Windows 7 or Windows 8 for a gaming PC?

[Davo-Meerkat]

Hey, I have been planning a build for a while now and I was wandering whether i should use windows 7 or 8, or if it even matters! Thanks everyone.

[Dim]

All in all, there are features of both that are preferable. Windows 8 feels visibly smoother than 7, and in general performs a little bit quicker. Windows 7, however, has a greater deal of practicality in my opinion. I used Windows 8 for about two months, then went back to 7 purely because of the "babying" Windows 8 does to you. Some things take a little longer to find in Windows 8 (the Search is a little off; I hate using the mouse), but all in all its main selling points are speed and smoothness.

Honestly, using Windows 8 on a tablet is great but for a desktop I would say it doesn't really matter all that much and they each have equally-weighted pros and cons.

[obsidian1200]

Aside from gaming, what else would you be using your PC for? My biggest complaint of Windows 8 is how difficult it can be to multitask with at times, but it's a decent OS for content consumption. Generally, I'd recommend Windows 7 over 8 for the multitasking reason alone, withholding the other issues people experience with Windows 8's useability.

[GoodBytes]

How is Windows 8 more difficult to multi-task? It's a Start Menu... but full screen... the desktop is the same.

To answer your question, Davo, it doesn't really mater.

There is nothing ground breaking to it's architecture that pulls miracles. It is more optimized than Windows 7. But as Windows 7 was pretty much well optimize, the gap isn't as big as Vista to 7... it's a mild speed increase. Does game run faster under WIndows 8? If you have a new GPU and new computer, you wont' notice the difference even on benchmark. But of you have old system or an old GPU like a GTX 9800 or 260, then yes you'll see a visible bump in performance in gaming.

It comes down to, do you care about Windows 8 new features or not. For me I prefer the Start Screen. It allows me to pin all my games together, and quickly lunch them, without having to open Steam, then go under library, and then click on a game. And have a different steps/experience for games that are not on Steam. Here i click and I play.

Also, I get to pin what I want and where I want. So I get to make my own groups, and pin my own folders that I want, and not limited with the Start Menu offering of 7.

Here is an old picture of my desktop start screen (I have more games and apps installed since, but you get the idea): http://www.helpweaver.com/dss.png

Plus you get enjoy the new features of Windows 8.

-> Faster Boot up, including instant boot feature if you have the requirements (GOP ready graphic card, and full UEFI support motherboard and SSD)

-> Improved SSD support

-> USB 3.0 native support

-> Free music streaming of 30 million songs or 10$ per month gets you unlimited downloads of 30 million songs (I use this service, it's awesome. I don't use iTunes anymore.. so much money saved (I don't have an iPod))

and more.

-> Faster file copy/transfer

-> Faster file copy/transfer over network

-> File collision (override dialog box) occurs once, and at the end of the process and not during like in Windows 7

-> File collision is way more useful than Win 7, where you better compare your files/folder, and regroups everything into 1 dialog box

-> Detail transfer speed graph for any file transfer

-> Ability to pause a file transfer to priorities others, or if you want to pause it all to do something else with the system that needs the HDD/SSD a lot for a moment.

-> Reduce restarts from updates

-> Updates are not less visible, and no pop-up about restarting your computer. It give you several days grace period by default, with notification about it on the lock screen.

-> New Task Manager with more info available such as startup program impact with the ability to disable them directly from the task manager, and disk utilization

-> Storage Space feature

-> New file history system allowing you to go back in time of a file, folder or drive

The only complaint I have is turning off or putting to sleep manually Windows 8. It's not the end of teh World, you can just do Alt+F4 on the desktop, or do Win+I and you have the shutdown button.

[Davo-Meerkat]

Thankyou everyone for the responses! Helping me a lot.