Introduction

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Microsoft Windows 8, the year's biggest tech launch, is on course for a late-October launch. Before consumers can get their hands on the new operating system, Microsoft made its fit-for-market version (RTM) available to industry partners and enterprise clients. We got our hands on the new operating system.

Windows 8 is more than a new operating system with a new user-interface. It is based on the new Windows 6.2 kernel and comes with a new driver model; in particular, a new display driver model (WDDM 1.2). The new DDM changes the way software interacts with graphics hardware, meaning that Windows 8 could have a different graphics performance from Windows 7.

Meanwhile, the two leading gaming GPU markers, NVIDIA and AMD, have both claimed to be the first with drivers certified to work with Windows 8. We took this opportunity and installed Windows 8 RTM on our VGA test-bench, picked a high-end graphics card from each of the two camps, here the GeForce GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970, and made them work with drivers NVIDIA and AMD recommend for use with Windows 8. We put the two graphics cards through our VGA gaming benchmarks with these Windows 8 drivers and came up with 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

Test System

<table class="tputbl">
<thead>
<tr>
<th colspan="2">Test System - VGA Rev. 22</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tr>
<th width="120" scope="row">Processor:</th>
<td align="center">Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.7 GHz<br />(Ivy Bridge, 8192 KB Cache)</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Motherboard:</th>
<td align="center">ASUS Maximus V Gene<br />
Intel Z77</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Memory:</th>
<td align="center">2x 4096 MB Corsair Vengeance PC3-12800 DDR3 <br />
@ 1600 MHz 9-9-9-24</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Harddisk:</th>
<td align="center">WD Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500 GB</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Power Supply:</th>
<td align="center">Antec HCP-1200 1200W</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Software:</th>
<td align="center">Windows 7 64-bit Service Pack 1<br />Windows 8 64-bit RTM</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th scope="row">Drivers:</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">NVIDIA: 304.79 Beta<br />ATI: Catalyst 12.8</td>
</tr>
<tr class="alt">
<th scope="row">Display:</th>
<td valign="top" align="center">
LG Flatron W3000H 30" 2560x1600<br />
3x Hanns.G HL225DBB 21.5" 1920x1080
</td>
</tr>
</table>
Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when this exact same configuration is used.

All video card results were obtained on this exact system with exactly the same configuration.
All games were set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
AA and AF are applied via in-game settings - not via the driver's control panel.

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

1280 x 800, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most small flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Alan Wake

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Alan Wake, released in 2012 for the PC, is a highly successful third-person horror shooter that revolves around the adventures of novelist Alan Wake who has to battle the "darkness" which takes over living and dead things. Alan's signature flashlight is used to strip the forces of darkness of their protection to make them vulnerable to conventional weapons.

The engine of Alan Wake uses DirectX 9, but features complex lighting effects, making it a quite demanding title. We benchmarked with the highest settings possible.

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Batman: Arkham City

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Batman is back on the LCD screen with Batman: Arkham City, a sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum, by Rocksteady Games and WB. It was released on the PC platform in November. Batman is imprisoned in Arkham City, an infamous district of the DC Universe that contains the scum of Gotham, most of whom Batman helped put in there. In order to get out, he must go through scores of baddies and encounters many of the iconic supervillains along the way - he's not entirely alone.

Batman: Arkham City uses the same Unreal Engine by Epic as Batman: Arkham Asylum does, but, it has, thanks to the engine's modularity, been overhauled and outfitted with the latest technologies, including a graphics engine that takes advantage of DirectX 11.

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Battlefield 3

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Arguably one of the most anticipated online shooters in recent times, Battlefield 3 is the latest addition to some of the most engaging online multiplayer-shooter franchises. It combines infantry combat with mechanized warfare including transport vehicles, armored personnel carriers, main battle tanks, attack helicopters, and combat aircraft - pretty much everything that goes into today's battlefields. Infantry combat is coupled with role-playing elements which make the experience all the more engaging. It also has a single-player campaign which adds a few gigabytes to its installer.

Behind all this is a spanking new game engine by EA-DICE, Frostbite 2. It makes use of every possible feature DirectX 11 has to offer, including hardware tessellation and new lighting effects, to deliver some of the most captivating visuals gamers have ever had access to. Not playing this game on the PC is a grave injustice to what's in store. Faster PCs are rewarded with better visuals.

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BattleForge

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BattleForge, a card-based RTS, is developed by the German EA Phenomic Studio. A few months after the launch, the game was transformed into a Play 4 Free branded game. That move, and the fact that it was included as a game bundle with a large number of ATI cards, made it one of the more well-known RTS games of 2009. You, as a player, assemble your deck before the game to select the units that will be available. Elemental force choices can come from the forces of Fire, Frost, Nature, and Shadow to complement each other.

The BattleForge engine has full support for DX9, DX10, and DX10.1. We used the internal benchmark tool in DirectX 11 mode with the highest settings possible to obtain our results.

