Windows 7 64bit as gaming OS?

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Logan321

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 9, 2003
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Anyone using Windows7 64bit as the OS for their gaming box? Any critical drivers still missing? (X-Fi, for example)

I'm considering making the switch soon, leaving Vista32bit on another HD.

Does Folding@Home work with W7-64? Improvements? Make anything worse?

Any other suggestions, or tips? Gaming box is in sig.
 
Yes. I am for one. No missing drivers for the rig in sig. The Creative drivers actually installed after a reboot via Windows Update but I used a set for Vista from the Creative site which work really well. Creative seems to have started making beta drivers for Windows 7. You'll need to check the site but in the mean time the Vista drivers work fine.

I installed the OS and it just works.
 
Been using Vista 64 on my gaming system since about 2 months after RTM (when nvidia finally released drivers). There have been a few issues here and there, some older games that don't work (like 5+ years old).

I had dual boot with XP setup for first few months, but I used it so infrequently I didn't bother reinstalling XP on last rebuild (which was March of 08).

For anything current, zero are really no issues.
 
No issues with Windows 7 x64 here. I have it on my desktop and laptop. On my HTPC I have Windows 7 32bit.

I even stopped booting into my hackintosh drive in favor of windows 7.
 
Right now Windows 7 is going to be hit and miss for performance vs XP/Vista simply because drivers are still maturing. The GPU drivers are good right now, some people having even better luck with Vista drivers but keep in mind Vista drivers are not 7 drivers so expect there to be compatibility/performance issues. From what I'm seeing, when 7 hits the shelves it will meet or beat Vista for gaming performance.
 
^ You have no proof. Each beta that has come and gone for 7 has degraded performance, if ever so slightly. I find build 7057 (which I'm running right now), is slightly slightly slower in perf than the original public beta released by microsoft.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
^ You have no proof. Each beta that has come and gone for 7 has degraded performance, if ever so slightly. I find build 7057 (which I'm running right now), is slightly slightly slower in perf than the original public beta released by microsoft.
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whilst i dont know how true your comment is, i have to agree, the 7000 worked flawlessly on my system, awesome!, 7022 was a bit iffy, 7048 started with blue screens and lock ups, 7057 was enough for me to try vista again, and no i am on vista again i am not liking it so much, missing just little things that 7 had.

in summery its a fucking lose lose situation, probably go back to 7057 tonight but i do worry about the integrity of these os, wish microsoft would just be like, well they have it, might as well release sha-1 for them so they dont get infected.
 
7057 x64 has been perfect for me thus far.

Far better than the previous releases.

I am not surprised if I encounter any issues, but unless something catastrophic happens, I'll be rolling on win7 until it releases.

All of my games play very well and the latest ATI driver is pretty good in my experience.
 
I don't know. I tested 7, version 7000 vs my Vista SP1 vs Server 2008 and noticed virtually zero performance difference between the 3 but everyone here says that 7 is faster on slower machines that Vista, so I take their word for it. 7 does run approximately 7-8 less processes at any given time than Vista, plus it's Superfetch is much less aggressive and it does offer a better solution to start up (by giving start up files their own partition at the beginning of the drive).

I love Vista (except the stupid folder view reset bug) but I think 7 is going to be slightly better across the board performance wise. Especially now that they give you more options to turn off stuff you don't want.
 
I went to 7057 straight from 7000 beta 1 x86 and it's just as fast, if not faster. I'm not sure what issues you guys are having.
 
Windows 7 benchmarks show it ahead of XP and Vista in almost every single test. It uses the same drivers as Vista. You can use the same exact video drivers too though the vista ones don't support WDDM 1.1 but they do work. I have used those and the windows 7 drivers and saw 0 difference in gaming performance in 7 between those drivers though 7 does have a performance edge in vista in game. Even my latency went down slightly.

Windows 7 has the same driver model as Vista.

For me the performance of build 7000 wasen't that great and it was quite buggy for me. I still have it on my HTPC.
Build 7048 is much better. And build 7057 is better still.
 
From my understanding, these builds are completely focused on stability.

Meaning they have yet to really focus on performance.

