Originally posted by Cleffy

Originally posted by BizkitNL

Originally posted by Cleffy

I think Windows 8 will be a better pick once you get acclamated to it and make adjustments to some of the worse features of it like how it handles programs started from the Modern UI, and the traditional desktop.

Windows 8 will be faster then Windows 7 and cheaper.  So if you care about performance then Windows 8 is what you want.

Bold statements. Care to back those up with facts?

http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3412/4/gaming-in-windows-8-vs-windows-7-whats-the-difference-in-performance-conclusion

Average of 1% performance difference in favor of Windows 8.  Some modern games run substantially better on Windows 8.

In that article, if you'd remove both the highest result in favor of Win 8 and the highest result in favor of Win 7 as measurement errors, you'd end up with opposite result and Win 7 would be about 1% faster. The writer of the article understood it, and wrote that 1% difference off as measurement error, stating that speed is the same.

I hated windows 8 for an hour, after I got used to it I love it more than Windows 7. It really is a matter of adapting to change, better get used it.

Those saying it isn't meant for desktops rely on mouse and sight to navigate thru the OS anyways.. if you're good with a keyboard and remember keystrokes then you'll be fine with windows 8.

For at least the next 6 months i wouldnt recommend Win 8 to anyone. While most things work not everything will. Even after that period i wouldnt bother with it and wait for 9.
There are a few nice features in 8 like the new task manager but all in all it is not something designed for desktops or even most laptops. The metro part is just horrible and a step back as far as PC OS interfaces are concerned.

Whoops linked to the article that didn't explain what happened in Crisis 2.  In Crisis 2, you can't turn off the VSync in Windows 8.  So the natural result is your fps will be around 60.  On the other hand games like Batman Arcum Asylum and Civilization V that more heavily use newer features in DirectX 11 show a substantial improvement mainly due to the adjustments made in how Windows 8 handles the new instructions.

Now the OP asked for the best performing OS in games.  To me the one that scores better even by 1% is the better performing OS.  Even outside of games it reacts faster.

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Originally posted by Cleffy
Whoops linked to the article that didn't explain what happened in Crisis 2.  In Crisis 2, you can't turn off the VSync in Windows 8.  So the natural result is your fps will be around 60.  On the other hand games like Batman Arcum Asylum and Civilization V that more heavily use newer features in DirectX 11 show a substantial improvement mainly due to the adjustments made in how Windows 8 handles the new instructions.

Now the OP asked for the best performing OS in games.  To me the one that scores better even by 1% is the better performing OS.  Even outside of games it reacts faster.

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No, you have a few outlier games. There are several DX11 titles that did not show any "Substantial Improvement", and in fact, were slower in Win8 by more than 1% - such as 3dMark, Heaven Benchmark, and Max Payne (depending on which video card you look at). And the Vsync bug in Crysis... I doubt - an Average framerate of 64 doesn't indicate to me that Vsync is stuck, just that the particular title is an outlier. They don't say anything about Vsync in the article that I could find.

There are no major changes in DirectX 11 in Win8, aside from the inclusion of 11.1 (which is what Microsoft touts as part of it's great graphics overhaul in Win8, along with a lot of hardware level improvements to graphics for Metro apps, which most games won't use).

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2011088/pc-gaming-performance-on-windows-8-a-hard-data-analysis.html?page=2

There is a difference between using a feature and saying you are using a feature.  Some games like Crytek, Metro 2033, and Dirt 3 are used to tought the technology but make poor use of optimizations, threading, and proper usage of a feature.  Games like Shogun, and Civilization 5 that are well threaded strategy games see major benefits from Windows 8.  It is not just a coincidence.  It is one of the things Microsoft worked on with Windows 8 in thread scheduling.  Ontop of this Civ was re-optimized for a Windows 8 scenario so its actually making use of the benefits of the OS.  Microsoft did make efforts at the kernel level to increase the performance on Windows 8, and some of those effects can be seen in how games handle simple DirectX11 functions.  The real thing to note is that alot of engine developers are still living in 2006.  They still have not focused out of developing DirectX9 games due to the longevity of the current console generation.  That will change this year with the addition of the new XBox, and Playstation.

This is why if you want a better performing OS for games it will be Windows 8.  Sure its benefits on current gen gains are within the margin of error.  On older games it performs worse.  But in upcoming games it will perform better.  I think the real thing to think about is what OS will get you to reaching 60 fps.  If its an old game poorly optimized for threading and using DirectX9, it will perform worse but you are already at 60 fps.  In a current gen game that makes poor use of DirectX11 features because its also targeting WinXP machines and old consoles, it will see a benefit within the margin of error and still hit 60 fps.  In an upcoming game that may not support DirectX 9 and is written with next gen consoles in mind, it will stand a greater chance at getting to 60 fps then Windows 7.

