If people are making performance comparisons between OS's then it needs to involve a constant. If somebody is running W7 off an SSD and they are moving to W8 purely because somebody says it boots faster on their HDD then, well, the obvious.
people keep saying all there steam games play with no problem...... what about non steam retail games. and why should I have to use hacked ddraw to make a 13 year old game work, that had no problems on windows 7. apperently some people dont know the outside world from steam. other then that. I like window 8.
But we're not talking about boot times, we're talking about gaming performance And comparisons would be made from people who were running 7 and upgraded to 8.1 regardless of their drive type
On my rigs, If W8 done the things that W7 does but noticeably better with no drawbacks then id change, but it doesn't, so I haven't.
+1 The only game i seen run any better was BF4 other than that all other games was the same. I must use classic shell, i couldnt use Windows 8.1 without it if im honest other than that all is good.
+1 for me to i can say that Win 8.1 is a good OS for gaming at at least the same level as Win 7, but for the games that come 8.1 will be better (BF4 is the first in the list, works better on 8.1 that on 7). As for the people that say that old game have compatibility problems on 8.x and on 7 they work fine show me one of them. I can understand people that don't like a OS for the new UI, but to instal an OS for 1 week and say is bad is just like you say i can play professional pool after just a week of play. :bang:
basically OP, there's a few minor incompatibilities with win8.1, the last game I can think off that won't work outright is Assetto Corsa, but that works with win7 compatibility (think even win8). Also, there's a few programs that won't work atm, I still can't get Raxco Perfectdisk to run. but other than that it's great and the fixes will come.
I had 2 games that had major problem in windows 8. DeusEx and Rally championship 2000. I was able to fix DeusEx with the DX10 patch, but no fix for RC2000, I can only get that game to run at 30 fps. I'm sure there are other games that have issue. That is one of the only reason I'm still double booting. As for the question in the OP, when games are running without issues, they run as good in Win 8, 8.1 or 7. Mind you I only play about 15 games so a more limited amount, only 1 games is causing an issue.
just throwing some benchmarks out there couple weeks ago I did pcmark 8 bench, and while gaming score where the same if not more in windows 8, other test in windows 8 where higher then windows 7 http://www.3dmark.com/compare/pcm8cre/7538/pcm8cre/7536 I gained about 300points in windows 8 3dmark also show increased scores in windows 8. edit: also if you own games that where made from yoyo game maker. there might be some issues with the games if they didnt update the game with the newer game maker.
The only games I've had any problems with on Win 8/8.1 were MLB 2k12 and BioShock. Turns out MLB needed a patch (which they surprisingly issued) and Bioshock is just a bitch of a game (the issues were sound related and also present in Win 7/Vista). So really, gaming-wise I haven't had problems. I also play plenty of old school games but I should note that Win8x64 does not natively support 16 bit apps. So if you're playing any REALLY old stuff that isn't DOS based you're gonna have to look into VMWare or dual boot with an OS that supports 16 bit.
the version on dosbox version listed on the website and provided with steam and gog has issues with windows 8. some people people say it works fine, while other says it doesnt work well, freezes. hangs, opengl not working sometimes. or runs slow. the SVN builds work fine in windows 8, but gog already said they wont update the game with the SVN builds.
I can only speak from my personal experience. And even though Windows 7 is great for gaming, I've got no problems whatsoever with Windows 8.1. I believe that, ultimately, it's more of a personal choice and taste than anything. That being said, if you're going to assemble an SSD, it's far better to go with the Win 8/8.1. Greetings.
I ended up installing 8.1 and I gotta say I see a giant improvement in bf4 performance. With 7 my bf4 settings were medium at best but now Im able to play on ultra with much smoothness!! And im liking 8.1 as well.
Just done an upgrade to win8 then 8.1 from my win7 pro. I've the original Mafia game in Steam and no way could I get it to work in win7 but it started straight up in win 8.1, I couldn't believe it. I miss the familiarity of win7 but I'm sure I'll get the hang of 8.1 before long.
I dedicated a good chunk of my day to get familiar with 8.1 and customizing the apps on the start page, I have 8.1 booting right into my desktop and not to the start screen. I gotta say Im liking the transition very much
