Does O/S matter with gaming?

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by qubit

Duh, I'll second that. I think Microsoft are heading for a crash worse than Vista with this one.

Why is that? Windows 8 has quite a bit more improvements and changes other then the GUI. And why is it a bad thing that they want the OS from going from a phone > tablet > desktop to look and perform the same? Itll make it easier for average consumers to go from one device to the other. On the desktop honestly we still get our normal UI, just the start button is gone, but now with Windows 7 the start button has become a lot less popular to use and people are now putting all their stuff down in the task bar rather then in the start button or on the desktop.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by nvidiaintelftw

Why is that? Windows 8 has quite a bit more improvements and changes other then the GUI. And why is it a bad thing that they want the OS from going from a phone > tablet > desktop to look and perform the same? Itll make it easier for average consumers to go from one device to the other. On the desktop honestly we still get our normal UI, just the start button is gone, but now with Windows 7 the start button has become a lot less popular to use and people are now putting all their stuff down in the task bar rather then in the start button or on the desktop.

Have you tried using Windows 8? That Metro/desktop switch is jarring as hell making it bloody awful - and I'm not the only one saying it either, many pundits are too.

It's obvious that Microsoft want to push everyone onto the dumbed down single tasking full-screen only apps interface on Metro. If that isn't a massive backwards step then I don't know what is. On top of that, it forces you to buy all your apps from the Microsoft store. This allows Microsoft to control everything that you're allowed to have on your PC and of course, they get a healthy cut of the sales revenue, which you pay for. And they're doing all this in the name of chasing Apple. It's pathetic.

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by qubit

Have you tried using Windows 8? That Metro/desktop switch is jarring as hell making it bloody awful - and I'm not the only one saying it either, many pundits are too.

It's obvious that Microsoft want to push everyone onto the dumbed down single tasking full-screen only apps interface on Metro. If that isn't a massive backwards step then I don't know what is. On top of that, it forces you to buy all your apps from the Microsoft store. This allows Microsoft to control everything that you're allowed to have on your PC and of course, they get a healthy cut of the sales revenue, which you pay for. And they're doing all this in the name of chasing Apple. It's pathetic.

Microsoft and Apple are direct competitors lol!

And yes I have had Windows 8 on my laptop for the last 2 months, and at first I didn't like it on a desktop/laptop environment. But it has grown on me. Its not that bad. All the people bitching about it has probably used it for a max of 15 minutes. How are you suppose to build a reasonable opinion on it in such a short amount of time.

[qubit]

Originally Posted by nvidiaintelftw

Microsoft and Apple are direct competitors lol!

And yes I have had Windows 8 on my laptop for the last 2 months, and at first I didn't like it on a desktop/laptop environment. But it has grown on me. Its not that bad. All the people bitching about it has probably used it for a max of 15 minutes. How are you suppose to build a reasonable opinion on it in such a short amount of time.

Ok, you're the one person here that likes it - tick one box!

I'm glad it works for you, but yeah, I've not used it for very long myself, because it felt so obviously wrong, that I couldn't stand it. I'll be very interested to see how Metro is implemented in the final build, as that will be the acid test for the product.

That pundit I told you about has an article on ZDNet called Windows 8: Can we live without the desktop? According to him, some simple tweaks would improve Metro a lot. In a way, Metro is just like a huge, expanded Start button, so I can see where he's coming from. I still prefer the regular Start menu interface though and think that Microsoft should make Metro optional in Windows 8.

[20mmrain]

You can play most games on windows XP however..... you can not use most of those games to their fullest potential without Windows Vista/7/8. It also depends on your video card. If you are only using a DX 9 video card then windows XP will be fine for most games as because Windows XP does not support anything higher than DX9c.
But if you have a DX10 graphics card or higher... then you are not using your video card to it's highest potential unless you are using Vista or higher.
I also want to throw out that some games will not work on Windows XP at all. Some important games (for example Battlefield 3) will not play on Windows XP SP3 or any other SP for XP. More and more modern games will start doing this... I guarantee.
Why? There is no money in it. Xp is a Dead OS.... it is not going anywhere. It was the best in its time.... but MS found a great OS to replace it not long ago. Windows 7!!! and with more and more people making the switch (Plus Windows 8 releasing) there is no reason for game makers to support an old OS like XP any longer.

