Experiment: Modern Win7 Gaming rig

[TheBlackSun]

Greetings, Community!

Now, here's a crazy idea I've been having.

 

A build for breakneck modern performance and ultimate backwards compatibility - using Win7!

As such, there's really just one rule: No Win10. What's the very best that Win7 can achieve, nowadays...?

 

How about.. two options for each component. The sane option, and the manman's choice.

Feel free to go crazy on that one, disregarding practicality and expenses as long as it's compatible with Win7.

 

1. Budget & Location

Doesn't matter all that much - as long as it works, in the end. 3k, 5k - heck, maybe even 9k (€) in total? Sure, why not, let's hear it. The costs will ultimately be determined by what is needed to build either a sane, an insane, or an in-between-y build, running Win7.

 

2. Aim

First and foremost, raw gaming performance - everything from the newest and shiniest games (let's say, Star Citizen on max in VR [riiight] ), to Win7-roots compatibility for many retro games, using things such as DOSbox. If there are sacrifices required to be made, so be it - but compatibility is almost as important as raw performance, for this one. Having the cake - and eating it, too! As much as possible, at least. If at all.

 

3. Monitors

I'm not opposed to consider one of those stupidly wide, desk-spanning kind of screens for the insane, or (at least) two medium sized screens for the sane build. Middle- to high class category monitors - and if retro gaming is still possible, some kind of lower resolution support on at least one of them would be important too, I imagine.

 

4. Peripherals

G910 keyboard and G900 mouse, wireless Xbox, SNES and NES controllers along with a HOTAS are already present, no need for new ones, yet. As mentioned above, the main challenge here is still the OS: Win7.

 

5. Why are you upgrading?

I'm trying to see how much of a great experience you can still get on Win7 machines today, in spite of the whole "Win10 becoming mandatory" thing. A crazy Win7 build rivaling the most expensive Win10 gaming machines seems rather intriguing, doesn't it?

 

6. Bonus points

A particular neat or flashy case? Mobility, thanks to small form factor, LAPTOP, even?! Bonus points for all of those. I love neat and clean looking things. Enough to sacrifice some performance.

 

 

When everything's said and done, I'd be interested in swapping the drive [SSD / M.2 Optane] and installing Win10 on another, to benchmark and compare the performance, too. In the end, maybe set up a dual boot for the best of both worlds.

 

Anyone interested in helping me pick some stuff?

Because boy, that sure are exotic requirements.

[iRileyx]

Just build the rig you'd get if you were running Win 10, there's honestly going to be no real differences lol, as its a new build you'll still be running the same hardware as if you were building a W10 system.

It's not like there's a secret combo that gives W7 an edge in performance.

[Blebekblebek]

There's nothing wrong with windows 7, even for gaming.

it supports up to 128GB RAM and 256 Cores CPU

 

I really don't understand why you think so.

The only reason why it's being left out is because Intel & AMD decide no longer supports it for their new lineup.

Thus making it redundant to use it with new hardware.

 

[AngryBeaver]

1 minute ago, Blebekblebek said:

There's nothing wrong with windows 7, even for gaming.

it supports up to 128GB RAM and 256 Cores CPU

 

I really don't understand why you think so.

The only reason why it's being left out is because Intel & AMD decide no longer supports it for their new lineup.

Thus making it redundant to use it with new hardware.

 

Until you want DX12 support which doesn't exist on windows 7. Honestly, there is no reason to keep trying to hang on to a OS that is soon to be EOL.

 

Despite what you may think windows 10 IS superior. It runs better under the hood, it has nice added features, it is more secure, and while some can't stand the missing start menu.. it has easier options to locate things.

[TheBlackSun]

5 minutes ago, Blebekblebek said:

The only reason why it's being left out is because Intel & AMD decide no longer supports it for their new lineup.

Thus making it redundant to use it with new hardware.

 

That's why I'm asking. I've been on a gaming Laptop for... yeeears by now. Mobility is very valuable to me.

But especially in that category, I can't find anything that'll run on Win7 anymore. New Laptops released with Win10 might have drivers that are not available for 7 and such, if my understanding is correct.