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Civilization 5

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Sid Meier's Civilization V (or Civ 5 in common jargon) is the latest addition to the franchise of masterfully crafted turn-based time strategy games that let you play God to a nascent civilization of your choice all the way up to the space age. Civilization V uses large 3D worlds that are procedurally generated and takes advantage of the hardware tessellation features offered by DirectX 11 to exponentially step up the complexity of cities, models, terrains, and objects. This generation of GPUs can be expected to handle large texture loads that come with such eye candy.

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Crysis

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After the tremendous success of Far Cry, the German game studio Crytek released their shooter Crysis in 2007. The game was by far the most hyped and anticipated game in 2007, and forums were full of "Can my system run Crysis?" threads because of the high hardware requirements of this game. Just like in Far Cry, the plot evolves on a small island with a thick and richly detailed jungle world. A lot of attention has been given to small details like accurate physics. When you, for example, fire on a tree trunk, it will shatter and the tree will fall over and leave a stump behind. Enemies in a car can be stopped by shooting the tire of the car. The game graphics are, even today, top notch, yet the game still runs well on most computers.

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Crysis 2

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Crysis 2 takes the player into an alien-infested New York City. The game adds a tactical options mode that allows several ways to attack a heavily infested enemy location. The new Nanosuit 2.0, that the player uses, offers more freedom in ability use; multiple abilities can, for example, be used at the same time. To better accommodate a given play style, weapons can be customized with silencers, laser sights, or even a sniping scope.
For rendering, Crytek's CryEngine 3, which comes with reduced system requirements compared to the first Crysis game, is used. Since Crysis 2 is a multi-platform game, with major development focus on the console, the graphics on launch day were only DirectX 9. DirectX 11 functionality was added later in a patch. We used the DX11 version and the high-res texture pack for our benchmarking.

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Diablo III

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Blizzard's Diablo 3 is the latest release in one of the most popular action RPG series of all time. You, the hero, will experience epic adventures on your journey to defeat Diablo, the master of Hell. Diablo 3 set the record for the fastest-selling PC game - selling over 3.5 million copies on the first day of its release. It was also the most pre-ordered game on Amazon.

Blizzard's DirectX 9 engine provides the player with an isometric view on the action. The game has been tuned to run well on most computer systems to let as many players as possible experience the game. We tested Diablo 3 running at the highest image-quality settings.

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Dragon Age II

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Dragon Age II is the second game in BioWare's Dragon Age franchise and was released in March 2011. You will be able to pick your hero, named Hawke, from several classes and grow him over the course of the adventure. Gameplay takes you through a linearly narrated story of Hawke's rise to become the legendary "Champion of Kirkwall".

BioWare's Lycium Engine has support for DirectX 11, using tessellation, advanced dynamic lighting, and camera effects like depth of field. We benchmarked the DX11 version with details set to the highest possible.

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Hard Reset

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Developed by Flying Wild Hog, a studio that prides itself with the fact that its creation is PC exclusive (bless them), Hard Reset is a first-person shooter that's set in a future cyberpunk setting of a dystopian world. It reintroduces many of the gameplay mechanics that have made classics such as Quake wickedly fun to play and that are sorely lacking in today's tactical military shooter, thus creating a 'void' for Flying Wild Hog to fill.

The game uses the studio's in-house Road Hog Engine, which isn't particularly heavy on new-generation DirectX features, but can still be taxing for some GPUs.

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Metro 2033

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Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter game that is set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow - inside the metro system as the name suggests. You will fight mutants or other humans who want to take away your shelter. The game has many gameplay elements similar to STALKER; the engine also has similar features. This is because two STALKER engine programmers left GSC Game World and started their own company which made Metro 2033.

The engine has support for all the latest eye candy like DirectX 11 and tessellation. Unfortunately, it leaves a less than satisfactory impression, making it a candidate to surpass Crysis for the highest hardware requirements. We tested the game in DirectX 11 mode with details set to "Very High".

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Sniper Elite V2

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Sniper Elite V2 is a tactical shooter letting you play the Battle of Berlin during early May 1945. You are an American elite sharpshooter who is located behind enemy lines to stop the German V-2 rocket program. Gameplay does not only focus on full frontal assault, but also requires elements of stealth and patience to gain the upper hand. Sniper Elite V2 features a complex ballistics simulation, forcing players to account for factors including gravity, wind, velocity, bullet penetration, and aim stability.

Sniper Elite V2 uses DirectX 11, including tessellation, contact hardening shadows, and DirectCompute-based effects, including anti-aliasing.

For our testing, we used the Sniper Elite V2 benchmark tool, in DX11 mode, with highest settings and super sampling disabled.

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STALKER: Call of Pripyat

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STALKER: Call of Pripyat continues shortly after the events of the prequel STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. The player is one of many stalkers who are attracted by the Zone in hopes of finding fame, wealth, and artifacts. Over the course of the game, you meet Strelok, the protagonist of the first STALKER game, and team up with him to progress through the Zone.

An updated X-Ray Engine 1.6 powers the game with support for DirectX 11 using DirectCompute Shaders to improve shadow rendering and tessellation to improve model quality.

