Finally upgraded - Windows 8 to Windows 7, a gamers point of view

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Dreamerbydesign

Supreme [H]ardness
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Feb 3, 2008
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I bought Win 8 x64 when it first game out. I adopted early, and defended the cobbled OS for months:rolleyes:

I had SO many issues with Win 8 and gaming. To name a few:

Steam games randomly did not work properly, and required multiple tricks to get the games to work (Mostly due to GFWL issues! No joke)
Small things, like game launchers not working properly with Win8. Especially on NEWER games such as Guild Wars 2 and League of Legends

So thinking it was just an install issue with Win8, I resinstalled. 3 times over a 6 month period. Never reinstalled ONCE with Win 7. Bought it on launch day, used the same install until the day Win 8 was installed.
Next came multiple support threads, contacts with customer support from both MS and the game companies, I finally found the answer!

WINDOWS 7 PRO FTW! Amazing how going "BACK" in time equates OS progression. Sorry MS, you just dropped the ball for gamers. I officially have given Win 8 the boot. I was a staunch supporter, but when major games are not properly supported, I draw the line. As a office OS, I am sure it is great. For a gamer, there is no alternative to Win7.

Anyone have similar thoughts or experiences?
 
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Welcome back to common sense. Windows 8.1 is not going to change anybody's mind about the new OS. Windows 7 is going to be around for a long, long time. Fan boys can cry all they want but the majority have spoken.
 
Honestly, I built a win8 box for one of my friends and he hasn't had any trouble with games as of yet. I'm not using it myself, but I haven't really seen anything that would dissuade me from eventually getting it.
 
When Vista came out, going from XP to Vista was a downgrade and Vista and XP an upgrade. Unbelievable how many naive, ignorant, and arrogant people there were. Back then, the masses thought that new Windows release must mean it is better than the previous OS! By now, people have learned and on top of that Microsoft has overdone the releases. It used to be that it would be "the talk" amongst even computer illiterate common people when Microsoft was about to release an OS -- nowadays its like an everyday thing for Microsoft to release a full blown brand new OS every 2 days.
 
No issues for me at all. ive grown to love windows 8 quite a bit.



its only gotten better with 8.1
 
Both of my computers are running Windows 8 Pro and I haven't come across any serious issues.

To be totally honest, I did have a GFWL issue with one game when the OS first launched, but last I checked it was sorted out.

The OS layout isn't the greatest, but it has grown on me quite a bit. I look forward to using 8.1 and being able to boot straight to the desktop, as well as having the metro interface share a background with my desktop. It was somewhat funny watching my dad try to shut the computer down when he recently came to visit; they certainly made that aspect worse.

I was pleasantly surprised this week when my Asus P8P67 Deluxe died and I had to swap the motherboard for a MSI Z77A-G45 Gaming (hey it was cheaper than the regular G45). After swapping boards Windows booted up, did its thing, and all that was required of me was installing the Killer NIC drivers. Excellent experience.

EDIT: Well I also forgot that Windows isn't identifying my SSD Raid-0 array as an SSD, so I had to shut off automatic optimization for that drive.
 
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jmilcher said:
Small things, like game launchers not working properly with Win8. Especially on NEWER games such as Guild Wars 2 and League of Legends
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not an expert here and didn't use Win8 but maybe try to touch the launcher with your finger not a mouse and keyboard since Win8 wasn't designed for them :D
 
Those who say no are not gamers or they have very few games installed and are not valid critics. I have 140 Steam games, also have close to a couple hundred more non-steam games. I use Win8 as my music server on a laptop and not as a gaming OS because that is about all it is good for.
 
I like Windows 8 now. It was weird at first, but it feels leaner and quicker for me. Once you get used to the corner "hotspots" you can actually do quite a bit and go to a lot of different places in a hurry.
Never had any driver performance or stability issues either...and I currently have 35 PC games (and a few classic emulators) installed.
The more integrated metro stuff in Windows 8.1 is nice, too.
It certainly isn't perfect, but I have no reason to go even consider going back to Win7 now.
 
I've been running Windows 8 since it went RTM (August 12, 2012?) and I think the only compatibility issue I've had was with The Walking Dead not running with the 360 controller connected because it needed DINPUT8.DLL in the game directory (probably sloppy coding). Other than that, everything else works fine, even GFWL.

I'm sticking with it. I even did a UEFI WIN8 installation on an HTPC and it boots very fast on that skimpy computer with an HDD.
 
