Windows 8 & gaming: yes or no?

By kiddingguy
in Microsoft (Windows)

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kiddingguy

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Several sites mention there is practically no difference in gaming experience between Windows 7 and Windows 8.

My question to you guys is: is there a difference? noticeable? and is it preferable to upgrade for gaming-sake?

(and not for better performance and memory management, boot time increases etc already in Windows 8)

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https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1125612-windows-8-gaming-yes-or-no/
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Grand Master

Brandon H Supervisor

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IIRC DX11.1 is only available for windows 8?

game devs have hardly started touching directx 11 and have just began taking real advantage of directx 10

directx 11.1 i wouldn't really say is a selling point at this point in time

Grand Master

Brandon H Supervisor

Posted
  • Supervisor
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Crysis 3 !

crysis has always been about trying to push the boundaries though

most other AAA titles are still using directx 9 as the base and adding in a little directx 10/11 as an afterthought

some companies are starting to announce they're gonna drop directx 9 support soon though thankfully

Grand Master

spaceelf

Posted
Posted

crysis has always been about trying to push the boundaries though

most other AAA titles are still using directx 9 as the base and adding in a little directx 10/11 as an afterthought

some companies are starting to announce they're gonna drop directx 9 support soon though thankfully

They already did. Even Activision finally released one without dx9.

ZeniMaxx is the only major one left that I can tell still releasing dx9 games.

Several sites mention there is practically no difference in gaming experience between Windows 7 and Windows 8.

My question to you guys is: is there a difference? noticeable? and is it preferable to upgrade for gaming-sake?

(and not for better performance and memory management, boot time increases etc already in Windows 8)

Load times do seem improved for gaming in W8, but performance on a same app basis won't be much different.

Grand Master

Max Norris

Posted
Posted

For my hardware, it feels like stuff does load a tad faster, could be placebo, never actually timed it. FPS wise, it's pretty much the same, plus or minus a couple depending on the program. Haven't run into anything that doesn't work. Pretty much the only noticeable difference is how stuff is launched, after that, nada.

Grand Master

Yusuf M. Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
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The only difference for gaming is full support for DirectX11.1. Some features will be made available for Windows 7 with a platform update (see here). At the moment, no games support it so it isn't worth upgrading to Windows 8 only for DX11.1.

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Mystic Mungis

Posted
Posted

I've had 8 installed on my desktop since the Dev Preview, as expected it was a little bit buggy then but ever since the Consumer Preview I've noticed no difference at all. Was playing Guild Wars 2 on my friends desktop running 7 and thought it looked a little less smooth but to be honest that could just have been in my head so I'd just go with whatever OS you preferred.

Grand Master

PGHammer

Posted
Posted

The only difference for gaming is full support for DirectX11.1. Some features will be made available for Windows 7 with a platform update (see here). At the moment, no games support it so it isn't worth upgrading to Windows 8 only for DX11.1.

I have one MAJOR reason that I prefer Windows 8 over any other Windows for non-browser-based gaming - and it's not DirectX versions or frame rates.

It's called (amazingly) stability.

Games simply crash less (far less) on Windows 8 than on earlier versions of Windows - even games that predate Windows 8 by several years.

Okay - why is browser-based gaming the exception? Easily explained; for some reason, Adobe Flash has issues with desktop flavors of Windows (regardless of browser) when it comes to stability. For browser-based gaming, the best Windows IMHO is (egads) *Windows Server 2012*.

Grand Master

spaceelf

Posted
Posted

http://techreport.co...le-in-windows-8

On the off chance all you want is a quote

Trouble is, that doesn't really matter. A moral victory in the borderline-meaningless FPS sweeps doesn't overcome the fact that the Radeon HD 7950 has a persistent problem with high-latency frames across a range of test scenarios based on the latest games. The 99th-percentile frame times reflect that reality. Our latest round of tests shows that Windows 8 is not the problem. On the contrary, Windows 8 generally improves the latency picture somewhat.

Except in AC3, 8 offers smoother gameplay for the 7950 in pretty much everything they tested.

Grand Master

n_K

Posted
Posted

Games simply crash less (far less) on Windows 8 than on earlier versions of Windows - even games that predate Windows 8 by several years.

Eh? Been a long time since I used windows but back when I did (xp/7) I never really remember many game crashes at all.

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