Originally posted by avalon1000
Recently upgraded my computer and chose Win7 (OEM version). After reading several posts from people who had tried Win8 I decided to stick with tried and true (not to mention every other OS Microsoft puts out has been less than desirable).

Do you mean every other literally?  As in?

WinXP = Good

Vista = Bad

Win7 = Good

Win8 = Bad

Win9 = Good?

Originally posted by Cleffy

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2011088/pc-gaming-performance-on-windows-8-a-hard-data-analysis.html?page=2

 

There is a difference between using a feature and saying you are using a feature.  Some games like Crytek, Metro 2033, and Dirt 3 are used to tought the technology but make poor use of optimizations, threading, and proper usage of a feature.  Games like Shogun, and Civilization 5 that are well threaded strategy games see major benefits from Windows 8.  It is not just a coincidence.  It is one of the things Microsoft worked on with Windows 8 in thread scheduling.  Ontop of this Civ was re-optimized for a Windows 8 scenario so its actually making use of the benefits of the OS.  Microsoft did make efforts at the kernel level to increase the performance on Windows 8, and some of those effects can be seen in how games handle simple DirectX11 functions.  The real thing to note is that alot of engine developers are still living in 2006.  They still have not focused out of developing DirectX9 games due to the longevity of the current console generation.  That will change this year with the addition of the new XBox, and Playstation.

This is why if you want a better performing OS for games it will be Windows 8.  Sure its benefits on current gen gains are within the margin of error.  On older games it performs worse.  But in upcoming games it will perform better.  I think the real thing to think about is what OS will get you to reaching 60 fps.  If its an old game poorly optimized for threading and using DirectX9, it will perform worse but you are already at 60 fps.  In a current gen game that makes poor use of DirectX11 features because its also targeting WinXP machines and old consoles, it will see a benefit within the margin of error and still hit 60 fps.  In an upcoming game that may not support DirectX 9 and is written with next gen consoles in mind, it will stand a greater chance at getting to 60 fps then Windows 7.

Apart from figuring out not to schedule a rendering thread while it is waiting on the video card (which might be impractical to do, anyway), I don't think there is much to be had in the way of thread scheduling gains as compared to Windows 7, at least on a desktop.  On a tablet, the Windows 8 thread scheduling changes will allow cores to power down more of the time, by bunching commands together so that it will be power up, do a bunch of things at once, and then power down.  Windows 7 will make a core power up, do one thing, power down, power up again, do another thing, power down again, and so forth.  That could save you a fraction of a watt in power consumption without meaningfully affecting performance.  That's great in a tablet, but meaningless in a desktop.

At least in Windows 7, Civilization 5 suffered from an acute case of badly-coded syndrome, possibly due to being the first (and possibly still only) game to make use of DirectX 11 multithreaded rendering.  I'm not sure if that's the fault of Firaxis, Microsoft, AMD and Nvidia, or some combination of them.  Regardless, multithreaded rendering is a dumb idea if you're trying to make your game playable on a mid-range video card and a quad core processor, let alone lower end hardware.  Several years from now, it might be a big deal, but not yet.

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Originally posted by Cleffy
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2011088/pc-gaming-performance-on-windows-8-a-hard-data-analysis.html?page=2

 

There is a difference between using a feature and saying you are using a feature.  Some games like Crytek, Metro 2033, and Dirt 3 are used to tought the technology but make poor use of optimizations, threading, and proper usage of a feature.  Games like Shogun, and Civilization 5 that are well threaded strategy games see major benefits from Windows 8.  It is not just a coincidence.  It is one of the things Microsoft worked on with Windows 8 in thread scheduling.  Ontop of this Civ was re-optimized for a Windows 8 scenario so its actually making use of the benefits of the OS.  Microsoft did make efforts at the kernel level to increase the performance on Windows 8, and some of those effects can be seen in how games handle simple DirectX11 functions.  The real thing to note is that alot of engine developers are still living in 2006.  They still have not focused out of developing DirectX9 games due to the longevity of the current console generation.  That will change this year with the addition of the new XBox, and Playstation.

This is why if you want a better performing OS for games it will be Windows 8.  Sure its benefits on current gen gains are within the margin of error.  On older games it performs worse.  But in upcoming games it will perform better.  I think the real thing to think about is what OS will get you to reaching 60 fps.  If its an old game poorly optimized for threading and using DirectX9, it will perform worse but you are already at 60 fps.  In a current gen game that makes poor use of DirectX11 features because its also targeting WinXP machines and old consoles, it will see a benefit within the margin of error and still hit 60 fps.  In an upcoming game that may not support DirectX 9 and is written with next gen consoles in mind, it will stand a greater chance at getting to 60 fps then Windows 7.

