Benefits of Win7 over XP

NeilF · 11 Mar 2010 at 15:56

apatia77 said:
I think all you get extra is directx 10/11.

WinXP is still good enough for everything, it will play games and run all applications just as nicely as Win7.

But hey hooo, Win7/Vista looks rather good, GUI wise by default.

Really, I thought some games now needed Vista/Windows 7?

finite · 11 Mar 2010 at 22:17

SiriusB said:
I absolutely love the driver support in W7. Usually the biggest pain of an XP install is hunting down and installing drivers and the million restarts. With 7 you can in most cases use it right away with its built-in drivers.

I've just done a fresh install (display driver only on a 760G motherboard) and would you Adam and Eve it the eSata on the Quick Port Pro is working

I'll have to see which one of the ATI chipset drivers breaks it.., but it seems as though I will be better off with MS defaults.

Mp4 · 11 Mar 2010 at 22:35

NeilFawcett said:
Really, I thought some games now needed Vista/Windows 7?

Some do - Just Cause 2 is one of them

Well been a week on Win7 really enjoying it 4GB ram helps a lot also very tempted to get another 4GB in two weeks & then save for a new gfx card

IE is outstanding i've not moved to FF as of yet

super fast indeed

With XP i used to services & msconfig most of the time to make it run a bit faster + i hated startup programs.

Not touched this aspect as of yet with Win7 as i feel i don't have too!

theheyes · 11 Mar 2010 at 23:09

SiriusB said:
It would have to be really low spec. Windows 7 does very well on lower end hardware and minimal RAM. I know you know this from the VMs you and I have both run

Oh aye I agree, but if we isolated "speed" as a factor (and what is speed anyway? general responsiveness, memory and GPU demands I guess) then on the same low-ish end, low-ish memory PC then XP would probably run the better of the two, and my point slowly spirals into conjecture...

Anyway I also agree with the driver support. It is good in Vista too. But for me the whole WIM format thing is close to being the Best Thing Ever. The amount of time the two combined save me is brilliant.

Hilts · 12 Mar 2010 at 12:05

Mp4 said:
Some do - Just Cause 2 is one of them

Well been a week on Win7 really enjoying it 4GB ram helps a lot also very tempted to get another 4GB in two weeks & then save for a new gfx card

IE is outstanding i've not moved to FF as of yet super fast indeed

With XP i used to services & msconfig most of the time to make it run a bit faster + i hated startup programs.

Not touched this aspect as of yet with Win7 as i feel i don't have too!

I agree, only been on W7 for 4 days now, and i used to do all the old XP tweaks and MSconfig tricks to get XP to run well (although i had no gripes with it). Windows 7 hasn't made my games run better (the hardware has) but the overall OS performance is amazing, so mich quicker, well instant really (no more egg timer) and transfer rates between my drives is brilliant.

My only flaw with W7 is the sound performance which seems a tad quiet, although i'm working on it

mrk · 12 Mar 2010 at 12:12

win7 sound is of a higher standard to any other Windows version

Duke · 12 Mar 2010 at 13:15

SiriusB said:
I absolutely love the driver support in W7. Usually the biggest pain of an XP install is hunting down and installing drivers and the million restarts. With 7 you can in most cases use it right away with its built-in drivers.

Yep and it searches online a lot better so will grab them for you too, if not on their list.

NathanE · 12 Mar 2010 at 13:25

Khaaan! said:
win7 sound is of a higher standard to any other Windows version

It's the same high fidelity audio stack as Vista