I don't have problems with Win8 because i don't use it for games. Oh hey look, Win8 is great for games because it runs my Bejeweled and Peggle just fine. :p
 
I have been running windows 8 since launch day without a problem. Started on an I7 920 and moved to a 4770k. As somebody who also purchased Vista on launch day, i can say that Windows 8 is perfect in comparison. Vista at launch had (for me atleast) all the problems that you brought up with compatibility problems, crashing ect. Windows 8 for me has been perfect, just as stable as windows 7, anything that worked on 7, works with 8.

edit * - FYI i have 190+ Steam games, since i guess that matters lol
 
Pleb said:
Those who say no are not gamers or they have very few games installed and are not valid critics. I have 140 Steam games, also have close to a couple hundred more non-steam games. I use Win8 as my music server on a laptop and not as a gaming OS because that is about all it is good for.
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http://steamcommunity.com/id/satsun

I play plenty, from small indie games to big AAA titles. It just works for me.

What are you people doing? Installing every registry cleaner, PC optimizer, and toolbar program you see on download sites?
 
Pleb said:
I don't have problems with Win8 because i don't use it for games. Oh hey look, Win8 is great for games because it runs my Bejeweled and Peggle just fine. :p
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damn, i wish my bejeweled ran on my computer
 
Pleb said:
I don't have problems with Win8 because i don't use it for games. Oh hey look, Win8 is great for games because it runs my Bejeweled and Peggle just fine. :p
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I know you are joking, but to be serious for a minute, I play many games.
The list of games off the top of my head that i've played without issue on my Win8 machines are,,,

Tomb Raider
CS:GO
Diablo 3
TF2
Borderlands 1 and 2
Fallout: NV
HL2
Deus Ex: HR
GTA IV
Portal 2
Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3
I'm sure more that I forgot
 
Look - the fact is that Win8 does cause issues with certain games. I don't have any direct experience with those issues but have seen enough posts around various gaming forums to know that is fact so claiming there is no issue is pure BS and you make yourselves look like software industry apologists.

"Oh hey look, a new user trying to create controversy!"

I read this as, "Let's pick on the NEW guy". :)
 
Pleb said:
Look - the fact is that Win8 does cause issues with certain games. I don't have any direct experience with those issues but have seen enough posts around various gaming forums to know that is fact so claiming there is no issue is pure BS and you make yourselves look like software industry apologists.
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Bashes Window 8 for being shitty to play games on, says he doesn't actually have any issues.

lol.gif
 
djoye said:
...the only compatibility issue I've had was with The Walking Dead not running with the 360 controller connected because it needed DINPUT8.DLL in the game directory (probably sloppy coding).
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DirectInput is deprecated, but they're still shipping the DLLs with Windows 8, so they should still work. It's possible they were for some reason targeting a specific version that Windows 8 doesn't include.
 
Pleb said:
Look - the fact is that Win8 does cause issues with certain games. I don't have any direct experience with those issues but have seen enough posts around various gaming forums to know that is fact so claiming there is no issue is pure BS and you make yourselves look like software industry apologists.

"Oh hey look, a new user trying to create controversy!"

I read this as, "Let's pick on the NEW guy". :)
Click to expand...

You're not fooling anyone.
 
AMD T-type said:
Bashes Window 8 for being shitty to play games on, says he doesn't actually have any issues.

lol.gif
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Yea, because I don't use it for games. As I said before, Win8 is just my music server on a laptop and for games I use Win2KPro, XP, Vista, and Win7 on various PCs. I have more games installed for Dosbox than Win8.
 
I can't stand the overly simple and idiotic graphical design of Windows 8 for use on PCs. I don't understand why any advanced pc user would want to use that... unless you are rich and just curious
 
jmilcher said:
Surely not a majority opinion ;)
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Have it installed on 6 pcs around the house. Windows 8 works perfectly fine on all of them and it makes an excellent steam box os.

Gw2 worked perfect on windows 8 as well as the rest of my game collection. All of my gog games, steam, origin, and uplay titles work perfectly fine.
 
hfk said:
I can't stand the overly simple and idiotic graphical design of Windows 8 for use on PCs. I don't understand why any advanced pc user would want to use that... unless you are rich and just curious
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you think windows 8 is simple?

thats probably the last word i would use to describe it TBH. it is very counter-intuitive
 
Pleb said:
Yea, because I don't use it for games. As I said before, Win8 is just my music server on a laptop and for games I use Win2KPro, XP, Vista, and Win7 on various PCs. I have more games installed for Dosbox than Win8.
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Name 5 games in the last 2 decades that runs on windows 7 that doesn't run on windows 8. Color me curious.
 