On that note, I've been using Win7 64 for gaming (moved from Vista64) and have had no issues whatsoever.
 
Logan321 said:
Anyone using Windows7 64bit as the OS for their gaming box? Any critical drivers still missing? (X-Fi, for example)

I'm considering making the switch soon, leaving Vista32bit on another HD.

Does Folding@Home work with W7-64? Improvements? Make anything worse?

Any other suggestions, or tips? Gaming box is in sig.
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I am using Win7 x64 Build 7057 with the Ati cat 9.3's and the Daniel_K creative 1.1 drivers for my X-FI. It works flawlessly in everything except games using punkbuster (punkbuster's fault). I'm not sure with folding@home as my room is already warm enough then to have another dedicated heater going 100% all night ;) I would advise against the standard creative drivers, they still suck nuts.
 
I just installed it on my new build last night. Fired FarCry2 and Crysis and running smooth. Tonight I'll fire up the rest of my games and see what the verdict is for them.
 
I haven't had any trouble with gaming on Win7 64 that can be traced back to the OS. That said, if you're playing online games which use punkbuster, you're likely to be SOL. Punkbuster will not update anything so you can play games that use it on Win7 as it's just beta at the moment.

I don't have any input regarding Soundblaster devices as the last one I used was a Live card. Video drivers have not been a problem at all.

As for folding, the only thing I'm running as far as F@H right now is the GPU client and I haven't had a problem with it. I doubt you'll have any trouble with the regular single core CPU client either. I'm not sure about the SMP client but I believe there are a number of people running it without any extra trouble.

 
Win 7 x64 going strong here, love it. A few games made a little fuss but nothing major.
 
I've been playing with BF2 on build 7057 and I finally managed to get by PB kicks with some guide that I found Googling, but now I'm getting CTDs (Crash-to-desktop) caused by the Desktop Window Manager and disconnected from servers for some unknown reason after about 10 minutes.

I'm about ready to give up on BF2 in general. I made a partition and installed a fresh copy of XP and updated drivers and everything and got a blue screen while playing BF2. Buggy piece of shit game, I can play every other game fine.
 
Been using Win 7 build 7057 here and I love it! It seems more stable on my PC than build 7000. Make sure that when you install 7057 that your HD is on SATA 0 otherwise install will be SLLLOOOOWWWW and it will run like crap. I've been playing CS & TF2 and they run great. No probs here.
 
wasabipeas said:
Been using Win 7 build 7057 here and I love it! It seems more stable on my PC than build 7000. Make sure that when you install 7057 that your HD is on SATA 0 otherwise install will be SLLLOOOOWWWW and it will run like crap. I've been playing CS & TF2 and they run great. No probs here.
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I have 3 hard drives in my system. I've installed various builds on all of them and it's never been slow or run like crap.
 
Windows 7 is a great gaming OS UNLESS you use Ventrilo. Because Ventrilo in Windows 7 is just horribly broken. And before anyone says anything...yes, it installs and yes it runs but it's horribly laggy from time to time for no appearant reason.
 
ScYcS said:
Windows 7 is a great gaming OS UNLESS you use Ventrilo. Because Ventrilo in Windows 7 is just horribly broken. And before anyone says anything...yes, it installs and yes it runs but it's horribly laggy from time to time for no appearant reason.
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I've run 7000 7048 7057 and now I'm on 7068. Never had a problem with ventrillo. Sound card drives maybe?
 
I put Windows 7 x64 on my LAN rig (P35 w/ E4500 @3.0, 8800GT). The first LAN I went to with it I had build 7000 and it would crash randomly. I upgraded it to 7057 before another LAN and it ran great. Just upgraded to 7068 and it's still running great.

Only issue I've had since I upgraded to 7057 was some minor issues with my Audigy2 ZS, randomly in game it would start to sound crackly and distorted, and all I could do to fix it was restart. I never fixed the issue, but just used my spare USB headset (that uses it's own sound controller) instead.
 
Wel I knew something was wrong. I figured out what it was. Theres a windows defender update that auto installed and it SEVERELY bogs your rig down. DO NOT install it!

7057 works great, just as fast if not faster.
 
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