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Gaming On Windows 7

Posted by Soulskill on from the extreme-minesweeper dept.

Jason Wilson writes "Windows 7 comes out Oct. 22, and many gamers are wondering whether it will be a boon for gaming, as Microsoft promised Vista would, or a disappointment (like Vista was at its launch). Former ExtremeTech editor Jason Cross, who's covered games and tech for 13 years, discusses the pluses and minuses of Windows 7 for gamers — how it differs from Vista, if it'll run older games, and the benefits of 64-bit computing. 'Windows 7 basically takes the Vista codebase and rewrites, refines, optimizes, and overhauls most of the internal stuff without making dramatic changes to the driver stacks that Vista did over WinXP. The changes to the fundamental driver models are small and mostly serve to improve performance. Plus, the hardware makers — especially the graphics guys — are on top of the changes this time around. Nvidia and ATI have been shipping quite good Win7 graphics drivers for months now.'"

5 of 554 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Everything works for me by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Creative cards working yet? I'd heard vista lacked any decent hardware sound support, effectivelly rendering headphone gaming with X-fi cards impossible.

    Also I don't buy their statistics. According to the latest steam hardware survey data released (June 2007) 60% of all surveyed systems were using winXP still, even a year after win7's launch unless it manages to actually outperform XP I don't see that changing anytime soon.

    --
    A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
  2. Re:Ok, so windows does have its fanbois too by Elektroschock · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Also called astroturfing.

  3. Re:Everything works for me by TheRaven64 · · Score: -1, Redundant
    I still think the article is astroturfing:

    Nvidia and ATI have been shipping quite good Win7 graphics drivers for months now.

    Neither company has managed to write drivers I'd describe as good for any other OS, so I'd be very surprised if they managed it suddenly for Windows 7, especially if there are few changes to the driver model.

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    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  4. Re:Everything works for me by commodore64_love · · Score: -1, Redundant

    I agree. We're only jumping +0.1 in version numbers (from Win6.2 to Win6.3). Anyone who has 6.2 should get a free upgrade to 6.3, just as on my XP machine I got a free upgrade from SP2 to SP3

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    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  5. Re:Everything works for me by Chabil+Ha' · · Score: -1, Redundant

    Nothing new in Windows 7, you can do that in Vista, too.

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    We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others