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Again, not the best article to be citing:

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What is not an issue is performance. Most games under Windows 8 seem to perform as well as they do in Windows 7. Some may perform better than expected. In the end, Windows 8 may introduce problems in some games at first, but most games will likely run just fine, and game performance on Windows 8 will in most cases be equivalent to performance on Windows 7.

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....

You now are comparing potential future performance to current performance, which you can't do. Sure, games in the future may perform better, but then again, in the future, maybe we all get taken over by an alien race, or all game on tablets, or have decided that Win8 blows and everyone keeps right on using XP/7...

For instance, I could optimize my titles for Win8, and sure they would run great under Win8, and maybe marginally on anything else... but your hedging that most developers are going to do that - right now there is no evidence that they will (and if I had to argue, a lot of evidence that they won't: Developers Hate Windows 8).

Right now Windows 8 to me is basically another WindowsMe. Something I would'nt installed if I was paid to.

I am really not likeing the idea that companies are trying to force out desktops in favor of tablets when tablets cannot do all the things desktops can do...and that is exactly what Windows 8 is, their trying to force desktops out by getting people to isntall an OS made with the limitations portables bring.

The reason I cited that article is because it points at Crisis 2 benchmarks were vsync was stuck.  Its the same on all the benchmarks using that game and it gives an unfavorable view of the OS because in the benchmark suite, 1 game is stuck around 60 and it makes it into the total tally.  So it looks like Windows 8 is losing by 1% instead of winning by 1%.  Now if someone asks "What OS has better performance for games?"  I would tell them the OS that has an advantage even if its a small or marginal one.  Just like in 2008 people would recommend an 8800 gt instead of a 3870 because of a marginal advantage.  If I had to recommend a processor purely with gaming in mind it would be an AMD instead of an Intel, because when the processor matters AMD has the architecture that takes advantage of those situations.

Now you consider some benchmark results a fluke or outlier, but to me some are simple errors of an early OS and some are the OS operating like it should.  An early OS error can be fixed, especially when you consider most of these comparison benchmarks were done with Windows 8 RTM versions, or beta video drivers for the OS.  On the other hand a highly threaded processor intensive game like a strategy game getting a benefit from a noted feature of an OS to me is not a fluke but something that is working as intended.  Asking myself how this will affect the future comparisons, I think its safe to say games will be getting better multi-threading in the future when you look at the upcoming x86 based consoles.

Onto developers hating the new OS or refusing to develop for a new OS standards is a bit ludicrous.  There is not much difference on getting the most out of Windows 7 as Windows 8.  Only Windows 8 handles it a bit better.  So really if the developers are developing with Windows 7 or Windows 8 in mind instead of Windows XP then they are going to be favoring Windows 8.  I think right now its a question of if developers will get out of 2006 and catchup to 2012.  Sure Developers/programers might not like working with some things, but if they are beneficial in selling games you can be sure the owner of the studio will want developers/programers who can.

Onto multi-threaded rendering, right now alot of games don't make much use of the processor.  But I was not talking about Multi-threaded rendering.  There are games that make heavy use of the processor, I was talking about CPU multi-threading.  These would be MMOs, Strategy games, and Sim games.  I would think many playing games on mmorpg.com would like these types of games.  The only way to get more out of the processor is to get better multi-threading.  The current results in Civilization V and Shogun 2 show just how big a gap there is between the 2 OS here.

Performance is about same. According Tom's Hardware, Windows 7 performance was better and it was more compatible - however - this was very marginal and likely only temporal until games and 8 is patched up.

- Tom's hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-8-gaming-performance,3331-13.html

You need to learn new tricks with 8. Yes - most of Windows 8 users says that you can "skip" modern UI (metro UI), but still skipping requires that you either add shortcut to desktop to modern UI or you other methods (like installing 3rd party modifications that might cause problems with other applications (happened for me)). And even if you skip modern UI, then you still need to learn new tricks.

I would skip Windows 8 - and get windows 7 and wait Windows 9 (should come 2013). Hopefully Micrsoft has then understood how big morons they are and returned native mouse and keyboard interface to desktop computers - instead of trying to force their stupid touch/pad/phone interface. (My estimate is that Windows 9 is not going to change - but at least Steam/Valve has made some moves toward Linux so maybe someday we can actually choose best OS for ourselves.)

Originally posted by Cleffy

Onto multi-threaded rendering, right now alot of games don't make much use of the processor.  But I was not talking about Multi-threaded rendering.  There are games that make heavy use of the processor, I was talking about CPU multi-threading.  These would be MMOs, Strategy games, and Sim games.  I would think many playing games on mmorpg.com would like these types of games.  The only way to get more out of the processor is to get better multi-threading.  The current results in Civilization V and Shogun 2 show just how big a gap there is between the 2 OS here.

