Windows XP vs 7 vs 10 Gaming

[Ivelin__]

As the title says. I will be playing World of Tanks and some older games.

E8400

2GB Ram(the reason I am still using XP)

gt 210(don't worry, soon it will be 630, next year- 650 or up)

And don't tell me to downgrade to 10 for no reason. If XP is better, I will stay with it. If 7 is better, I will upgrade.

Security is not concerning me.

It won't be upgraded (ram), ddr2 is way too expensive to be worth it.

[Sauron]

Windows 10 is higher performance in games that support dx11.2 and above, simply because windows 7 doesn't support them. Windows xp... just don't.

 

Also, don't bother with the gt 630, it's not much better than an overclocked 210. go straight for a 750.

[TomvanWijnen]

While I don't have the answer to your question, I do have one thing I'd like to add...

It won't be upgraded (ram), ddr2 is way too expensive to be worth it.

Over the year, I've gotten many DDR2 sticks, for cheap prices. I quickly cheched, and found a 2x2GB set for only 18 euros. If you haven't already, try searching on a second hand site, they will most likely have a lot of cheap DDR2 memory.

[Sir Asvald]

As the title says. I will be playing World of Tanks and some older games.

E8400

2GB Ram(the reason I am still using XP)

gt 210(don't worry, soon it will be 630, next year- 650 or up)

And don't tell me to downgrade to 10 for no reason. If XP is better, I will stay with it. If 7 is better, I will upgrade.

Security is not concerning me.

It won't be upgraded (ram), ddr2 is way too expensive to be worth it.

Windows XP is dead, has no updated and vulnerable to viruses. So I would suggest getting Windows 10.

[Djole123]

Windows XP-Unless you want to do some registry hacks to get updates 'till 2019, it's not worth it.

Windows Vista-Unless you want to go with the Starter edition (u can't even change wallpaper), it's again, not worth it.

Windows 7-Good balance beetween these old and new

Windows 8/8.1-Has some legacy issues, but good for modern stuff

Windows 10-In my experience, it was slow as hellllll. Don't reccomend it on older hardware

[Ivelin__]

Soo, XP it is. I have no problem with no updates, they just slow down. The viruses may become a problem, but by the time this happens my 1155 build will be finished(currently no money, it needs HDD/SSD and a better PSU) and it will have enough power for 7 ultimate x64(pirated ofcourse, no way I am going to pay 400bgn for a OS, whatever it is)

[Delicieuxz]

Windows 10 vs 8 vs 7 gaming performance:

http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1460〈=english

 

"Most of you guys might have already expected that, in the case of gaming performance, the three operating systems aren’t worlds apart. Nevertheless it is interesting to see that there are some actual differences. As you can see by the results gathered during our testing, Windows 8.1 is producing the highest frame rates. On second place there is Windows 7 and Windows 10 comes in third. If we were to come up with kind of a forecast, we’d be writing that maybe, at some point in the future Windows 10 could be the fastest operating system from Microsoft for gaming, but just now the crown belongs to Windows 8.1"

 

 

 

Windows 7 will have the most support for games at this time, and the most community effort to produce fixes for older games. It also continues to support all new game releases, and will receive support for Vulkan, which is the OpenGL-ish version of DirectX 12 and accomplishes the same performance boost.
 

I would generally think that Windows 7 is the best OS from a the perspective of someone who plays games from all years, but if you know that the games you are going to play all work fine on Windows XP, and that you aren't going to want to make use of any additional support that Windows 7 offers, then there's no point in using anything different.

 

Which OS delivers the highest average FPS can vary between XP and 7 depending on the game, but there are also likely to be more stability issues in XP.

 

Scroll down on this page to see benchmark comparisons between XP and Vista and 7: http://www.maximumpc.com/windows-7-review-xp-vs-vista-vs-7-in-80-benchmarks/#page-4

[Yongtjunkit]

As the title says. I will be playing World of Tanks and some older games.

E8400

2GB Ram(the reason I am still using XP)

gt 210(don't worry, soon it will be 630, next year- 650 or up)

And don't tell me to downgrade to 10 for no reason. If XP is better, I will stay with it. If 7 is better, I will upgrade.

