobility 12.8 Win 8 | Win 7 | Vista (64-bit):

http://www2.ati.com/...8_64_dd_ccc.exe

AMD Catalyst Mobility 12.8 Win 8 | Win 7 | Vista (32-bit):

http://www2.ati.com/...8_32_dd_ccc.exe

[BeerFan]

I'm currently installing Battlefield 1942 (yes, incredibly old school) just to see if it runs. The more I use this OS, the less I like it.

[Excelsis]

Using these on Win 8 Enterprise x64 with 7970s and 7870. Great performance so far. These were just released today.

Gonna assume you were talking to me. As I said, AMD isn't going to support legacy cards, which the 4000 now falls into since a couple of months, the latest stable release for my card is 12.4, which worked fine in Win8 but didn't help with the performance issue.

Same with the 12.6 Legacy beta drivers.

I'm guessing the issue is related to DWM which can't be turned off, as another I play (Osu!) as input lag- exactly the same way as when I play in windowed mode with DWM enabled.

It's not AMD's fault though; it's just how Microsoft decided to do things with Windows 8. Not gonna blame them either, my card is several years old, it doesn't affect anything else, only high end games (and Osu! for some reason...).

[ArialBlue]

Will probably upgrade one of my PCs when AMD will, if ever, get better "legacy" drivers via WU out.

[d1glow]

well im running on 12.8 Catalyst Driver and it is soo smooth on battlefield 3 (48-52fps Consistent) 1680x1050 all high motion blur off, Counter-strike Source I get around 250fps consistent starcraft 2 120fps all high settings 1920x1200 runs so amazin no rendering lag I load before everyone on a 4v4 match just cause 2 max settings 60fps with vsync on and that's all I have tested the best about the OS is no frame rate spikes constant smooth rendering of graphics and boot times on applications such as origin, steam, battlefield and other games load nearly instantly

Im running:

AMD 1100T x6 3.3Ghz

ATi 5750 1GB GDDR5

8GB of ram

and a normal HDD 1TB

im really impressed with this OS only little downfall is file transfers but that's okay cause it scans you're files for viruses before saving

[ObiWanToby]

The more I use Windows 8, the more I like it. My games all seem to be working quite well.

[George P Global Moderator]

Performance problems could be, and probably are a cause of the change in WDDM. If I remember correctly, Windows 8 uses a newer WDDM version, 1.2, compared to v1.1 in Windows 7. The, probably minor, changes they've done are what's messing with older drivers. This sucks for older 4000 card owners on the AMD side, but, guys, if you can upgrade it's worth it. I upgraded from a 4770 to a 5770 last year. I'll upgrade again to whatever the newest AMD card is after I do some other upgrades to this PC and finally install Win8 RTM on it.

[Dashel]

I've seen zero performance gains and several net losses, I'll chalk that up to drivers for now. I'm just not seeing this 'radical' performance jump compared to Win7, in anything but boot times. I'm suspect of anyone that says they can perceive a 5-10% gain unless their hardware is already borderline.

[kachimasu]

Little report about running the newest games on Windows 8:

FIFA 13: Doesn't run smooth, gets random lags. (The game runs perfect on Windows 7)

PES 13: The same problem as the FIFA 13, but a little bit smaller lags. (Runs perfect on Windows 7)

F1 2012: FPS drop. The car is getting to vibrate, when you're close with the other cars. (No problems on Windows 7)

Av. FPS = 58.8, Min. FPS = 53.3, Samples = 8615 (Windows 7)

Av. FPS = 57.1, Min. FPS = 46.9, Samples = 8372 (Windows 8)

I was readed some good benchmarks of windows 8 vs windows 7 gaming performance, but in my pc is not the same story.

Maybe, the fix for this problem is to wait for a new version of NVIDIA drivers.

[Max Norris]

I was readed some good benchmarks of windows 8 vs windows 7 gaming performance, but in my pc is not the same story.

Probably just boils down to drivers. I've seen similar benchmarks.. on my hardware anyway (AMD), gaming has been consistently more or less identical to 7, and when there is a difference its pretty minor at best, plus or minus a couple FPS. Where I do notice a nice improvement though is load times, be it booting the OS or just applications in general, just seems a bit quicker there across the board especially when it comes to large applications like Visual Studio 2012 and whatnot. A cold start of a fully loaded VS2012 install with big addons like CodeRush and the like starts up a fair bit faster under 8 than 7.

[kachimasu]

Probably just boils down to drivers. I've seen similar benchmarks.. on my hardware anyway (AMD), gaming has been consistently more or less identical to 7, and when there is a difference its pretty minor at best, plus or minus a couple FPS. Where I do notice a nice improvement though is load times, be it booting the OS or just applications in general, just seems a bit quicker there across the board especially when it comes to large applications like Visual Studio 2012 and whatnot. A cold start of a fully loaded VS2012 install with big addons like CodeRush and the like starts up a fair bit faster under 8 than 7.

I agree with you.

What version of nvidia drivers do you suggest to install? :)

[+DKAngel Subscriber²]

nvidia drivers blow at the moment, but hey its not out to the public yet where as the windows 7 driver has matured over the last 3 years , win8 drivers are still a baby

[f0rk_b0mb]

I noticed Skyrim and Crysis is a tad smoother on Windows 8 when I had it installed. It wasn't by much, but it will get fixed and improved in the future when better drivers get made.

[Max Norris]

I agree with you. What version of nvidia drivers do you suggest to install? :)

Most of my systems are running AMD cards sorry, I'd just be guessing. The couple that do have nVidia hardware are running 7 or BSD. I'm sure somebody can chime in with a good suggestion though.

[AngelGraves13]

Windows 8 is smoother for me on Skyrim. I'm able to play with Ultra shadows whereas Windows 7 should stutter for the first 15 secs after a level load.

Other games...can't tell. More or less the same.