The only improvements that Windows 8 could possibly make in CPU threading is to fix things that Windows 7 did wrong.  From a desktop performance view, there's not much there to fix.  (From a tablet battery life view, there is, but that's a different matter.)  Windows 7 is able to use as many processor cores as you've got, too, you know.  And it also doesn't have much in the way of background processes that will hog CPU cycles.

Windows 8 could, if so inclined, change how it handles different thread priorities to give more or less weight to a programmer saying this thread should be a higher priority than that one.  If there are more threads requesting CPU time than cores available, it could also change how long it lets one thread run before switching to another.  But it's not clear that there is much to gain there, and if anything, the thread priority choices that programmers have made are with older operating systems in mind, not Windows 8.

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There are two reasons why a game wouldn't make heavy use of the processor.  One is that it doesn't need to, because it simply isn't that processor-intensive.  If a game runs great on a Pentium 3 in Windows 7 and XP, there's really no room for Windows 8 to improve on that.

The other is that a game isn't threaded very well to scale to more cores.  But there's really nothing that Microsoft can do about lazy or incompetent programmers failing to properly thread their software.  (For some types of software, poor core scaling is understandable, as some algorithms simply don't thread very well.  But games aren't like that.)  Threading tricks that are easy to do when you're creating a game engine are nearly impossible to do at an OS level when the OS isn't aware of the high-level ideas behind the design of the game engine.

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Originally posted by Cleffy
Now you consider some benchmark results a fluke or outlier, but to me some are simple errors of an early OS and some are the OS operating like it should.  An early OS error can be fixed, especially when you consider most of these comparison benchmarks were done with Windows 8 RTM versions, or beta video drivers for the OS.  On the other hand a highly threaded processor intensive game like a strategy game getting a benefit from a noted feature of an OS to me is not a fluke but something that is working as intended.  Asking myself how this will affect the future comparisons, I think its safe to say games will be getting better multi-threading in the future when you look at the upcoming x86 based consoles.

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How can you tell which results are flukes, and which are simple errors of an early OS, and which are the OS operating like it should?

An aggregate result of ~1% difference tells me there is no meaningful difference right now.

You may have a point about future performance, but there's no real evidence to back that up, because there is no way to get that evidence, the best you can get would be MS or some developers talking about it. Now MS has claimed DX11.1 will give a lot of good benefits, but they also stated that they will be Win8 Exlusive - and a lot of developers have stated they don't really care for Win8. The introduction of next-gen consoles may change that, but that's at least a year away, and probably several years before we would see it make DX11.1 the standard over DX9 - and by then we may well be at Win9/10.

win 8 sucks.

did that answer your question?

I went into windows 8 very apprehisive tbh but its really not all the different from 7 and like others have mentioned there are certain games that truly do see increases in performance.  The problem is when you first install it, its so foreign that it gets really frustrating just thnking why did they mess with something that wasnt' broken.

After around the 2 hour mark I had the administrative stuff unlocked and the start area setup like I wanted it and after that tbh I can't say its any worse than windows 7 just different.  In saying that it isn't any worse its not really any better on the whole either. 

Things it does right:

Rock solid just like windows 7 it runs smooth boots fast

If you have other windows devices with versions of 8 on them it synchs well with cloud support

It finds your xbox and allows 360 control and changes from teh pc, nothing big but I do use it I must admit

Bads:

The touch screen support means nothing to the average gamer and never will on the home system

I did find one game that although it runs great I have to run it windowed but it is a older game

I found a couple other games that I had to run in windows 7 compatibiiity mode

The start screen takes some getting used to though once the desktop is setup you really only use it for quick launching of certain stuff

All in all I bought it becasue after my discount upgrade code I paid 16 dollars for windows 8 professional with media center add on.

Really its a push pick the one you can get cheaper fyi I need a OS that could handle more than 16 gbs of memory and windows 7 home premium is capped at 16 so keep that in mind.

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Originally posted by itgrowls
Apparently I've been reading that windows 8 causes issues with various commonly used peripherals and the apps that go with them. Also, there seems to be issues with the 64 bit implementation of these apps and some of the drivers so I'd personally stick with 32 bit and windows 7, unless you plan on mapping the human genome. :P

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The only bad thing about 32-bit Windows 7 is that it limits you to 4G of RAM, and most gaming PCs these days, 4G is the barebones minimum - most are being built with 8G or 16G.

64-bit used to have a good deal of issues when it was first introduced - mainly because XP 64-bit was really Server 08 stripped down so almost none of the older XP drivers worked, and then Vista had driver issues all the way around -- but actually required hardware manufacturers to create 32 and 64-bit versions of their drivers if they wanted to be called Vista compatible - so that helped a lot. By the time Win7 shipped, 64-bit was pretty well ready for prime time.