Security is not concerning me.

It won't be upgraded (ram), ddr2 is way too expensive to be worth it.

You should upgrade to windows 10, at least window 7. Windows XP had reached its end of surport. Windows 7 have better compatibility with old games windows 10 for better graphics

[Delicieuxz]

Windows 10 doesn't produce better graphics than Windows 7.

[GoodBytes]

Ok here is the real thing:

-> DirectX wtv, doesn't matter. Even if you pick a GeForce 630 you won't be playing games to reach any setting to matter. If the game doesn't run due to not supporting a newer version of DirectX (usually game are backward compatible, but just let's say), in any case it won't run properly.

-> Windows 8 over Windows 7, has A LOT of optimization done to the OS which really benefits slow systems. It allowed Atom based system, to be enjoyable to use (not just that the Intel Atom CPUs got better). So you will benefit from this.

-> Windows 10 is like Windows 8. But, it does use more GPU power. This is mostly because more Windows built-in programs (Windows Calculator, Photo Viewer, Edge, etc) including the start menu, calendar/time pop-up, network panel, etc. are all GPU accelerated. That means that means that while it will struggle on slow system, if you have a more modern GPU, it should handle it fine. I expect the GeForce 630 that you plan on getting will be no problem. If you use the original Intel integrated graphics of the system (assuming it has one), then forget it.

-> Windows XP will perform better, much like MSDOS, due of being lighter system. However, your system will shine more with an SSD and more RAM (4GB of RAM), due to the fact that XP regardless of how much free RAM you have, was designed for system with 128MB, yes, MB!!! of RAM. So it has this very aggressive behavior to put the least thing in RAM, but rather on your HDD. The OS doesn't support SSD (will work, but you'll take 0 advantage of the SSD. Heck, XP barely support SATA to start with). The OS is a serious security concern as well. And I don't mean because it doesn't have anymore security updates. No. To put you in context, when Windows XP was released, XP had bad security. Sure it was better than previous version of Windows, but the problem is that it is based on Windows NT 3, a 1993 OS, in a time where all these mass and even deadly virus/malware was not really a thing. And the Internet was really not what it is today. To be in perspective, in 1995, the web was mostly sites from people of their cat, and family. Kinda like a Facebook but people learned HTML/CSS and did something. You had very few businesses, and it was more advertising then actually selling things. the e-commerce thing was not really a thing. The Internet was mostly used for communication purposes from businesses to businesses (e-mail, and database sharing between the same company at several locations), and things like this.

That is why Microsoft started the Longhorn project, where they scrap XP, and started from scratch (at around 80%), 6 years later, in a rushed released, we had Vista. 3 year later of polish, clean up, and optimization (and let the hardware of computers catch up from it's idle state of many years, revived it like the old days, and pushed performance forwards, allowing modern Windows to run fine and smooth), we got Windows 7. So you can say, in a way, making Windows of tomorrow back in 2001, took Microsoft 9 years in a way. Yes, an OS is SUPER complicated peace of software. What you see, and interact with, is like only 10% of an OS. There is A LOT that goes on, on the back.

Anyway, Windows XP, I can assure you, that all security holes are well known, and the OS in such in a bad state that Microsoft could not really fix them. Imagine looking at chicken wire. Each hole is a security hole. I believe an 8 year old kid can make a mass powerful attach for XP with relative ease, and trust me I won't be surprised.

Windows Vista and up, priorities RAM. It loves RAMs. The more you have it, the better the experience. It will do its best to avoid using your HDD, unlike XP, where you can be sure the moment you minimize something it is basically on your pagefile instead of RAM. And I think a perfect example of XP behaviors (and also the downside that XP and older Windows used the CPU to draw, which sucks horribly at it, hence why we use graphics cards) is when you quit from a game, and your HDD is under max load, stressing like no tomorrow, and your screen is all black, slowly drawing the interface, as the CPU is busy not only drawing (intensive), but swapping stuff from pagefile back to RAM. What a mess.

You want the OS to use the most RAM as possible. 'cause even a set of fast SSD on SATA-3 RAID for performance, is slower than your RAM. So, yea.

