Zardon

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In the latest of our articles focusing on Windows 7 we look at the gaming performance when compared to Microsoft's older operating systems, namely Vista and XP. Many people (and websites) still hail Windows XP as the OS of choice so today we will ascertain if you should be making the leap to Windows 7 when it is released next month. We think you will find the results very interesting, we know we did !

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OmegaRED

I was not expecting Windows 7 to come out on top in every test against Xp, maybe a few of them but even the DX 9 tests...that's impressive. Glad I made the switch

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IvanV

Thanks for this article, I think that this was a nice test of maturity of both the OS itself and the drivers (tough it was to be expected considering the unchanged driver model). I postponed switching to 7 because of the problems I'd had with my TV card with beta and RC, but this article has convinced me to give the RTM version a test as soon as I have the time.

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Feed the porkers and don't touch the buttons!

swimtech

The consistently higher minimum framerates in Win7 compared to XP regardless of the game title or DirectX version was very encouraging to see!

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

Judas

I've always giggled a little bit when people were even today still claiming XP to be surperior for gameing ....

i've always noticed vista's ability to even with older games.. .wipe the floor with xp.... and now.. win7 is showing a marginal but noticeable gain again.

this is not surprising to me at all.. i expected it

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BlueMak

For me it shows what I believed.
1)People complaining about Vista speed in games have an XP system in terms of technology in them, or just lying about trying Vista.
2)Vista and 7 are identical in speed.

The only thing I am curious about is the compatibility of 7 with games. From what I have heard from here and there (but nothing conclusive), 7 has problems with some older games. True or not I don't know.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Neshi

Vista has trouble with some of the older games as well..
I couldn't get the very first Warcraft, rollercoaster Tycoon or Dune (or Dune 2 for that matter) to work..

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If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

The only guarantee in life is failure, to achieve success you have to take risks.

Tipstaff

It's because the installers for those games are 16bit. The only work around is to use DosBOX to install the game, and hope that the game itself will work. I think Warcraft does, not sure about Rollercoaster Tycoon, but Dune won't from what I remember.

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BlueMak

Yeah, apparently the problem has to do with the 64bit version of the OS, or at least that's what I understand. I haven't tried them on 32bit version.
But I wasn't talking about that old games, but of the last decade.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Stop It

Well, one of the major Faux Pas with WIndows Vista was the fact that (initially) gaming performance was lower than that of XP, this is clearly not the case with Windows 7.

This is good news for all, because the more people who (finally) ditch XP, the more people who can use DirectX10/11 and thus push gaming tech forward as it has really been stagnating these past few years (just look at Crysis, still the benchmark for gaming graphics)..

Great article Allan & Stuart.

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Bobeca

I have seen a lot of XP vs Vista vs 7 tests but none of them was with an older configuration!I am wondering what will be the result then.After all not everybody have a GTX 295 or Core i7 !

ToHellAndBack

I have a GTX 295 an Iam very plesed to see these benchies.
However I think that if the reviewrs used Vista SP1 instead of SP2 its would've likely beaten Win7.

Cos I found gaming FPS went down a few farmes after upping to SP2

Tyrsonswood

On very old systems, P4 3Ghz with 2meg ram for example, Windows 7 runs generally worse than XP in my experience. (Note, I don't game, it's music recording) Something like in your specs I don't know, a lot of guys seem to like it.

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clanman

Nah, think it might be your imagination. I found SP2 faster than SP1 for gaming. Regardless, I don't think we can ask DH to publish benchmarks on operating systems which have out of date patches applied, doesn't make much real world sense.

EfrainMan

Funny, I was just trying some old PC games and they seemed to work in my Win7 64-bit RTM: Panzer Dragoon PC, Silent Hill 2 PC and Myst 3D (tho the latter requires some canoodling). I'm sure that people's mileage will vary, of course.

I've also tried the Dolphin and PCSX2 emulators, and they work fine as well.

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My modest video card history: S3 Virge, 3DLabs Permedia 2, 3dfx Voodoo3 2000, 3dfx Voodoo5 5500, GeForce 3 Ti500, GeForce 4 Ti4600, Radeon 9700 Pro, Radeon X800XT, Radeon X1900XT+Crossfire, GeForce 8800GTX, Radeon HD4870x2

IvanV

I just noticed something that I missed at first: you used Windows XP x64! I understand that it fitted the test system much better, but it's not the OS that people are clinging to, so I must say that I find that a dubious decision. I'm assuming that XP x86 would mostly do worse as it would see less RAM, use an older kernel etc, but perhaps switching to x64 introduced some penalties of it's own. In either case, it was a significantly different system than what people are actually using.

