Windows 8 gaming – no faster than Windows 7

Windows 8 hasn't received the welcome that Microsoft would have hoped, even though sales seem quite good so far. We have been hearing that Windows 8 is a great operating system for gaming however so far it doesn't seem to have brought any radical improvements.

Our friends over at Hardware.info published an article this weekend which shows that both Nvidia and AMD performance between the operating systems is pretty much on an equal footing. Their conclusion page was summed up with a single paragraph – “After many hours of benchmarking, we can finally and convincingly settle the debate about whether gaming in Windows 8 is better or worse than in Windows 7. And the answer is: it's the same!”

While Windows 8 seems to be a great operating system for a tablet, we still aren't sold on the merits for a desktop operating system. We recently ran polls on Facebook and the overriding response was that ‘Windows 7 is better'. We haven't even bothered with an analysis yet as our behind the scenes testing shows exactly what Hardware.info posted – very little change, if any. It would also appear that only a small portion of our audience have adopted Windows 8, so we may hold off until 2013 before moving all our test systems to Windows 8.

It is too early to claim that Microsoft have released another ‘Windows Vista', but the public response in the enthusiast sector is certainly less than positive. Additionally, CEO Ballmer spoke out about the release of their Surface tablets – he said sales were off to a ‘modest' start, which certainly isn't the kind of statement that instills confidence.

I tried Windows 8 myself last week and found that once I disabled the hideous tiles and modified the operating system with the Stardock Start 8 menu hack – available for $4.99 over here, it looked and felt almost identical to Windows 7. Would I upgrade all my machines now? I see no reason, although Microsoft will try forcing their hand to ensure sales are good – such as developing Direct X 11.1 ONLY for Windows 8.

Kitguru says: Windows 8 – are you happy with it? have you even tried it?

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