Win 7 vs Win 8(.1)

[JonnyManc]

Guys

A question that I am sure will have already been asked but.....

Is there an obvious performance difference between Win7 and Win8?
(kind of an NT vs RT question)

I know the UI is 'not naturally conducive to a nice experience with a mouse' but I am considering a move across if the performance improvement is worth it!?

Cheers

[shaithis]

If you are going to play BF4, you may find 8.1 a reasonably priced performance upgrade, BF will use DX11.1 codepaths. You should start seeing DX11.2 performance tweeks on XBO ports soon as well.

Of course we don't know exactly how benefit it will bring exactly but one source here shows impressive BF4 average framerate increases...and that's only DX11.1 changes AFAIK.....DX11.2 brings even more performance tweeks (presumably thanks to XBO needing to be squeeze dry for performance )

[AGTDenton]

With an SSD in your system Windows 8 appears to have improved SSD optimisation and this may be where the main benefit comes from.

http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-ne...ealth-comfort/

When it comes to games, unless you have a large SSD or a secondary SSD where you install the most demanding games then the SSD benefits become less so.

Without factoring in any potential DX advantages then from what I'm reading daily use performance doesn't change much outside of Startup and Shutdown speeds. My Haswell i5 build boots in 16 seconds to Windows 7, a time I'm very much happy with and feel no need to upgrade to Windows 8 to gain a few seconds.

So unless DX11.2 is breath taking in a real world build I wouldn't bother.

[soudazhou]

Seems Win8 upgrade would worth the price

[polosistealth]

u have to reinstall windows if u upgrade from Win 8.0

[Mister]

7 is easily still the best of the 3. Theres no reason to upgrade really. The performance is the same and so are boot times once you install drivers and updates.

The whole dx11.1 propaganda is MS desperately trying to force people to upgrade, take no notice. The vast majority of gamers are still using 7, so developers won't really bother with anything later than dx11. Similar to dx10 when everyone was still using XP because of Vista fail.

If your already using windows 8 then just stick with it, 8.1 is quite buggy and most of the new features are just trash. Use classic shell if you want to boot to desktop on 8 and have a proper start menu (which is much better than the 8.1 one anyway).

[simonpreston]

I am running 8.1 Pro on both my main rigs. Windows 7 Pro on 2 laptops and a third rig. I am having no issues that I can see with 8.1 and quite happy to use 7 or 8.1 interchangeably. I have an MSDNAA account so I get access to the new OS for nothing. If I had to pay to upgrade from 7 to 8/8.1 then I probably wouldn't bother.

Either way, you should be fine with either. Performance differences these days is hardly noticeable in real world terms.

[Flibb]

I agree with Simon. I curently run 7 on my main desktop and 8.1 on my rather old laptop. Out of the two I actually prefer 8.1, but not enough to upgrade from 7. Performance is great on both, very happy that an old laptop (upgraded to ssd) is so responsive.