Windows 8 Versus Windows 7: Game Performance, Benchmarked

By Don Woligroski
published

We already know that the look and feel of Windows 8 is very different from Windows 7. But once you fire up your favorite title, does Microsoft's latest affect your experience? We test 10 games and talk to one of the company's SDEs to answer that question.

Benchmark Results: Sleeping Dogs

We only have benchmark results for Sleeping Dogs under Windows 7. Our testing employs the High detail preset. But when we applied this to our Windows 8-based configuration, much of the in-game art simply disappeared, rendering the title unplayable.

Sleeping Dogs can be played under Windows 8 if you're willing to drop to the Medium detail level, though. Here's how the same scene looks with the quality preset one notch down. The artwork is suddenly visible.

Because our target settings wouldn't work in Windows 8, we don't have a comparison between the two operating systems. But we are able to see that AMD's Radeon HD 7850 1 GB and Nvdia's GeForce GTX 660 perform fairly similarly under Windows 7.

Don Woligroski
201 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mubin
    Only the fast boot time is noticeable in win 8. But still win7 is great and i love it as its 1years+ old running in my system, no crash, still fast.
    Reply
  • steve360
    Another reason NOT to buy Windows 8...I mean Windows Vista 2.
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    It's good to see that there aren't any major performance deficits when moving to Windows 8, like some past Microsoft OS's. For the most part everything looks to be within the margin of error.
    Reply
  • saintjimmy
    I still plan on sticking with Windows 7 for a few more years...
    Reply
  • dragonsqrrl
    steve360Another reason NOT to buy Windows 8...I mean Windows Vista 2.And what reason is that? It seems pretty positive from a performance standpoint, which was the purpose of this article.
    Reply
  • ojas
    Hmmm...wasn't expecting anything else.

    No compelling reason to upgrade for me yet.

    Windows NT 7 is where it's at. B-)



    EDIT: I KNOW Vista, 7 & 8 are NT 6.
    Reply
  • lockhrt999
    My current win7 installation is more than 2 years old. I never used windows installations that are older than 4-5 months. Yes, win7 ages too but it's too slow and well managed compared to old windows OS.

    And yes win8 has better RAM and processor management as touted, but then you lose more time navigating through blocky interface. You complete your work a 3 seconds more with win8 but you had taken 5 more seconds to start that program from blocky interface.
    Reply
  • mafisometal
    lockhrt999My current win7 installation is more than 2 years old. I never used windows installations that are older than 4-5 months. Yes, win7 ages too but it's too slow and well managed compared to old windows OS.And yes win8 has better RAM and processor management as touted, but then you lose more time navigating through blocky interface. You complete your work a 3 seconds more with win8 but you had taken 5 more seconds to start that program from blocky interface.
    You do know that you can use a program called Star8 by StarDock to get your desktop and toolbar back...it works quite well, no problems over here.
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    mafisometalYou do know that you can use a program called Star8 by StarDock to get your desktop and toolbar back...it works quite well, no problems over here.
    The problem is that Star8 and other 3rd-party tools haven't been able to fully replicate Win7's Start function.
    Reply
  • looks like M$ is going the route of Apple and making a idiot proof OS, which is, well, good for IDIOTS :) anyone who actually wants to more than check email and play a game needs to stick to windows 7
    Reply