[Blebekblebek]

1 minute ago, AngryBeaver said:

Despite what you may think windows 10 IS superior. It runs better under the hood, it has nice added features, it is more secure, and while some can't stand the missing start menu.. it has easier options to locate things.

Meh, it just windows 8 renamed.

even the kernel hasn't changed, so more secure? if MS had treat windows 7 the same way they treat windows 10 what's the differences.

3 minutes ago, TheBlackSun said:

That's why I'm asking. I've been on a gaming Laptop for... yeeears by now. Mobility is very valuable for me.

But especially in that category, I can't find anything that'll run on Win7 any more. New Laptops released with Win10 might have drivers that are not available for 7 and such, if my understanding is correct.

you can use some windows 10 drivers for windows 7 and vice versa.

The most common issue isn't with the CPU/GPU or chipset.

but rather with the storage and input devices since most recent hardware only support USB3, and using M.2 or pcie, so the first problem would be installing windows 7 into new machine.

 

[Fadednova]

11 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

Until you want DX12 support which doesn't exist on windows 7. Honestly, there is no reason to keep trying to hang on to a OS that is soon to be EOL.

 

Despite what you may think windows 10 IS superior. It runs better under the hood, it has nice added features, it is more secure, and while some can't stand the missing start menu.. it has easier options to locate things.

"secure" means having you private data as main course for microsoft

[TheBlackSun]

23 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

Honestly, there is no reason to keep trying to hang on to a OS that is soon to be EOL.

[ . . .]

It runs better under the hood, it has nice added features, it is more secure, and while some can't stand the missing start menu.. it has easier options to locate things.

 

11 minutes ago, Fadednova said:

"secure" means having you private data as main course for microsoft

Win7 is still receiving security updates.

However, this ain't about why, or why not to use Win10.

But it's the only non-debatable rule for this build - no Win10, period.

At least not for the main drive / system running the machine.

I'm not going to discuss that rule - it just exists.

 

 

I'm perfectly fine with not constantly upgrading to the latest thing right on release date - but I'm the kind of guy to throw a huge amount of money at a system day one, getting the latest and greatest no matter the cost, and then keeping that running almost unchanged for an extensive amount of time. Customizing and tinkering on the software side of things a lot. That's how I work in general, I guess =D

 

As such, I've stuck to the gaming Laptop for many years by now.

The best thing I could imagine would be a sick gaming Laptop, no matter the cost, running Win7 and supporting external GPU for gaming when at the desk. If there is such a thing, for Win7 mind you, I'd probably buy that instantly. I just ain't the hardware and drivers expert, myself.

 

And as I'm very much interested in the best VR experience money can buy, I'm now considering desk PCs, too.

[AngryBeaver]

32 minutes ago, TheBlackSun said:

 

Win7 is still receiving security updates.

However, this ain't about why, or why not to use Win10.

But it's the only non-debatable rule for this build - no Win10, period.

At least not for the main drive / system running the machine.

I'm not going to discuss that rule - it just exists.

 

 

I'm perfectly fine with not constantly upgrading to the latest thing right on release date - but I'm the kind of guy to throw a huge amount of money at a system day one, getting the latest and greatest no matter the cost, and then keeping that running almost unchanged for an extensive amount of time. Customizing and tinkering on the software side of things a lot. That's how I work in general, I guess =D

 

As such, I've stuck to the gaming Laptop for many years by now.

The best thing I could imagine would be a sick gaming Laptop, no matter the cost, running Win7 and supporting external GPU for gaming when at the desk. If there is such a thing, for Win7 mind you, I'd probably buy that instantly. I just ain't the hardware and drivers expert, myself.

 

And as I'm very much interested in the best VR experience money can buy, I'm now considering desk PCs, too.

Sounds to me like you have more money than sense. So lets throw a few grand at a new top of the line pc, but not run top of the line software to support it.

 

You are limiting what you can get out of the machine by a decent bit. A lot of the newer features of motherboards, cpu's, and gpu's are not supported on windows 7. So if you are going to be set on using an outdated OS you might as well settle on using slightly outdated hardware.

 

Now when it comes to an external GPU on a laptop... all of the current solutions cause performance loss as they do not have enough throughput to keep up with the GPU. So you are going to see bottle-necking at the physical connection between GPU and laptop.

