Windows 10 and Gaming - so what's up?

Will Windows 10 be good for gaming?
Tyler Wilde Jan 21, 2015

I still use Windows 7, but I’m going to have to upgrade eventually, regardless of the terrible Modern UI-induced stress I get (what the crap is Xbox Music?). We’ll all have to upgrade eventually, because we’re going to want DirectX 12 features, right? So it’s great news for us that Microsoft will be offering free Windows 10 upgrades for a year.

To clarify, Microsoft’s poorly-worded announcement made it sound to some like the free upgrade would eventually involve a subscription plan. What Microsoft meant was not “free upgrade for the first year,” but “upgrade for free within the first year.” It’s not a subscription: it’s a free, one-time upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10, which includes free future updates, the way Windows has always worked.

My hope is that mass adoption of Windows 10 will defragment the PC gaming audience—we'll never all be on the same hardware (and wouldn't want it that way), but at least non-Linux PC gamers can be on the same version of Windows and DirectX. Back when Windows Vista launched, everyone who chose not to upgrade missed out on DirectX 10. Vista didn't have a lot of fans, because it was absolute garbage. If Windows 10 suffers the same fate, DirectX 12 (and I’m 99% sure the full features of DX12 won't be available on Windows 7) will go underutilized. But why would that happen if Windows 10 is free?



Gaslamp Games CTO and lead programmer Nicholas Vining isn't as optimistic. Vining points out that only around 50% of Windows 7/8 users have DirectX 12-capable hardware (actually, it’s some number greater than 50%, according to Microsoft, but apparently not high enough to note the difference). And even if they do have capable hardware, he says, that doesn’t mean their hardware will perform well, and there’s no guarantee they’ll all upgrade to Windows 10 even if it’s free. Lots of people, myself included, are perfectly happy with Windows 7.

“Developers, especially smaller ones like us, cannot afford to reduce our userbase down to whatever percent of the DirectX 12 hardware owning userbase decides to migrate to Windows 10,” wrote Vining by email. “It wouldn't be 50% of our user base; it might be somewhere between 8% and 10%, but we skew demographically older.”

Vining says that, for a small developer, the majority of the customers expect perfect performance out of the box “because Minecraft works on their machine, and it's 3D, so ‘why doesn't your game?’" He also points out that “if somebody gives you something free in the exciting world of computing and technology, that typically means you're the product.”

“If somebody gives you something free in the exciting world of computing and technology, that typically means you're the product.”
After the year of free upgrades, Microsoft will be selling Windows 10, but Vining's skepticism is fair—we don’t know exactly what else Microsoft may be planning. But we see that free upgrade window as a push to wash away the sins of Windows 8 and get as many people as possible onto one OS. The sooner Microsoft moves past Windows 8, the sooner they can stop putting out significant updates for it, freeing them up to focus on forward progress.

Shams Jorjani, VP of Acquisition, Portfolio Strategy & Unicorn Division at Paradox Interactive, didn't have any insight about unicorns, but did have a few things to say about DX 12. He seems somewhat indifferent to the advancement (and unsurprisingly fond of Paradox games).

"DX12 mainly means more advances in graphics—which means another step up in the technological arms race some devs/publishers enjoy participating in—and that's fine as it leaves more room for us, the connoisseur's choice,” wrote Jorjani. “What makes a Paradox game beautiful isn't necessarily shaders, tessellation, SSS, or other wizardry—just good gameplay. Then again, we have a few games that do look pretty so it's a win-win for us."

As for that “technological arms race,” we've yet to see exactly how DX12 will make games better in the wild, but the evidence so far looks good. DirectX 12 is intended to improve multi-threaded performance for games and let directors code 'closer to the metal,' with less overhead between their code and the CPU and GPU. Not all game developers need that level of control, however.

"DirectX 12 is intended to improve multi-threaded performance for games and let directors code 'closer to the metal'"
Intel showed off an impressive demo back at SIGGRAPH 2014, and during today’s Windows 10 reveal event, Phil Spencer said that “for CPU-bound games, DirectX 12 will increase the performance of those games by up to 50 percent.” That’s great, but it may be that the upgrade primarily matters to those who engage in the arms race—the Activisions and EAs—while the rest stay focused on supporting Windows 7.

With that perspective, it’s not really good news or bad news, just neutral news: upgrade for free to Windows 10 to get DX 12 features in whatever games utilize them, but don’t necessarily expect Windows 7 and DX 11 to be ditched. We may stay fragmented after all.

Even though I hate the sight of Windows 8, I do plan to upgrade to 10 to see what it can do. I’m a little nervous, though. Microsoft pushed a few things today that made me uneasy, such as the ability to stream Xbox One games to a PC. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the feature, but I’m wary of any more attempts to treat the PC like an Xbox companion.

Likewise, there’s nothing wrong with the functionality of the new DVR system, which will allow us to capture, edit, and share game footage, but I tend to back away from anything that seems to involve me more in the Microsoft ecosystem. Again, what the hell is Xbox Music? I want Windows to sit quietly and run my games, and I hope that Windows 10’s new features can be shushed.