If you can't get more RAM on your system, which ever the OS you pick, install 32-bit version of it (consumes less RAM)

You might be OK with Windows 10 being 64-bit, as Windows 10 uses dynamic in place memory compression technique, which will try and compress in place in RAM unused programs to free RAM space for other programs, just as an intermediate step to avoid using the pagefile (as mentioned, fast SSD's setup is still slower than RAM).

Performance in gaming by OS. This one is hard to determine. Why? Because it has to do with driver optimization, mixed with hardware manufacture no longer optimizing their drivers for older games, and focus on newer games. Every new version of Windows, you always see that it is slower than the previous one, and the gap between the previous one and the one before is the same (within margin of errors, something to always consider when looking at benchmarks, because Windows is not a Real-Time OS, so there can be a million reason for something to make the system do something on the back and affect performance).

But usually, the latest Windows, will perform worst then the older one, but over time will match, and may surpass it, all because of optimization.

I have similar computer

My mother, actually have similar computer. The CPU is a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, GeForce 730, Samsung 840 EVO (no need something fast, just something cheap, as the system only support SATA-2). The system ran Windows 8.1 64-bit and now Windows 10 64-bit above and beyond. In fact it feels like my gaming desktop computer in terms of general usage. Of course, it show it's slowness when you extract .zip files, or install programs. But in terms of using Office, surfing the web, etc. Very similar experience.

It is basically an old Lenovo thin form factor system, which I upgraded the RAM (2 to 4GB), put an SSD, fanless low profile GeForce 730 (because the Intel GPU was too weak and no drivers for Windows 8. Low profile was needed to fit the case), and replaced the fan of the case and the PSU where old and of course crappy, to Noctua ones, set at the lowest speed. You don't know if the system is on or off, just by the sound.

[Ivelin__]

-snip-

Ok, the PC is going to be replaced soon anyway, but it kind of depends on a lot of things(when will dad give me 100euro to buy a new PSU and a SSD, do I want to spend the money, and something else will probably pop up).

8/8.1- I still hate it for being what it is, and what it did(Metro , that sh*tty interface)

10- In my country 99% of all software is pirated, and with all the security issues(like, why would M$ make it so easy to disable stuff they put in months to do)

7- it's about the RAM, when I upgrade this will be the OS I am going to install

XP- I don't know why you are all freaking out about "no support", it's a perfectly OK OS for a PC that's only used 2-3 times a week(or less). 

[GoodBytes]

Ok, the PC is going to be replaced soon anyway, but it kind of depends on a lot of things(when will dad give me 100euro to buy a new PSU and a SSD, do I want to spend the money, and something else will probably pop up).

8/8.1- I still hate it for being what it is, and what it did(Metro , that sh*tty interface)

10- In my country 99% of all software is pirated, and with all the security issues(like, why would M$ make it so easy to disable stuff they put in months to do)

7- it's about the RAM, when I upgrade this will be the OS I am going to install

XP- I don't know why you are all freaking out about "no support", it's a perfectly OK OS for a PC that's only used 2-3 times a week(or less).

You do what you want. I am sharing my extensive knowledge on Windows.

If you think I am saying crap, then too bad for you.

Also, I don't care what others do. If they enjoy pirated software, music, and so on, then good. You in the other hand, do the right thing, and buy your stuff.

[obsidian1200]

The best way to answer your question is for you to research the games you want to continue playing on the machine and how well they work on newer OSes. Sometimes they work perfectly, some may need compatibility mode enabled or other fairly easy work arounds to get them working, and others may suffer from bugs that can't be fixed.

 

For that matter, you could always look into dual-booting between XP and a newer operating system if it turns out some of the games you do enjoy don't function well on newer OSes.

[BuckGup]

Windows 7 all the way. It just works with everything simple and sweet

[LabRat]

I reformatted an xp machine about 6months ago. i got updates for it. all the service packs too.

 

an e8400 and WoT. I'd be running xp. i'd also bump the ram a bit. the thing with w7 or 10 and more modern graphics cards is less performance for your system. the games will be wanting to render DX10/11/12 graphics. xp will only render DX9 graphics giving you a leg up.