Is it worth installing windows 8 for gaming?

After researching a little on the net it seems Win 8 has a slight advantage in terms of performance (i.e fps in games) over win 7. We're not talking of a big improvement, from what I can remember its like 2-3 fps in some games.

Also, it seems that nVidia a pushing newer, more optimised drivers for windows 8.

Is the Kernel more efficient on Win 8? Perhaps its taking better advantage of last gen hardware..?

What do you think?

I'm running a Clevo P150SM with 4700MQ anf 780M

 

I downgraded to Win 7 because my benchmarks in both 3DMark 11 and 3DMark and AS SSD Benchmark and CrystalDisk Mark were all higher by 15% on Windows 7

Windows 8 only excels in boot time / shutdown time, it fails behind windows 7 everywhere else

 

I disagree with Intel d00d. I'm consistently getting slightly higher benchmarks on Windows 8 (possibly due to updated drivers and such). Most importantly for the future, DirectX 11.1 is only supported on Windows 8.

 

Synthetic benchmarks barely have any bearing in real-life performance, gaming or otherwise. If you want my two cents, the very minor improvement under 8 (if that actually exists) isn't worth the upgrade cost to 8 (marginal gains and whatnot). Considering that you already have a quad-core and 780M, I don't understand how you'd even see a difference between the two; the 780M should be able to smoothly play most, if not all, games at 1080p and high settings...

 

I don't see any huge pressing benefit but the DX11.1 potential is there (future proofing) and if nothing else the Start screen makes a convenient game launcher.

 

Come on, 9.0c was back in 2005 and most newer games can still be played with just that. How long do you think it will be before you exclusively need DX11.1 or 11.2 or better?

 

I totally agree...how they can see real difference other then the synthetic numbers game when their system is already Mach speed is beyond me and like most games have yet to use all of DX11 what makes one think the programmers are going to get on the band wagon if their DX11 games don't profit for them. Those profits are the real number game folks and don't think it matters cause it matters more then the synthetic numbers of which can be optimized to make it look or give the numbers you want to have. Oh yeah and streaming video or watching dvd/bd on their laptop and email and facebook, twitter isn't going to push the DX11 anywhere soon. That is where the vast majority of users are at. Business is more concerned with stability and platform user access and IT management. Even core Gamers build their own system so everyday john and jane doe will never go pushing to those levels other then turn on and use and turn off when done or print...and that is all that for their regular usage not gaming....

 

I will also are synthetics are little reason to judge an OS. That being said though, they do not matter so long as real world there are no significant performance issues. 95% of the machines are either not in the high end hardware spec and/or not high end gaming hardware. Even those of us with higher end hardware performance is at the mark where things are done to effect synthetics there is no real world appreciable change.

As far as synthetics they should only be used to tweak a single system. As far as I've seen, and in my own limited experience, the numbers should be about the same between Windows 7 and Windows 8. There should be no statistically significant differences. If so there is either a tweaking issue or something is broken.

As far as is it worth upgrading from 7 to 8 just for gaming, there is no performance reasons to do so. Until either there is a reason you can't live without DX11.1 or greater there is no reason there as well. Your present listed hardware should be well enough off that if at a later point you NEED to upgrade there should be no issues down the line......

 

I would worry if game makers in 2013 tried to sell games that required software tech that only existed late in 2012. That's not a valid selling strategy at all. But I never mentioned drawing a line in the sand and forcing every single game to only run on new stuff. I simply said the potential was there for DX11.1.

List of games with DirectX 11 support - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to Chrome's find feature, 21 of the titles listed here "Only supports DirectX 10 and 11."

 

I just built a Steam Box and i'm leaning going with Windows 8 as it would be perfect for the Start Page with all the game tiles. I'm hoping I might be able to control the UI with a Xbox 360 wireless controller like you can on the Xbox 360.

 

I don't have too much of an experience gaming with windows 8 but I guess with the current system that you have, you wouldn't feel any difference when it comes to gaming if you are using either windows 7 or 8. You have such a decent gaming PC and I doubt you will experience any delays or lags while gaming in either OS.

 

Even dx10 was the end of 2006...............

 

Practically, the difference you'd see, if any, is going to be near nil. I agree with Kuroi-Tsubasa, you won't be able to tell a difference, and it won't be worth the money.

The DX 11.1 argument also seems irrelevant to me. It was only in fall of 2012 when there started being significant numbers of new games that required DirectX 10, which came out almost 6 years before that, and even today there are games coming out with DX9.0c support. With 8's reception being similar to Vista's, by the time games require DX 11.1, you'll likely have upgraded anyway. That would be what, summer 2018 when DX 11.1 becomes a real consideration? What are the chances this will be your primary machine then?