Windows XP vs. Windows 7

Microsoft recently released its latest Windows operating system; Windows 7. Many enthusiasts complained about Windows Vista’s sluggish performance, and many gamers opted to skip the troubled OS altogether, deciding to stick with Windows XP.

With Windows 7 widely available now, and early reports suggesting that it has patched up many of the shortcomings that were present in Vista, gamers have reason to be excited.

Can Windows 7 deliver equal or even superior performance to Windows XP service pack 3? While the prospect of DirectX11 has many enthusiasts drooling, the reality is that current games will benefit from solid DX9 and DX10 performance. With this in mind, we benchmarked the two operating systems using a selection of modern games in DX9.

Test Rig

AMD Phenom II 965BE@3800MHz

8GB DDR 3 1333MHz

AMD HD 5870

Testing

All games were benchmarked in DX9 mode. Identical hardware was used on both operating systems, with all the most recent system and game updates installed. All games were benchmarked at 1680×1050. The scores indicate how many frames are rendered per second.

According to our tests, Windows 7 offers slightly improved performance over Windows XP in some games, while others are likely to be equal, and others will show improved performance in XP.

Considering that Windows 7 is a new OS, and performance is likely to improve with future updates, its gaming prospects are promising. Add to that DX10 and DX11 functionality, and gamers currently still using XP have good cause to make the Windows 7 plunge.

Next week we will be comparing the gaming performance of Windows 7 to Windows Vista.

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