Windows 7 - Game Performance

[EliotAndrews]

Hey.
I was interested in upgrading to Windows 7 to make use of DirectX 11, which will include multi-threading support.

My question is, will this multi-threading support be exclusive to only DX11 games, or games running in the lesser versions of DirectX, as well?

Thanks for the advice!

[xycury]

wiki says that 11 will enable 10 to use multi-threading but requires that the drivers be up to snuff to do something like that.

No mentioning of 9 though, so maybe not even alot of games.

[EliotAndrews]

That would still be a huge improvement, especially if most of the games I'm playing now are simply using one core.

My computer is certainly up for the task, though; I just built it a few months ago with some serious hardware. Unfortunately, I had to skimp on RAM because XP only takes up to 2 GB or so.

[n25philly]

wiki says that 11 will enable 10 to use multi-threading but requires that the drivers be up to snuff to do something like that.

No mentioning of 9 though, so maybe not even alot of games.

like vista there is no dx 9 in windows 7, it's emulated

[vwllss]

That would still be a huge improvement, especially if most of the games I'm playing now are simply using one core.

My computer is certainly up for the task, though; I just built it a few months ago with some serious hardware. Unfortunately, I had to skimp on RAM because XP only takes up to 2 GB or so.XP can take up to 4GB, but part of that is allocated to video so realistically you're usually looking at around 3GB.

As for the multithread question, I haven't seen any mention but I doubt Windows 7 can make a game run multiple threads if it wasn't designed to be. Many newer games can run on multiple cores, but in general I'd say if it can't then it can't. I wouldn't worry too much about it since video is usually the bottleneck, not CPU.

[moneymoguls]

I believe the game has to be written to run multiple threads. The OS cannot perform this alone.

[Brownjohn]

All 32-bit operating systems will only address 4GB of memory. However, because some of that memory is used by a video card and other things, you'll realistically only have around 3GB of "usable" memory. Upgrading from windows xp 32-bit to windows 7 32-bit will not change that. You'll need to upgrade to 64-bit, which in addition to more memory available, it is able to address 64-bits of data at a time, versus 32-bits, so you'll notice a speed increase, without increasing RAM.

I haven't used XP on my gaming machine for a while, but from upgrading to 7 from vista, I noticed a difference in most games. A lot of the games increased 10-15fps.

[n25philly]

my games crash a lot faster after upgrading to windows 7 pro RTM

[Demolition Man]

I have noticed my frame rates on WoW are a bit higher on Windows 7 than they are on Vista. :)

[Logain8955]

All 32-bit operating systems will only address 4GB of memory. However, because some of that memory is used by a video card and other things, you'll realistically only have around 3GB of "usable" memory. Upgrading from windows xp 32-bit to windows 7 32-bit will not change that. You'll need to upgrade to 64-bit, which in addition to more memory available, it is able to address 64-bits of data at a time, versus 32-bits, so you'll notice a speed increase, without increasing RAM.

I haven't used XP on my gaming machine for a while, but from upgrading to 7 from vista, I noticed a difference in most games. A lot of the games increased 10-15fps.

Did you do a regular install of 7 or one of those "Install In Place" installs?

I'm getting a copy of 7 from the ExpertZone in a couple days, would like to keep all my stuff when I upgrade.