What Windows 7 Means For Gamers
The open beta for Windows 7 has been available for about a week now and many of you are probably wondering what impact this is going to have on your gaming lives. Fortunately Tech Radar has a low down on what Windows 7 means to you.
They generally give off a good impression with the new operating system is much more efficient, especially when it comes to using RAM. The other biggie is graphics card drivers, Tech Radar report that you can simply use the same drivers for your card as you use in Vista without a problem. That certainly sounds good to me.
Another important thing is the Windows Experience Index which gives your machine a rating. The Windows 7 blog has a piece explaining all the changes that have been made to it.
Have you started to use Windows 7, if so what are your thoughts on it?
7 thoughts on “What Windows 7 Means For Gamers”
So is this all in relation to Vista or XP? Although I hear they are very much the same now anyway (Vista + XP)
Yeah in relation to Vista, lord who uses XP still? /faints
Win7 seems to me to be an attempt to remove Vista’s perception problem. There are a few genuinely useful ideas, UAC granularity in particular, but most of the improvements would only tempt someone who is still on XP, perhaps having lapped up all the hate the media doled out on Vista.
Take memory: of my 2GB Vista eats up 150MB for processes and 150MB for kernel, while 7 manages with 145/81. A nice improvement which I welcome, but memory is so cheap today that any gamer trying to get by with less than 2GB clearly hasn’t been paying attention (or else really likes old games).
It’s a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist unless you’re managing Microsoft’s PR, tearing your hair out every time you see some mug meaninglessly compare Vista’s numbers to XP’s.
I’m not going to upgrade any time soon, even if I get a new machine. 7 will have to come down in price quite a bit before it’s worth migrating to from Vista.
I do Chris! /waveshandchildishly
Not for any particular reason, just can’t be bothered upgrading. My desktop arriving this weekend will probably have it installed though, so my use is probably short-lived.
I’m still on XP. Mostly because I’m too cheap to upgrade :D
Uuurgh XP, it feels so old and flimsy to use nowadays :(
I have XP and Vista installed on my PC, only use my Vista partition, even though my XP one has more/better games installed on it :P
I’ve used the Win7 beta on a few machines, including a pretty underpowered HP 2133 netbook. It runs pretty snappily for general-use purposes – very nearly as snappy as XP, actually, but with the full Aero look and extra enhancements of Vista.
Don’t think that it’s going to make your GeForce 8400 a new lease on life, though – a snappier OS doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be seeing more frames per second, though the RAM 7 doesn’t use (as compared to Vista) might help.