Will Windows 7 improve videogame performance? Is it really worth it?

Hi, I've got Vista and I just received a new laptop today from Dell. Just wondering if I should go with the £30 Windows 7 offer for students. Two questions:

1) I've heard Vista is horrible but I've never really used it before properly. Is it really worth it to buy Windows 7 if you've got Vista?

2) I've heard Vista eats RAM, so will Windows 7 improve gaming performance?

My specs:

Dell Studio 1555
P8600 2.4 GHz
4 Gig RAM
ATI HD Radeon 4750

 

Depending on what you play there can be a noticible speed increase... and why so much for the upgrade you should be eligible for a free upgrade ( possibly S&H charges ) as ptreet much all new machines since mid June are eligible for the free upgrade

 

What games do you play? In my experience, none of my games experienced any significant gains moving to Win7.

 

Your new dell is eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7. Check their website.

 

Here you go:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/windows-7-vs-vista-vga-game-performance/

That covers desktop GPUs, but it is still a good read.

 

Some games did run better on Windows 7 of course.
But for overall gaming performance changes, Vista and 7 is about the same. Just that 7's have slightly(0.5-1%) higher than Vista's.
However, Windows 7 have DirectX 11 currently which Vista doesn't have it.
So, those Games run which used DirectX 11(probably very new games and very few) will have better performance on Windows 7 due to DirectX 11.
Yet, Microsoft claims that Windows Vista will have DirectX 11 support in the future too.
Sad for XP which only used DirectX 9.

 

I found pretty much all of my DX10 games ran better in Windows 7 than with Vista. So I game in Windows 7 only now. Once the free upgrade comes I will only use Windows 7.

 

Simple Answer:
YES!!!
Win7 will be much more resource efficient than Vista.

 

Im with you. I really got incredible performance boost and gpu was also under control. So, WIn 7 is must have for gamers.

 

Hmmm, my Dell Studio 15 is REFURBISHED :O, but I did only just get it.

Is it still legible?

 

Probably not. I ran into the same thing buying from the Dell Outlet during the free Vista upgrade period

 

well you still should be eligible because its tied to the new vista install not the notebook...

 

Should I upgrade to windows seven for gaming or stay with vista

 

Those who have beta tested W7 say that W7 is better than Vista and some claim that it rivals XP wrt gaming performance, which would be nice.

 

Here you go. This should answer your question rather thoroughly:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/windows-7-vs-vista-vga-game-performance/

 

You should be illegible for a free Win 7 upgrade of the same edition as your Vista. I highly recommend Windows 7 If you can go 64-bit version, it will be even better as not only you have more security, get to you use more your FULL 4GB of RAM, but also unlock the full potential of your CPU (and run 64-bit applications/games/codecs), which presents it self as a nice boost even for for you 32-bit software (about 10-15% increase).

Vista isn't horrible, but in fact a great OS. Just because some people had fun installing Vista on their 200$ laptops that can't even run XP properly, and a lack of optimized Vista drivers for many devices at it's early release.
True that the 32-bit Vista was mess as it was done at the last minute for a OS. But, the 64-bit Vista was MUCH more polished.. sadly most review sites decided to treat Vista 64-bit as XP 64-bit and just ignore it. Also, Vista was a bran new core, working differently then XP, however this has been ignroe in many reviews and articles and Vista was "optimized" (read that as CRIPPLE), like XP. XP Optimization (disable all services as possible for example), was crippling Vista for the most part, therefore that produced negative conclusion of Vista. Once the dust settled, people saw Vista 64-bit as a great OS, far form Win7, but better than XP any-day now. Sadly, early users simply decided to not give Vista a real second chance, and teh dust settling part was towards the end of life of Vista.

People that complained about Vista eating RAM, should read a book on operating system and computers. What is point of RAM... offer memory to the system accessible significantly faster over any other existing medium (other than the L1, L2 and L3 cache of your processor).

XP memory management behavior, was abysmal. It was smart when XP was released, as it allowed preatty much the unachievable to be achievable (require more RAM then what existed on the market at affordable prices).
Many experts alerted Microsoft that while teh current system is great, it will be very problematic and abysmal when more memory (512MB+) will be affordable and people would get that in their system. Microsoft did not really care, as a new Windows with that fixed was supposed to be released in 2003, which would have been a just in time. However, as you noticed, in 2003 there was no new Windows. Yes, because Microsoft realized that not only no one had a 64-bit CPU in their system at home&office desk, but also that making a new Operating System from scratch was a little more time consuming (make that 6 years and not 2 and half like an ordinary Windows upgrade). So the memory management problem appeared, and caused BIG problems, especially among professionals who needed a lot of memory. Which explain a push to do their jobs on Mac OS rather than on Windows. (Artists, photographers, 3d modeling, audio montage/editing/recording, and more).

What was so bad in XP memory management, you ask? Simple, it had 2 fundamental flaws.
1- 2GB limit per applications, no mater how much RAM the user has in his system
2- Wonder why XP uses MUCH less RAM over Vista? It's because it put EVERYTHING it can on your HDD instead of your RAM. The nano-second it can free up your RAM by moving everything to your HDD, XP was doing it. This caused sever performance issues, not really visible in games as it's memory is continuously used, which prevented Windows XP to dump your game to your HDD while you were playing it, but was trying. In result, no mater how much RAM your system had, it always acted as if you wear low in memory.

Under Vista 64-bit this was all gone. In fact it did the exact opposite... EVERYTHING goes to your RAM, and avoided the HDD at all costs unless you fell in to a low memory situation. That is why Vista takes more RAM.

In result Vista is significantly more responsive than XP, provided some performance increase as disk access was lowered, and increase laptop battery life (again reduce disk access). Of course Vista, on laptops properly equiped for Vista requirements, it didn't show any battery life chances over Vista as Vista had a lot of new things over it which made it use more power (ie: having the hole interface drawn by the GPU which is designed for doing just that, instead of the CPU which sucks at it)

Windows 7 memory management is similar to Vista, however it's algorithm has been optimized providing many small benefits which results in larger, more visible performance increase over Vista's.