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StarCraft II

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StarCraft II, released in July 2010, is a sequel to Blizzard's award-winning strategy game StarCraft. In the 26th century, three species, namely, Terrans, Protoss, and Zerg, are at war. The campaign takes you through many missions on different planets where you have to face various enemy factions or, sometimes, several of them at once. StarCraft II features a similar number of units - some of them new - as the original game. Due to the massive success of the first game, Blizzard chose to focus a large aspect of the game on multiplayer combat through Battle.net. The campaign serves as a good introduction to units and concepts – the real action is in competitive multiplayer combat.
The StarCraft II engine supports only DirectX 9, but several patches have improved rendering quality and available options considerably. We tested the game using a recorded 1 vs. 1 multiplayer replay in the late-game phase. Please note that StarCraft II is very CPU limited on high-end cards, especially on lower resolutions, so you may not see much scaling between some cards. StarCraft II does not support multi-monitor gaming, because it would provide an unfair advantage in competitive multiplayer as a larger portion of the map would be visible.

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Total War: Shogun 2

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Set in 16th century feudal Japan, Total War: Shogun 2 takes the player on a quest for domination to conquer and unite the warlords of Japan. Moving away from the European setting of previous Total War games, the game is now designed around the principles of the brilliant Chinese general Sun Tzu and his book The Art of War. Gameplay switches between real-time battles, during which units on the battlefield are controlled, and turn-based strategy, which focuses on diplomacy, economy, and production management. Taking control of a castle involves several different stages which adds more complexity to the warfare in Shogun 2.

We benchmarked using the highest settings possible in DirectX 11 mode, which was added via a patch after release.

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The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

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This isn't just a game - it's a masterpiece; a very large sandbox game that rejects the quality-quantity inverse proportionality. By genre, TES: Skyrim is a role-playing game - it combines some of the best elements of older titles in the franchise with some new sandbox elements to churn out an extremely engaging and addictive game. It makes use of Bethesda's Creation Engine which isn't visually intensive in that it doesn't use taxing graphics features. Instead, the game's presentation itself, with large open worlds, ends up taxing your hardware. Faster GPUs result in smoother gameplay with most eye candy turned on.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

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World of Warcraft is the most successful massively multiplayer online game in the world with far over 12 million monthly subscribers. The game is centered around the epic battle between the Horde and Alliance factions with many other races getting involved in a long and complex story line. Although World of Warcraft was released in 2004, Blizzard has, especially with new expansions, always added incremental improvements to the graphics. One key success factor of World of Warcraft is that it will run on a large number of slower systems, but, at the same time, also deliver a decent graphics experience on high-end systems. We tested the game in DirectX 11 mode with details set to "Ultra".

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3DMark 11

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3DMark 11 is the very latest benchmark test from the house of Futuremark, which has given out some of the most comprehensive benchmark applications for PC enthusiasts and gamers. 3DMark 11, as the name might probably suggest, makes use of the Microsoft DirectX 11 API and puts every feature of it at its disposal to use, creating astonishingly realistic visuals. In the process, it evaluates DirectX 11-compliant GPUs and lets gamers know what to expect from upcoming games that make use of the API in terms of visual realism. The tessellation and depth-of-field tests are particularly of interest here. 3DMark 11 has no proper support for multi-monitor configurations.

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Unigine Heaven 2.0

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Unigine Heaven was one of the first demos that supported DirectX 11. Heaven is a technology demonstration for the Unigine engine which supports DirectX 9 through 11 and OpenGL. Version 2.0 adds more scenes and, optionally, more complex tessellation features. Although there is some controversy surrounding the benchmark and as to whether it is an accurate representation of what to expect from future games in regard to DirectX 11, we still decided to use this test to get an insight into the potential of future gaming.

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Performance Summary

The graphs on this page show a combined performance summary of all tests and resolutions from previous pages. Each graph shows the tested cards on Windows 7 as 100% and Windows 8 performance relative to it.

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Conclusion

After testing both AMD's Radeon HD 7970 and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 on Windows 8 using 19 benchmarks, we can confirm that both Windows 7 and Windows 8 offer the same gaming performance. Some games at low, CPU-limited resolutions show Windows 8 lagging slightly behind Windows 7, which is a sign that there is some mechanism at work here that increases CPU time or otherwise limits the system from sending information to the graphics cards fast enough to achieve higher framerates. This difference is very small though and barely noticeable, especially at higher resolutions like full HD or 2560x1600. The same performance is, at higher resolutions, pretty much the same as in Windows 7. The difference we noticed would be smaller, or go away, with a weaker graphics card at lower resolution as the slower GPU will limit framerates in such a scenario.

In terms of driver quality, I have to commend NVIDIA for releasing a perfect-working, rock stable Windows 8 driver, even though it is still marked as beta. AMD's first Windows 8 WHQL certified driver doesn't do so well here. We spotted a significant performance loss in Crysis 2, limiting maximum FPS to 63 - no matter the resolution. Other games work fine though; this seems to be a limited issue.

Overall, there is no reason to upgrade to Windows 8 just for a performance gain in games. There are certainly other reasons that make the OS upgrade interesting like faster boot time, UEFI support and Storage Spaces. There are, on the other hand, some turnoffs like the Metro UI that many users describe as clunky.

Support for DirectX 11.1 is, at this time, useless because there are no games that support it, nor have games with support been announced.