How much performance loss if I upgrade to windows 7?

[Celeron_Phreak]

So I am running the system below in my sig, and I'm wondering how much of a gaming performance hit I will take if I upgrade to windows 7. The MAJORITY of my time is not so much gaming anymore, however when I do play, I would like the peace of mind that I'm still getting some decent frame rates using the same settings I currently use.

The games I currently am satisfied with are from around 2006 give and/or take 2-3 years. So, the F.E.A.R series, condemned, HL-2, Quake 4, Doom 3, Call of Duty 4, Portal series, Serious Sam 2, PREY, and of coarse Duke Nukem Forever.

I don't plan on upgrading to anything really current for awhile, just don't have the funds at the moment, and need to pay off some debt consolidation loans and I have a year left on a car loan. So what I have at the moment is going to have to do for now.


So with an Opteron 180, 3GB of RAM, and an 8800 Ultra, what type of gaming performance hit will I take going from XP Pro 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit?

 

[ozan]

I say open up a seperate partiton, download a 30 day win7 trial and install it

 

[Celeron_Phreak]

I was thinking of doing exactly that. My free time is next to nothing at the moment, I just didn't really want to waste the time of doing it all if there might be some experienced users were here.

 

[Bobnova]

Probably none, really. Nothing noticeable anyway.

 

[Culbrelai]

If you disable Superfetch performance/resource usage should be about the same

 

[ozan]

Windows 7 has better resource management. My older build(6 years old E4400, 4 gig ram) had no performance drop at all. It just allocates more memory and especially more video ram when running.

 

[c627627]

I'm not sure it's a good idea to disable Superfetch. There are other things that are disabled routinely but Superfetch is controversial and a lot of people leave it alone.

3 examples of what's definitely OK to disable imo if you so choose:

* [Disable System Restore:] Right click on computer > Properties > Advanced system settings > System Protection TAB > Configure > Disable system protection > OK > OK

* [Disable hibernate mode in Desktops] from DOS > powercfg -h off
[To get to DOS: Start Menu > Windows System > Command Prompt]

* [Disable Indexing] Right click on every drive > Properties > UNCHECK: Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties



Even if you have all the resources in the world, it's a great idea to leave the previous OS in tact and instal the new OS on another (relatively small) partition and there have only Windows and maybe a few small applications (nothing big - so that it is easier to image/reimage).


Then you dual boot or multi-boot and simply reboot into another version of windows IF, make that WHEN, things go wrong or don't work when you most need them to.

 

[Culbrelai]

When I disabled it, RAM usage went down 1-1.5GB on the first reboot.

 

[c627627]

I would like to be wrong. I seem to recall articles being written that explain it in detail, it may not have been this one but could you take just a quick look to look at this:

http://blog.tune-up.com/myth-buster...erfetch-on-vista-and-windows-7-is-a-bad-idea/

 

[Culbrelai]

You know, its funny, XP outperforms 7 and Vista in several respects, and it doesn't have superfetch... including boot times

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2355703,00.asp

So I have to dispute that article =P

OS bloat is baaad

 

[wagex]

i didnt even know 7 had superfetch i thought that was just vista. lol but i find windows 7 runs better on most of my systems than xp does tbh, specialy like on my net book it had xp on it idk how many times, put 7 on it seemed like a new netbook lol

 

[Celeron_Phreak]

I think I will disable it since I don't have much memory, we'll see how it goes once I pick ups copy of 7 and get a partion setup for it.