Do I go to Windows 7 or 8 from Vista?

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Commander0Zero

Limp Gawd
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Jan 2, 2006
Messages
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I currently have Vista installed on my Rig. I'm about to install a SSD and was wondering would this be the right time to go windows 7 or should I hold out for windows 8? Gaming is a big consideration for me.
 
download the windows 8 preview and give it a run, if you like it, use it, if not get windows 7.
 
Commander0Zero said:
I currently have Vista installed on my Rig. I'm about to install a SSD and was wondering would this be the right time to go windows 7 or should I hold out for windows 8? Gaming is a big consideration for me.
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TechPowerUp did a Windows 8 review and showed that 8 is 1-2% slower than 7 in games.

Source
 
bigdogchris said:
TechPowerUp did a Windows 8 review and showed that 8 is 1-2% slower than 7 in games.

Source
Click to expand...

Lets get some context on that...

two objectives for our review:

-To find out what difference in graphics performance Windows 8 makes over Windows 7

and

-How NVIDIA's and AMD's drivers recommended for Windows 8 fare
Click to expand...
Sounds to me like they were comparing the brand-new WDDM 1.2 drivers on Windows 8 to the mature WDDM 1.1 drivers on Windows 7.

My HP Touchsmart TM2 is happily running Windows 8 with the same WDDM 1.1 drivers it used to use while booting Windows 7, and games run noticeably better under 8.
 
Maybe I should just stick with Vista until the 8 upgrade becomes available and get it at it's discounted price. I could hold on actually installing it until a few months until it matures a bit.
 
Commander0Zero said:
Maybe I should just stick with Vista until the 8 upgrade becomes available and get it at it's discounted price. I could hold on actually installing it until a few months until it matures a bit.
Click to expand...

Wise choice.


Although 8 is very quick, better to hold off and wait until you are ready.
 
Unknown-One said:
Lets get some context on that...


Sounds to me like they were comparing the brand-new WDDM 1.2 drivers on Windows 8 to the mature WDDM 1.1 drivers on Windows 7.

My HP Touchsmart TM2 is happily running Windows 8 with the same WDDM 1.1 drivers it used to use while booting Windows 7, and games run noticeably better under 8.
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Nvidia has been working on 8 drivers for almost a year. I doubt the performance is going to get much better.

As for your specific situation, the app parking and memory optimizations probably do help for lower end CPU's and memory like what that device has. In a modem gaming rig those limitations do not exist so I don't think there's going to be any difference in performance.

Vista SP2 performs virtually equally to 7 in gaming benchmarks on high end systems but you throw Vista on a lower end system and it simply cannot scale down as well as 7. The benefits I mentioned in 8 probably help it scale down more than even 7 can do.

Anyways the point is we need to compare apples to apples here. Seeing a benefit on your device does not mean people are going to see a benefit on a modern gaming rig.
 
Commander0Zero said:
Maybe I should just stick with Vista until the 8 upgrade becomes available and get it at it's discounted price. I could hold on actually installing it until a few months until it matures a bit.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there's still things to work out with Windows 8, it's really still two months away from real release. But at this time in the release cycle to see Windows 8 work virtually as well as Windows 7, not bad when you consider the other noticeable performance improvements. I would suspect that in time that Windows 8 should pull ahead a bit as drivers and the OS mature.
 
No discernable difference between Vista and 7 for everyday use. On the professional side there are some significant improvements though. A lot of 7 features have been back ported to vista btw.
 
i would say try 8 for free while you can to see if you even like the changes it has made from windows vista / 7, like metro...
 
In theory Windows 8 should perform better but I think it comes down to how limited the hardware has to be before the counters fire to park apps and optimize the memory take effect. If you have an 8 core system with 16GB of ram the OS isn't exactly going to think it needs to start saving performance.
 
bigdogchris said:
Anyways the point is we need to compare apples to apples here. Seeing a benefit on your device does not mean people are going to see a benefit on a modern gaming rig.
Click to expand...
You made exactly the same sweeping generalization you've accused me of making right here in the below quote, though... also, I never claimed that it would be faster on all devices simply because it was faster on my particular machine. I only said that I hold benchmark results with dubiously mature WDDM 1.2 drivers as suspect (it wouldn't be the first time that newer drivers brought with them a slight performance regression).
bigdogchris said:
TechPowerUp did a Windows 8 review and showed that 8 is 1-2% slower than 7 in games.
Click to expand...
You didn't say anything about specs there, just "Windows 8 is 1 to 2% slower than 7 for gaming, full-stop." That sounded misleading.

Their specific test system showed a very slight dip in performance under Windows 8. My specific test system showed a marginal gain in performance. My comment was meant to express exactly the same thing as your later clarification; that you can't simply call it faster or slower, the issue is more complicated than that.
 
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