If you're talking about something like your PC, I think that the picture would be very similar, only the overall performance would be lower. I used a similar computer at work (E8200, 2GB DDR2 800, GF 8400GS) and it was smooth as butter with Vista Business x86. Of course, if you go below a certain threshold, situation changes, but you'd have to go really low. Vista still runs fine (neither much faster or slower than XP) on machines around 2GHz single core + 1GB RAM + DX9 graphics card and that was mainstream 5 years ago. I think that it's common sense that it wouldn't really fly on anything older than that.

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Feed the porkers and don't touch the buttons!

Neshi

hmm, will have to try dosbox for warcraft and rollercoaster then, because that's what I really wanna play again.
Dune 2 worked with dosbox, but it turned out it wasn't quite the great game I remembered it to be.. has to be something about not being able to select multiple units and slow progress.

__________________
If one does not attach himself to people and desire, never shall his heart be broken. But then, does he ever truly live?

The only guarantee in life is failure, to achieve success you have to take risks.

BlueMak

Dosbox only works for dos games, not for 16bit windows ones. (w3.1, W95?)
but I think it's a bit off topic lol.

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The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Darvon

This. I wonder if the authors were being deliberately misleading or are just genuinely naive? If the title was "xp64 vs win7" the conclusion wouldn't have surprised anyone.

To the people further up going "lol I always new vista was better than xp": Sorry, you've always been, and still are, wrong.

brutusmaximus

As you are new here I think I might cut you a bit of slack - you do realise that the testing is deliberately ALL on 64bit operating systems to ensure that its as equal enough footing as possible? You can hardly expect one of the operating systems to be 32bit - otherwise there are a whole skew of variables to account for. (such as the 6gb of ram not actually being 6gb of ram anymore).

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Cow_160483

Its a really good comparison but since am running XP X64 and vista X64 i dont really think i will be switching to w7 anytime soon

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IvanV

I agree. With 4GB total address space, which includes memory on all te installed devices, and with a GTX 295 with a total of 1792MB of on board memory, I think that things would get pretty brutal in one or two cases, but perhaps they should have been. People are clinging to the plain, 32-bit XP which makes it the relevant test subject, and if it makes little sense on modern hardware, then why not show it?

I think that the results obtained probably reflect fairly accurately how things would look between XP x86 and the newer OS-es on a more mainstream build (something like Q9450+4GB+4850 512MB), but if that was the plan, then the main testbed should have been different, with maybe only one or two tests carried out on an i7 build in order to show how critically obsolete XP is becoming. I understand that including two testbeds, even if one was used for just a couple of tests, would significantly increase the testing time and that there was a need to finish the article in finite time so it may not have been the most fortunate solution. I also agree that, as it is, the article does show what it should, the results suggesting that the newer OS-es enable for higher performance or higher image quality than XP can be considered fairly accurate. Still, I don't think that XP x64, with its 64-bit kernel borrowed from Windows 2003, which makes it a significant evolutionary step ahead of the ordinary XP, and very few people that have even tried it, let alone who are using it, was the right choice from a "scientific" point of view.

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Feed the porkers and don't touch the buttons!

OmegaRED

I appreciated the extra effort of using Xp 64 for the testing, this is rarely done by other sites but it`s crucial to getting fair results.

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brutusmaximus

Absolutely - its totally relevant, if one of these operating systems was 32bit then the variables are not directly related to the OS but more to the hardware involved, 64bit executables, memory count. etc etc.

its a great article and very good to see DH standing against the popular MYTH that XP still rocks and kicks the ass of everything around it. It was great in its day but its simply archaic in 2009. Some people just hate change. I have read so much nonsense on many 'news sites' in the last year about vista for example which were more directly related to the idiots using it than the actual code.

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Drazula

Excuse me but how is this useful at all if most of the world uses 32-bit XP? I might cut you a little slack because well, you might be one of the three people that actually used 64-bit XP, but it tells the world nothing about the operating system most of the world will be upgrading from. How is this even useful to a 32-bit XP user? The answer is that it is not. So why not be clear and say they are testing 64-bit XP? Because no one would care to read it.

A VALID test is 3GB of memory (especially since no PC game requires more) with Win 7 vs. Vista vs 32 bit XP. Anything else is spin...

humonous

Are you sure you are on the right forum? Not sure where a few of these 2 and 3 post users are coming from but it looks like people from the gamespot forums.

