Performnce upgrade vs format?.

I wouldn't say there is, the only thing with doing a upgrade is that it leaves the previous OS files and folders behind so you can do a restore back to your previous OS.

so if you are referring to W10 you would upgrade W7 Sp1 or W 8.1 to W10 which will leave behind a windows.old folder from your previous OS.

I like to do clean installs so once mine was activated I formatted and done a clean install with their ISO file
 
For many people you get a feel good factor when doing a fresh install over an upgrade and according to this there are pros and cons for either.....


...for my eldest daughters aged Acer Vista bought laptop going to 7 and then to 10 meant that the upgrade picked up all the hardware correctly and installed the appropriate drivers etc.
Trying a fresh install of 10 on it left us with lots of unknown devices and question marks in the device manager. Updates did not sort that out and finding the appropriate drivers was a nightmare.

Depending on the age of the PC, I have tended to find laptops more of an issue than generic desktops for driver support etc, you might be best making a macrium reflect backup first and note the hardware inside and source drivers etc for a fresh install.
 
Hi. Is there any performance hit from upgrading windows instead of a full format?.

Not that I've noticed, but I do always prefer a clean install if I can be bothered. W8.1 to 10 has been the best upgrade I've done though. Previously, going from 7 to 8 always caused problems for me.
 
No but full format's make it feel much faster as it's a clean system.

Not really, the upgrade to Windows 10 isn't like the old upgrades from XP to 7 or Vista. It's a completely new system as far as anyone is really concerned, and if you're that bothered, you can 'Reset my PC' and opt to keep nothing like you can in Windows 8.
 
Always better to do a fresh install. You can have some odd buggy setting/configuration/driver moved over from an old install.
 
Theres no difference. Just upgrade unless theres problems you want to sort out. It's not like the old days where upgrading an OS was messy and almost guaranteed to cause issues.

Going from 8.1 to 10 for me was smooth, the only thing that didn't work was the graphics driver. I've not had a single issue so far :)
 
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Always better to do a fresh install. You can have some odd buggy setting/configuration/driver moved over from an old install.

The only buggy setting or configuration carried over would be those in the BIOS, which a fresh install wouldn't solve. As for drivers, Windows 10 will use the same drivers as 7/8 unless they require an upgrade like in the case of graphics cards (to the new WDM version).
 
I already done it from fresh install from windows 8 pro 64bit to win 8.1pro 64bit to windows 10 pro 64 bit upgrade from windows update. Everything went smooth. Just wanted to no if any loss on performance that all. Also my mother board box says windows 8.1 ready and not 8 so must be newer. Asus H61M-k.

Only difference ive seen is temp abit lower on graphic card using GPU tweak for my asus strix 970. On load full graphics 68c using power saving but using game profile goes up to 82c. The Power saving mode in windows 10 is 4c cooler then 8.1 but same in game mode. Also that's at 120hz set in the control panel can go up to 144hz but find that too choppy in some games what don't support above 60hz like AC4 but 120hz is just fine.
 
i did the upgrade and used that for 3 days and then did a clean install, i certainly got lots of ssd space back, (i had already deleted windows.old) and also noticed things seemed cleaner.

tbh it wont make much more difference, as a geek i wanted a clean install on my main rig, for the mrs and tv machine an upgrade is fine.
 
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