 

 

[TheBlackSun]

4 minutes ago, AngryBeaver said:

*snip*

Still want to do exactly that.

And, bottleneck or not: more... is more. Be that bottleneck called Win7, or external GPU - I don't care so much about what I could get out of it, I care about what I do get out of it, now and in the future. Same with gaming laptops, back then. Also, please don't conveniently skip reading the "dual boot" part...? Even with the focus being on Win7.

[porina]

1 hour ago, Blebekblebek said:

The only reason why it's being left out is because Intel & AMD decide no longer supports it for their new lineup.

Let's get this the right way around. It is MS that crippled support for anything newer than Skylake. AMD still provide Ryzen chipset drivers for Win7. Intel... I'm not so sure, but they tow the MS line. MS also actively blocks Windows Updates if you use Win7 with newer CPUs. 

 

On that basis, if you wanted a MS supported hardware platform with Win7, if you want more than 4 cores, you'd have to base it off X99 (Haswell-E or Broadwell-E). If 4 cores are enough, you could go Skylake (non-X). Apart from the supported CPU, the rest would be same as a Win10 system.

[TheBlackSun]

36 minutes ago, porina said:

Let's get this the right way around. It is MS that crippled support for anything newer than Skylake.

That's one of the reasons I even want to try this. Feels like they don't like the poor adoption rate of their newest OS and play dirty to force it. In March, I think it was, more than 60% of gamers on steam still ran Win7. I'd like to create the best circumstances for Win7 to work in modern gaming, just to spite their newest coup to try and force Win10 on everyone by crippling every other option. Some kind of Streissand effect motivating me, if you will - expenses are near irrelevant, I just want to see the options.

 

So, the new CPUs will indeed be an issue with 7? No way to force your way around this? I've seen CPUs working just fine until they're "patched out" of compatibility, so to speak.

 

If a particular component just won't work, I'm looking for an equivalent other component that will. Because of the support, Ryzen is a very relevant option to me. Any CPU in partucular you can recommend as a match?

[porina]

30 minutes ago, TheBlackSun said:

So, the new CPUs will indeed be an issue with 7? No way to force your way around this? I've seen CPUs working just fine until they're "patched out" of compatibility, so to speak.

 

If a particular component just won't work, I'm looking for an equivalent other component that will. Because of the support, Ryzen is a very relevant option to me. Any CPU in partucular you can recommend as a match?

I've ran Win7 on Coffee Lake and Ryzen, with no significant problems. As said, the CPUs are unsupported for Windows Update, but I don't care about security for my uses (competitive benchmarking and compute). If you want to use newer CPUs, you will have to consider if this is an acceptable risk for you. I hear there exists unofficial patches that can get Windows Update working again, but I've no personal experience of finding or using them.

 

The pain point can be getting the initial installation done, you'll have to look up on the details there. I kinda sidestepped the problem by cloning an already working install then installing updated drivers as needed. Beware if USB functionality isn't working until drivers are in place as it does make it rather difficult to control the system! Could be worked around by remote desktop or PS2 peripherals.

 

Otherwise, you can still consider X99. The problem is finding a cheap and good motherboard. CPUs are less of a problem, I got a 5820k earlier in the year and last time I looked pricing was pretty low.

[TheBlackSun]

Okay. How does a system with...

 

- Intel Core i7 8700

- EVGA GeForce® GTX™ 1080 Ti FTW3

- and M.2 + 32GB RAM

- on Mini-ITX board

 

... sound - does that hold up?

For Star Citizen or VR games in general, for example.

 

I want to install and compare Win7, Win10 and Linux on that.

There was something about NVME and Win7 that could be a problem on install, I think...?

[TheBlackSun]

 

 

 

 

 

Main OS: Win7

 

Asrock Fatal1ty z370 ITX/ac

Intel Core i7 8700 (non-K)

32GB G.SKILL TridentZ (3200MHZ, CL16)

nVidia EVGA 1080ti FTW3

 

OS: Samsung 960 Pro M.2 (512GB)
Data: Samsung 860 Evo SSD (2 TB)

 

Samsung Super Ultra Wide Monitor [C49 HG 9x]  @ 3840 x 1080