Firstly, when building a PC most people look at the cost. 6GB of DDR3 ram is now under £100 in the Uk Kingston HyperX 6GB (3x2GB) Intel XMP DDR3 12800C9 1600MHz Tri-Channel Kit (KHX12800D3K3/6GX) and im not talking about cheap stuff either. So why on earth would you opt for a system with 3gb of ram? Windows 7 and Vista will work much better with 4gb+ especially for high resolution gaming (and thats not to say that ALL we do is game, right? )

Secondly - and ill try and make it reallllly simple for you. a 32bit operating system is massively different than a 64bit operating system. if you are comparing a 32bit XP against a 64bit Windows 7 then you are NOT putting them on an even footing. The kernals of 32 bit and 64bit operating systems have differences which invalid the testing as a pure apple to apples comparison. This is why it was not a 32bit XP v 64bit Windows Vista and 64 bit Windows 7. Unless you expect the reviewers here to slap 2gb of DDR2 in all systems, mix all the systems up to suit a few people and run some messed up tests which wont be viable for THE AUDIENCE OF DH.

When comparing products or software across a variety of age spans it is important to make the footing as even as possible which is why ALL the systems had the same hardware, the same 64bit builds and the same settings. Its logical.

Zardon

6gb of ram was chosen because it is the most viable system configuration for the owners of Intel I7 systems to run in tri channel memory setups - it is also surprisingly inexpensive and ideal for 64bit Vista and Windows 7 setups (in a recent poll 95% of our audience run a 64bit OS).

This article was produced for our audience who will be running higher specification setups than the general populace. This was not meant to be an indepth look across various systems ranging from a Pentium III to an 6ghz LN2 cooled I7 system - it was a generalised overview from the specific viewpoint of one unaltering static system across all three major operating systems in 64bit format. Otherwise it is rather pointless and we cannot ascertain the benefits and changes with 64bit kernel/multicore and driver improvements.

Alex

You know, I have used XP for the better part of the new millenium and I still love it. I know the point you are making, its more "streamlined" - the only issue is that with the right hardware, its not better. When you move to a certain point Vista is faster in almost everything. Why? well it has better multicore support for a start - this was one of the biggest refinements, so if you have a Quad core Cpu then you will see massive gains when multitasking. This is pretty much fact, so don't let the silly news sites with 55 year old writers who can't disable UAC and haven't learned how turn their theme to classic if they want to cut out all the extra graphics effects tell you otherwise.

I think this article actually proves the point that XP was a great OS, in that it still gives great results for an OS of its age but it has been surpassed by superior operating systems made by the same company. I mean I know its cool to think that Microsoft are getting worse with age, but regardless to this feeling its quite the opposite - sure Vista killed many older systems with its demands, but anything semi modern with good internals had no issues and with the streamlined nature of Win 7 it has leapfrogged even further ahead.

I personally think many of the issues were that people didn't really know how to set the OS up right and this is the biggest failing of Microsoft, they didn't optimally configure the OS right 'out of the box'. Windows 7 has sorted this out.

This thread has certainly shown me how fanatical the XP fanbase are which stuns me because I don't know of any other software (apart from macintosh obviously) that has received the same level of fanaticism over the last year.

it really is time to move on - especially for gaming, the guys at DH don't lie, they get everything free to review so there is no 'personal bias' and I know Veridian very well as a reliable source of information so I have absolute faith that this article is a great indication of the advancements and improvements over the last 5 years.

I can only go on my view that I run all three operating systems daily and i have them all tweaked and refined to the hilt. the performance goes like this

windows 7 ----> vista ----> XP.

Drazula

You are hugely missing the point... if you follow the comments all the way up. The question was why there was such a misleading title, since this is not a comparison between an operating system that hundreds of millions will be upgrading from (XP 32-bit), but rather an operating system that nearly no one uses. Calling this a comparison between Win 7 and XP is like saying I am fighting the champion in a UFC bout, when the champion I am referring to is some grandma knitting champion.

Worse, this article is of absolutely no value to anyone upgrading from XP 32-bit. It seems pretty obvious that the misleading title was deliberate because they knew no one would read an article that only referred to XP 64.

THAT is the discussion. Arguing about the inequalities of 32-bit vs 64-bit is irrelavant. They wanted a lot of people to read this article and few would knowing it was XP 64 bit and not XP 32-bit.

I realized that it was XP 64 when I saw the scores, which is more a reflection driver support than OS performance. This further misleads the reader beyond just the title. Comparing a virtually unsupported game platform to Win 7 is rather silly and I think DriverHeaven knows it. This further explains the misleading title. Simply put, it is not acceptable to call XP 64-bit, just XP, when it is such a small percentage of the market and virtually no driver support. No use can be made of the results to the millions of XP (yes XP 32-bit can be called XP) users.

comp_ali

Good article although I am not planning to move to win 7 any soon.