Easy HTPC

A preview of Windows 7 gaming

Introduction 

Though officially in beta, Windows 7 is probably the most talked about subject in the world of PC technology today.  Released to the public on January 7th, 2009, Windows 7 has quickly found its way onto many computers including netbooks, laptops, virtual machines and even gaming and enthusiast PCs.  Users that were once distrusting of Vista and even Mac-lovers have spent the last few months complementing Microsoft of their latest operating system and for good reason: it slick, fast, visually appealing and runs on all ranges of hardware quite nicely.  Here in my office I have installed it on an Eee PC, a separate hard drive in my main system, my MacBook Pro (gasp!), the NVIDIA ION platform and a couple of benchmarking and testing rigs as well. 

This article will be the first in a series of performance and feature reviews on Windows 7 that will be updated and added to up through the final retail release of the Windows 7 operating system; whenever that might be.  As the title obviously suggests, today we are going to be looking at GPU and gaming performance on Windows 7 in comparison to Windows Vista.  There are two primary goals with this article: first we would like to see how, in general, performance on this beta version of Windows 7 compares to the performance of gaming on a more mature Vista operating system with Service Pack 1.  Secondly, we would like to compare how both NVIDIA and AMD are doing in terms of driver optimizations and performance for Windows 7 compared to each company’s support on Windows Vista. 

 
Windows 7 desktop feature – image from WinSuperSite.com 

Now, to assuage some obvious emails we will get from readers and trolls, let me add in a few points.  Yes, I realize that Windows 7 is in beta and as such performance results we get today may not be what we see when the OS is finally released.  It could be faster, it could be slower; that is the exact reason why this will be a SERIES of articles that is update continuously throughout the Windows 7 development cycle.  Once the Release Candidate 1 version of Windows 7 is divulged we will definitely come back to these results to see what changes.  Also, I realize that NVIDIA and AMD drivers might also be considered to be in a “beta” state as well – though not that both parties have WHQL approved drivers available that shouldn’t really be too much of an issue. 

Read the rest of the story here.

Via PC Perspective