Windows 7 - Game Performance

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!

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.

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.

[quote name='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.[/QUOTE]

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

[quote name='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.[/QUOTE]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.

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

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.

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

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

[quote name='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.[/QUOTE]

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.