[Dent1]

Originally Posted by gopal

No way i am going with Vista rather then going with vista i better go with W98 it is better then vista for sure i also buyed vista and it gave me some auto restarting problem and hangs after 5-6 hrs non stop work!

That is bullshit. I used Vista exclusively for about 3 years without any issues.

Vista has gone through many service packs, patches and hotfix. Any of those bugss were fixed years ago and it's just as stable as Windows 7 IMO.

And yes I use Windows 7

[MxPhenom 216]

Originally Posted by Dent1

That is bullshit. I used Vista exclusively for about 3 years without any issues.

Vista has gone through many service packs, patches and hotfix. Any of those bugss were fixed years ago and it's just as stable as Windows 7 IMO.

And yes I use Windows 7

^^THIS

Windows 7 and Windows Vista is pretty similar. Just Windows 7 has a lot smaller foot print on the system resources, and slight UI changes.

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

I also use win vista and win 7. Vista is every bit as stable as 7. I actually use vista more for some odd reason.

[Jetster]

7 has a lot less network issues than Vista. And Vista has a whole lot of updates other than that there very similar. I never had an issue with Vista but to reinstall updates took forever

[Widjaja]

For now I believe XP is still viable.
Most of these games are made for console and the requirements of a console are generally far less than PC even with the background overheads windows has.

Only thing which people maybe missing out on is a few games and DX11 which I personally do not see any outstanding visual improvements over DX9 in the games I play.

None the less in the near future I would recommend upgrading to Windows 7 basically due to MS making it obsolete by officially not updating it.

[natr0n]

Most arcade systems/units (TaitoTypeX) are made using windows XP still.

[TheMailMan78]

Originally Posted by natr0n

Most arcade systems/units (TaitoTypeX) are made using windows XP still.

They suck in graphics too.

[FordGT90Concept]

Originally Posted by Black Panther

Yes but realistically are there any games which benefit from having more than 16GB RAM? Or perhaps in the near future...

There are games that benefit from having access to an entire 4 GiB of RAM. On 32-bit operating systems, the operating system and software has to fight for the same 4 GiB of RAM. If you have 16 GiB of RAM installed, you could run up to three 32-bit applications and none of them will fight with each other nor the operating system for memory. Obviously, if you don't run anything that requires that much memory, there really isn't a point of installing more than about 6 GiB of RAM.

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by FordGT90Concept

There are games that benefit from having access to an entire 4 GiB of RAM. On 32-bit operating systems, the operating system and software has to fight for the same 4 GiB of RAM. If you have 16 GiB of RAM installed, you could run up to three 32-bit applications and none of them will fight with each other nor the operating system for memory. Obviously, if you don't run anything that requires that much memory, there really isn't a point of installing more than about 6 GiB of RAM.

firefox + game = worth it already

[FordGT90Concept]

Computer - FireFox = problem solved

Originally Posted by newtekie1

Not really, but since it looks like Win7 might be the OS of choice for a good while, it doesn't hurt to have the option to go with more than 16GB if you wanted. Plus, something feels wrong with buying a 64-bit OS that artificially limits the amount of RAM you can use. One of the main points of a 64-bit OS it to allow you to use huge amounts of RAM, so limiting it to 16GB is just so wrong, IMO.

I agree. There should be no software limitation on memory.

FordGT90Concept slaps Microsoft with a tuna.

[Frag Maniac]

@nvidiaintelftw,
Yeah it's not so much the features as the abysmal way they work together. Metro does not in fact seamlessly integrate as a desktop GUI via mouse, and so far they've not indicated they'll have an option to disable it for those that just want to use W8 as a desktop OS.

So, at this point your only option on desktop is to wade through the clunky Metro interface first. Now that may not seem horrible to some, but most everyone that's used it even for a little while has seen how utterly annoying it can become when repeated over and over.

I like W8 for it's slight edge on DX11 performance in games, plain and simple. Whether that amount of performance increase is worth wading through Metro every time you use your PC is questionable, esp when you consider few games use DX11, and many that do have performance issues that may not be overcome by that slight increase anyway.