Pleb said:
Look - the fact is that Win8 does cause issues with certain games. I don't have any direct experience with those issues but have seen enough posts around various gaming forums to know that is fact so claiming there is no issue is pure BS and you make yourselves look like software industry apologists.

"Oh hey look, a new user trying to create controversy!"

I read this as, "Let's pick on the NEW guy". :)
Click to expand...

He must have read somewhere on the internet about how new guys create controversy. Probably doesn't have any direct experience with new guys, but since her ready it somewhere on the internet then it must be fact.

I'm pushing ~180 games on Steam. They range from small indie games to AAA titles. The only problem I experienced is the same one as someone above mentioned -- walking dead and a 360 controller. Which I fixed, initially, by unplugging the controller.
 
Windows 8.1 Preview here, haven't run into any issues with games outside of the ones that also exist in Windows 7. In fact, Windows 8.1 seems to play nicer with my Nvidia Surround setup than Windows 7 did.
 
NKDietrich said:
Windows 8.1 Preview here, haven't run into any issues with games outside of the ones that also exist in Windows 7. In fact, Windows 8.1 seems to play nicer with my Nvidia Surround setup than Windows 7 did.
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dude im loving the 8.1 preview. been using it since i saw it posted on hard front page news its brilliant.
 
I've never had a single problem either, and I've played a bunch of different games. Games like the following

Battlefield 3
Diablo 3
Planetside 2
Everquest 2
Civ 5
Defiance
FTL
Binding of Isaac
Dungeon Defenders
StarDrive
Beat Hazard
Organ Trail

Tons of others, both major games and lots more indie games. I run in a 3 monitor set up (2 + TV hooked up for watching movies). Games are usually on one monitor fullscreen windowed with shit like vent, browser, trillian, etc on second.

I don't get most peoples "OH MY GOD IT'S SO BAD" complaints. It's windows. It's the same as it's been for a long time. I personally prefer the icons on the windows screen to a long start menu of text that's still a pain to go through. I can sort the icons on the start screen and put there what I actually use. I have plenty of stuff pinned to the taskbar that I regularly use, as well as short cuts on the desktop for stuff that is just convenient. Nothings really changed, except they added metro on top so you have access to all that stuff as well, and you don't even have to use it if you don't want to.

I'm relatively convinced most people who rant about how bad it is haven't actually tried to use it at all, or if they did they didn't take 2 minutes to set it up to suit themselves. They are just generally spewing retarded internet rage.
 
I haven't played a lot of AAA games on Windows 8, my main gaming system is still on 7 because I really don't feel like messing with that system, I'll go to 8.1 on my next build though. Crysis 3 and Tomb Raider worked just fine on my 920 3.6Ghz 6GB RAM 580 GTX Windows 8 box though.

tehslippery said:
I'm relatively convinced most people who rant about how bad it is haven't actually tried to use it at all, or if they did they didn't take 2 minutes to set it up to suit themselves. They are just generally spewing retarded internet rage.
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After a while its kind of hard not to come to this conclusion. If one thinks it sucks that bad it begs the question why one would be using it much. Then there's complaints about all the hoops and extra work it takes to do things that often doesn't make sense. Not liking something is one thing, but at least know about the thing before bashing it to hell and back.
 
No issues with 8.

Played on 8:

FallOut3 + NV
L4D2
League of Legends
Battlefield 3
StarCraft 2
CS:GO
Anti-chamber
40K: Space Marine
Borderlands 2
Mortal Kombat Komplete
Saints Row 3
Sniper Elite: Nazis
Sonic Racing and Transformed
Reus
Alan Wake
Bastion
Civ V
Portal 2
COD: WAW
TF2
Serious Sam 3
Just Cause 2
Darksiders 2
Anno 2070
Reckoning: Kingdom of Amular
Torchlight 2
Bioshock 1
Burnout Paradise

Note: this is combined on 2 different machines both running windows 8 64bit.
 
My current system is for gaming on Windows 8. Very rarely do I have issues with my game library.

I have suspicions that this thread was meant to be flamebait for nomadic trolls & new users wanting a "good" fight. :rolleyes:
 
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