Feature: What PC Gamers Need To Know About Windows 7

Posted Oct 6th 2009 5:00PM by John Callaham
Filed under: Features, Hardware

In less than three weeks, Microsoft officially releases Windows 7, the newest version of their PC operating system (although some PC makers could sell Windows 7-based rigs before the official October 22 launch date). After nearly three years of dealing with the last release, Windows Vista, all indications are that Windows 7 will be far more accepted by the public in general and PC gamers in particular.We can also expect far more support from game developers for the new OS.

If you are a PC gamer, chances are you have already tried out the release candidate for Windows 7 or are waiting for the final release. But there may be some things that you don't know about Windows 7 that you need to be aware of before making that final upgrade. Here are a few items that you may need to keep in mind:

Pick the version of Windows 7 that's right for you

There are three versions of the new OS that you have to worry about and pick from (there are more versions but PC gamers can ignore them without any worries) There's Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate. Windows 7 Home Premium has most of the bells and whistles of the OS and comes in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Windows 7 Professional has all of the Home Premium items but if you want some extra stuff like better backup and encrypting features plus the Windows XP mode (which is mostly for running older business programs) you might want to consider it. Finally Windows 7 Ultimate has everything from Home Premium and Professional plus BitLocker support.

The truth is nearly all PC gamers should be fine with Windows 7 Home Premium but if you are a paranoid type who wants to keep their PC super-safe from hacking and system crashes Professional and Ultimate might be the OS versions you want.

Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 will be harder than upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7

Windows XP launched nearly 10 years ago but the OS is still the preferred one for hardcore PC gamers since it has better performance and better driver support than Vista. It's likely that many of you reading this never made the move to Vista because, well, you didn't feel the need to do so.

That means many of you will be upgrading from XP directly to Windows 7. That's understandable but there's a small problem. You will have to a clean upgrade from XP to 7. You can't just put in the Windows 7 disk in your Windows XP PC and do a quick software upgrade. You will have to back up your files and do a full install of Windows 7. By contrast, upgrading from Windows Vista to Windows 7 will be a much quicker software upgrade without the need, in theory, to do a clean install.

PC gamers will likely want to do a clean install of Windows 7 anyway in order to get the best performance, no matter what version of Windows they have installed on their rig. Still for those of you who have Vista and don't want to waste time the software upgrade option is there.

Expect better performance on current and older games on Windows 7 compared to Vista

Microsoft released its release candidate build for Windows 7 some time ago (it's no longer available) and since then a number of hardware web sites have put the OS through its paces, seeing if it runs current and older PC games. The verdict is that Windows 7 seems to have performance improvements for current games and even runs most older titles pretty well.

An example is ExtremeTech's test of 22 current and older games on a beta release of Windows 7. In general most of the games ran on Windows 7. Two of them failed to run and a few others had different issues but could still be played. That article was posted last January before the release candidate version was released so it's more than likely that Microsoft has improved on Windows 7's PC game performance since then.

In short there should be little to no problems with your PC game library running on Windows 7, although as it is with all PC gamers your personal mileage may vary.

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Tags: directx11, features, games-for-windows, microsoft, windows-7, windows-vista, windows-xp

4 Comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

I've been very happy with its performance so far with the RC build I have. Most games run similarly for me, but there's definitely less choppiness in games I used to have some issues with.Posted at 5:14PM on Oct 15th 2009 by Tony

I have been useing "release candidate build for Windows 7" nearly 6 months or less. I downloaded it from from their website i mean microsoft's, soo I wanted to say that... this is the best OS i ever used after XP. I installed Vista but I didn't like it that much then i returned to XP again. then i saw and hear about the Windows 7 downloaded it and i'm running loooot of game with it really amazing fast in operating and everything. and now i'm waiting for the final versionon 22nd of this month :)

SOO WINDOWS 7 IS THE BESTPosted at 6:49AM on Oct 16th 2009 by Padfoot

Windows 7 is nice. I've been using it since Jan 09 and I like it a lot better than Vista and XP.Posted at 4:11AM on Oct 17th 2009 by Einhanderkiller

I’ve found there are a few things you can do to speed up your games, like disabling Windows search on your system. (Windows 7 maintains a database of your personal files, emails, favorites and start menu entries—this feature takes up a decent amount of processor and memory resources.) You can also try optimizing your hard disk for faster read/write speeds, getting the latest patches for your games and adding more RAM if you need to. By turning off Windows’ auto update and printer functions, you should see an increase in performance—just don’t forget to turn them back on! You should find this info helpful— http://bit.ly/1v8YOE.Posted at 9:18AM on Nov 5th 2009 by TuneUp

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