Is windows not stable enough to run multiple games?

Even with 32gb ram, 8gb of video memory and 1tb of disk space, I still struggle to run multiple games at once without it a program crashing or having somekind of error that makes one or more programs crash or just be unstable. Even with an i7-7700hq I still dont even ultilize all of the cpu power and average only about 60% just running two games.

 

Forgive me if it comes across this way, but I don't mean for this to sound sarcastic and I am asking because I am genuinely curious...

Why in the world would you run multiple games at once? Maybe I am wrong, but I cannot imagine anyone having a compelling reason to do that, and I cannot imagine that computer manufacturers would reasonably contemplate the need for that scenario. They'd have to be fairly slow-paced games to be mentally engaged in both simultaneously. If you can concentrate fully on both at the same time, you're brain is way lots better at multi-tasking than mine is, LOL.

Whatever the reasons might be, I wouldn't expect much stability trying to do that. There would be too much workload activity going on (even if not overly demanding or taxing in terms of resource utilization) to expect a great deal of stability as if you were running multiple browser windows or several productivity applications.

 

Oh thats easy @Mr. Fox

The low hanging fruit being running an MMO in the background or non primary screen while you play something else on the primary, be it a campaign or FPS title etc etc. Lots of those MMO or sandbox games have logged in bonuses or passive tasks that are essentially just time burners.

 

Ah, ok. Did not know that since I hate strategy and MMO/MMORPG games.

 

Im not a huge fan either, but happens from time to time that I want to do something to fill the time but not actually dedicate full attention to it.

EDIT: To the OP

That all being said, its usually cleaner to run games in a VM box with Direct I/O access which is quite painful to do on a laptop with Optimus (not sure what system you have)

 

Well I definitively dont have optimus, and I like running multiple games at once for various reasons. It doesnt have to be solely games, it can be other demanding applications. Perhaps I should rephrase it to "multiple demanding applications".

I have never heard of running games on a VM box outside of old dos games. How does that work? I was referring to games that are about no older then 5 years old like destiny 2 being played with ESO while running 100 tabs of chrome.

 

Windows is perfectly stable when running multiple games - I ran several instances of WoW on my laptop with 16GB of RAM. It all depends on a game, some may not run well when there is another game running. In this case running game in VM might help.
Be aware that some multiplayer games will detect VM software as cheats and you might get a ban.

 

What exactly is the benefit of running software on a VM anyway? I am under the impression that windows is technically just one big VM anyways...

 

No it's not. Windows (as normally installed) runs on bare metal.

A virtual machine is as it says on the tin: a virtual computer that you can install an OS on and treat it like a regular bare-metal computer. It's nice for isolating stuff from your main OS or to run multiple OSes for whatever your reasons are, or to try out other OSes, etc.

 

I see. And given the games I play its very likely it will be recognized as cheating software or something.

 

Life was much simpler before cheating became so common, and crappy anti-cheat software became a thing. Sadly, some of the anti-cheat crapware even interferes with running legit applications in single player campaigns. I've heard some of them are extra stupid and blacklist things like RTSS and HWiNFO64.

 

Not really. As far as a game would know, it's just another computer. Could really only see an issue if you're trying to log into the same account multiple times at the same time, if the game has issue with that.

 

I've for example switched into DoTA a few times when a friend or friends invited, while another demanding game was running and with Chrome and other stuff still in the background, never had any issue with the Dell in my signature, which has the same CPU but a GTX1060 in my case for GPU. It could also be an issue with the game itself that you're are running. Another thing I've seen often is those with issues quite often have "tweaked" windows a lot or played with certain things like disabling page file or setting it really low for example, even if you have adequate RAM. I hope you haven't done too much of that sort of stuff.