As long as it doesn't intrude too much, though, I’ll be happy to take the free upgrade offer—even if I still think it looks like an OS designed for babies. There are also some important upgrades in Windows 10 that Windows 7 might not know they're missing—better performance across the board, much faster boot times and far better UI scaling for 4K+ resolutions, for example.

And then there’s the crazy augmented reality stuff, but I don’t know enough about that yet to know how much I care (we’ll have more on Windows Holographic soon). Knowing what we do know, do you plan to upgrade?



Source -- pcgamer.com

 

Great review there William, it jumps to life. I think all of us will eventually have to move on to Windows 10 and I am sure by the time that happens these issues that are showing up will be over. Whether or not it will break the back of the Windows 7 user is another story as to when that will happen.

 

Yes true Rich but they sure need to tweak the privacy issues back towards the end user having more control by default. They could fix up the interface a bit. In my opinion just give us "windows 7 mode" and also "windows 8 mode" where the menus and everything are identical for the most part. That way you get everything that was great about the last two version of windows and we also get widows 10 for the future and you don't alienate entire groups of older users or even new users that simple want a familiar interface if they like

 

I agree on the older users and we also have to remember that businesses are very much like those older users and really don't appreciate changes that cost them time to train for with no real change in what the systems do for them. Failures to lure businesses into Windows 8 accounted for more of the failure of Windows 8 than anything else and I don't know if these small changes in Windows 10 from 8 are going to make up the difference in spite of the free upgrade. That remains to be seen.

 

My advice, if your Win7 rig is NOT broke, DO NOT 'UPGRADE'

If Win10 has features you actually NEED (not what they are trying to sell you) wait at least one year after release. First releases of Windows OS are notoriously known to be very buggy.

My rig is Win7 Pro 64bit and I do not intend to 'upgrade.'

 

I would agree with that above statement except for waiting past one year, what you want to do is just do the in place upgrade to 'ensure' you would at least have windows 10 for free, and then simply roll back to 7 and sit there on 7 as long as you like.


My Rig is Win 10 64 Bit and it runs great. I can also go back to 7 anytime I want.

 

You can if you have an image file of Windows 7 as the easy return only for 30 days.

 

You don't even need an image file, all you do is reverse windows 10. The best IMO thing is to create a restore point in W7, Call it something like "before W10". Install windows 10 make sure it's activated then roll back to windows 7 and *if* need be use your restore point in windows 7 you created.

Now if you are unsure if you can reverse it anytime before the 30 days then yes a real image file would be the thing to do. Really all I am talking about is just making sure you are able to get windows 10 for free in a technical sense.

 

Have you tried that? If that actually works it's brilliant, but it doesn't sound like it will.

 

I did it on the machine in my signature and eventually decided to just run a clean install of windows 10 for now anyway. But yes it rolled back to 7 just fine. I then decided to just go back to the restore I created as well just before the download and installation of 10. Seemed to run the same as it did before the upgrade.

 

That is amazing and then extends the 30 days you have to restore the old version of Windows. Who woulda thought!

 

Wait. Does that mean you want to try Windows 10 for a longer period of time

 

Don't be goaded into anything you dont want to do. Rich.
I booted the Windows 7 computer today.
Everything works with less key strokes.

 

I agree with Dougie Rich don't bother with Windows 10. It's for some people and not for others. It will mature in time, and in the mean time you can count on people like me to test it. Less key strokes ... is good.

I love testing

 

Educate me on the merits and benefits of using Windows 7 Dougie.

 

I am not comparing the two OS's as they are 2 different entities. As you know I have both OS's.
Would I recommend Windows 10 to any of my friends in it's present state and the answer is NO.
I hate the way Microsoft has gone about this release and the fact that Updates are installed without one having any say.
OK there are work arounds.
Another thing that stinks is Microsoft secretly downloads up to 6GIGS on peoples computers without them knowing.
That's bad if you have a small download limit, and small Hard Drives like a lot with dialup have.
The truth is do we need Windows 10. If you believe all Microsoft tripe then yes.
Windows 7 is a proven and very user friendly OS and will be supported till 2020.
I have a life besides computers and the Internet. Computers are part of my life, not my life..

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/201...ownloading-6gb-to-your-pc-without-permission/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...-onto-computers-without-users-permission.html

 

I cannot disagree with how it was released strongarmed as MS did it. That along with the invasion of privacy by default are my big problems with windows 10. Other than that its' a good OS but sadly only to those of us that know how to tweak and keep up with things. The majority of the public MS screwed.

 

I just see no need of it is all for now. I have been thinking about building a new pc and doing a clean install just to play with it, yes.

 

Might be a good idea Rich, build a machine just for checking it out as you will know then that the hardware should be OK and Windows 10 should run on it.
My idea would be to get one of these to use as the case and mount everything inside. Then if it proves that Windows 10 is no good, it is already in a rubbish bin.

 

I like it Nev!