Gaming experiences on Windows 7


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My i7 machine has been running Vista 64bit for a while, and a hard drive failure has caused me to replace the drive and rethink which OS to use for gaming. I already use Win7 on other machines, but I wanted to see people's reactions when it comes to gaming.

How do your modern games run? Crysis, Far Cry2, BF2, COD4, etc?

Any issues? Punkbuster? Ventrillo? Teamspeak?

Please write about your experiences.

Thanks!

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I've had no problems with gaming at all with Windows 7. I play Crisis, LFD, BF2 and WOW I use both TS and Vent and no problems...

However, this is based on MY hardware.

From the reading up I've seen, If you PC runs Vista well you should be fine with Windows 7

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Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2 and COD4 work perfectly, perhaps even slightly better. I tried installing BF2 and the latest beta patch but it wouldn't even load, though that could be because of the patch. SlamIt Pinball requires administrator access to run smoothly and OpenGL games clash with the Steam overlay, causing Quake 3 to be unplayable and causing the overlay to corrupt on Doom 3 and Prey. Punkbuster works fine. Here are some other games I've tried that run fine (definition: as good as Vista):

Assassin's Creed

And Yet It Moves

Bejewelled Twist

Bioshock

Braid

Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway

Call Of Duty: World At War

Civilization 4: Beyond The Sword

Defense Grid

GRID

GTAIV (though it's still a poorly ported game)

Gumboy Tournament

King's Bounty: The Legend

Left 4 Dead

Plants Vs Zombies

STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl

STALKER: Clear SkyTeam Fortress 2

The Maw

Tomb Raider: Underworld

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War II

And many, many more. Overall compatibility is very good. I've had more serious issues with some of my more important software (East West PLAY, iLok) - some of which have required elaborate work arounds, some worked by simply adding another entry to the NTFS file permissions with full access and others I haven't got around.

As a gaming platform Windows 7 is actually very good and overall responsiveness is much better than Vista - alt-tabbing out of games works better, for instance.

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i havent run into any problems under these games, been running win7 since build7000

crysis warhead/wars

far cry 2

sins of a solar empire entrenchment

warhammer online

WoW

everything runs great... win7 as main OS FTW!!

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Cool, I wouldn't expect my hardware to be a problem as well, but I was really concerned about the reliabilities for multiplayer. I read a lot of crap where punkbuster would kick people.

So for you all who play BF2 and Far Cry2, do you play multiplayer? I only highlighted those, because I know they use punkbuster. Do you get kicked frequently because of punkbuster, where you didn't when you had Vista?

I am glad to hear Ventrillo is golden.

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Runs CoD: WaW beautiful

Vent: No major problems so far

some issues with HL2 Engine games and steam in general

WoW lst night gave me a " Not Enough Space " error ( 1TB HDD with 90%free, and 6GB memory, go figgure)

other then that not havng any other issues, verry stable so far

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Cool, I wouldn't expect my hardware to be a problem as well, but I was really concerned about the reliabilities for multiplayer. I read a lot of crap where punkbuster would kick people.

So for you all who play BF2 and Far Cry2, do you play multiplayer? I only highlighted those, because I know they use punkbuster. Do you get kicked frequently because of punkbuster, where you didn't when you had Vista?

Punkbuster is pretty crappy at the best of times. I have huge problems getting into online games with FC2 because of it and yet it works fine with Call Of Duty: World At War. Then again I had the same problems with Vista64, so it's not Windows 7 specific. Punkbuster should be nuked from orbit, as it certainly isn't fit for purpose. I'm certain it has kicked more legitimate users than cheaters.

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Warcraft 3 is blazing fast...when I first open the game it takes too long to load but after that it loads very fast and the games is not chappy than I played it on vista or xp

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Punkbuster should be nuked from orbit, as it certainly isn't fit for purpose. I'm certain it has kicked more legitimate users than cheaters.

+1

I think I have Punkbuster and COD4 working properly now. Following a tip I read somewhere I reinstalled PB using pbsvc.exe and pbsetup.exe in XP compatibility mode and set the COD4 MP exe to XP compatibility too. Played on a half dozen servers and no kicks. 7100 x64 here.

I'm getting some artifacts in FC2 with DX10 enabled, but nothing major. In DX9 mode they're gone. Can't compare to Vista though as I came from XP.

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I had to manually update Punkbuster via the Punkbuster site as it kept disconnecting me after a few seconds in BF2. After I updated it everything was fine.

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OK well you guys make it sound pretty good. I'm going to give it a go tonight. I really only play Multiplayer on BF2 and FC2 nowadays, so I just hope I can get away from any punkbuster issues.... Yes Punkbuster needs to radically change man....it really sucks from experience and from what people say..

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Windows 7 has run every single game I've thrown at it. Basically, 'Run as Administrator' is your best Vista/7 gaming buddy. It pretty much solves everything outside of needing an emulator like DOSBox or some type of digitally signed bit. (which can be circumvented :D )

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All of the CoD games work perfectly, as does Bioshock. Some occasional framerate spikes in Fakefactory's Cinematic Mod 9.5 with HD addon, but I believe that is related to the way the mod is overstressing the source engine rather than a 7 issue. IMO 7 is a pretty viable gaming platform.

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I've been using the latest WHQL Nvidia drivers for 7. But I hear some people say it's better to use the Vista x64 ones instead. I'd lose WDDM 1.1 but is that such a big deal? Are the Vista drivers faster than the 7 ones? Running a 512MB 8800GT.

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I was running the windows 7 185.85 from their website, and I ran into a few occasional " The driver has failed, but it was recovered" messages. I was just on the windows desktop though, I was not playing any games.

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Ok well a small update, BF2 ran fine after updating punkbuster. However, I can't get into multiplayer games in FarCry 2, using Win7. It won't let me download new maps. Must be a firewall issue?

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...anyone tried,

WinQuake?

Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition (OGL 1st, D3d 2nd)?

Red Faction 1?

Grand Theft Auto II: London?

System Shock 2?

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I have been running Windows 7 64bit since the beta.

I have over 200 games on Steam, another 20 retail. Almost every new game that has come out in the past 3 years as well.

Those 200 plus games, I have had at least 100 of them installed, these include new game and even old games like Quake 2.

I have no issues at all, except for one game. For what ever reason (does not seem to be driver related) Fallout 3 loves to crash on me. But 1 out of 200 games, thats pretty good.

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I've found Windows 7 to play all my games better than any previous OS from Microsoft. GTA IV has seen the most significant performance increase for me. I can bump the detail settins all the way, and increase the distance settings higher than Vista and have the same framerates.

Civ IV...well it doesn't have high requirements anyway but it works flawlessly. C&C series works well too.

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I would pop Vista in the nearest bin and switch to Win7! ;)

I've had no problems with it at all, and neither have a few of my friends that have been gaming with it. (Y)

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I think I should have started a second thread. One that is related to playing games in general, and the other which is playing multiplayer.

Anyone here playing Far Cry 2 Multiplayer on Win7? Can you download the maps?

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every game I have tried has been running great for me. No problems with all listed above.

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