Gaming on Windows 7?

[archeryguy1701]

I've recently gotten a free copy of Windows 7 for a class, and have been seriously thinking about installing it on my main computer. I've toyed with it a little bit in a Virtual PC and have really liked it so far, but I have one very important question:

How is gaming on Win7?

Has anyone here gamed on 7? I really want to make the switch, but since playing games is one of my major activities, I don't want to switch over and then find that there are major compatibility issues or if a lot of games won't work. I've found a few industry reviews that are talk favorably about it, but I haven't found many gaming reviews from actual users. So what say you guys? Make the upgrade to Win7 or should I stick with Vista?

 

[firehawk12]

I haven't noticed any huge compatibility issues and some people think it has less of a footprint than Vista for what that's worth.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I don't know about gaming but at work it seems to me that Win7 is quite compatible with Vista. Everything we've thrown at it in testing suggests so at least. I'd be more leery if you were going from XP.

 

[firehawk12]

And actually, in 7 Pro you can run an entire virtualized version of XP if you really want to.

 

[clint g]

I've been gaming on windows 7 for a while now and the only issues I've had have been with older games, such as the original fallout games

 

[Kelthaz]

Windows 7 is pretty much a functional version of Vista. There's no reason not to upgrade.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

I recently upgraded and have been able to play Crysis, Flight Simulator X and a few older games (Doom 3, Darkstar One) with no problem at all.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Windows 7 is pretty much a functional version of Vista. There's no reason not to upgrade.

Functional or functioning?

 

[Sparky]

I've noticed that gaming is faster on Win 7 than it was with Vista. That also extends to the entire operating system itself though. Vista in every aspect is a dog compared to Win 7.

 

[John Clark]

I've only had two issues so far with Win7 (64) and games.

Gears of War says it's not compatible but I haven't tried to force the issue. Bioshock has had an audio issue (no sound at all), but was ok with XP.

All the other games I've played have been fine and one has even been faster than on XP, but that is probably down to having extra memory now.

 

[Sparky]

I've only had two issues so far with Win7 (64) and games.

Gears of War says it's not compatible but I haven't tried to force the issue. Bioshock has had an audio issue (no sound at all), but was ok with XP.

All the other games I've played have been fine and one has even been faster than on XP, but that is probably down to having extra memory now.

Bioshock works perfectly fine for me. No audio issues at all on Win7. Have you tried running GoW in Vista or XP compatibility mode?

 

[John Clark]

Bioshock works perfectly fine for me. No audio issues at all on Win7. Have you tried running GoW in Vista or XP compatibility mode?

Not yet, but it is on my list of things to do. I've also got a few tips to try for Bioshock.

Given how it runs all the other games though, I'm fairly confident I can get them to run.

 

[archeryguy1701]

Well, Win7 is installed. I've only tried one game on it. I haven't noticed any big difference, but the big thing is that it works. I must admit that I like the rest of the OS though. I think I'm going to be happy with this change.

 

[clint g]

Yeah, Windows 7 is pretty slick

 

[Hitman]

Upgraded to 7 Ultimate sometime ago, and the gaming experience couldn't be better. Higher framerates, zero crash-to-desktop, and zero problems running old games (from 2000 even).

 

[Reverend]

I'm still on XP (Vista never looked like a good idea to me) and I know sooner or later I'll have to upgrade but I am concerned about which games I will and won't be able to play anymore - I have a fairly sizeable collection of windows games, some rather old, most not-so-old but not exactly new either.

As it stands I'm already unable to get neither GTA III or Vice City to run on XP (switching off svchost.exe does allow it to work for some reason, but without any sound which isn't very helpful) and some games like PoP Sands of Time can't seam to deal with multi core processors and either run very slow or very fast. I imagine these problems can only be made worse by an upgrade.

 

[John Clark]

That's odd. GTA3 worked fine on XP-sp2 & 3 for me (AMD 64 x2 Dual Core 3000+ and 9800GTX as graphics card.) That said, there other games I had that were not happy with XP or Dual Core Processors that were Windows based

I haven't tried them on 7-64 bit yet though. (I also have a different video card as that one went and died on me). I haven't got Vice City, but San Andreas was ok on XP.

I do have spares around so I may just chuck together one for older games (Say, a pure dos machine and a Win95 or 98 one just out or curiosity. I could use dosbox, but I guess it gets my old DX2-66 some more usage )

 

[Reverend]

Intel 2.66ghz Duo, 2gb RAM, GeForce 8600 GT and neither of those work. I've been on to Rockstar and nothing they've suggested works. Literally the closest I've come is to terminate the svchost.exe process that using the most memory. The games run but it somehow prevents the game from detecting the audio and graphics drivers. The games run but totally muted and on the lowest graphics settings.
San Andreas works fine, as does GTA2. I'm at a loss really.

 

[Anthony Sabre]

My experience so far has been limited to MMOs, but I haven't had any issues aside from the user access levels. Eventually I'm going to reinstall some of my stand alone games, like Deus Ex, and see how they do.

 

[Sanji Himura]

2gb RAM...

Now there's your problem. Upgrade your RAM to 3gb or more. OS's now a days recommend that you have at least 2gb of RAM just to make your OS work properly. You are relying on virtual memory to run applications and that is really a bad thing.

It is either that or you have a memory leak in which case you still need to upgrade the RAM.