Is Windows 10 a Good Choice for Gaming?

Gamers account for a significant portion of all the Windows users out there, and with PC gaming on a meteoric rise, the folks at Microsoft have had to keep their video game playing consumers at the forefront of their minds while developing products for the masses. Gamers were really happy with Windows XP and Windows 7 as both Operating Systems were extremely stable and furnished as far as gaming was concerned. However, along came Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, both of which put the relationship between Microsoft and PC gamers on the rocks. Gamers, to say the least, weren’t happy with all the issues and problems Windows 8 and 8.1 had waiting for them in the early days of the then-latest and greatest iterations of the Windows Operating System.

The time of Windows 8 and 8.1, though, has long since passed – now is the time of Windows 10. With Windows 10, Microsoft tried their best to avoid the mistakes they made with its predecessor and tried their damndest to minimize issues and problems with the Operating System upon launch. Unfortunately, Microsoft wasn’t able to hold to their ambitions and Windows 10 was only a little short of a catastrophe for the gaming community upon launch. Chief among the hordes of problems gamers experienced after upgrading their Windows computers to Windows 10 (which was free to owners of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 for an entire year after launch) were compatibility issues with games, optimization problems, a wide array of issues with graphics cards and their drivers, and worst of all, a massive decline in the game performance and framerate.

To be fair, the description above is what the situation was like upon Windows 10’s launch. When the newest version of the Windows Operating System was launched, the whole world could see that it was crude and had curves and edges which needed to be and were polished post-launch. Microsoft has since done an amazing job of turning Windows 10 into the premiere choice of gamers when it comes to versions of the Windows Operating Systems for their computers. So, the question gamers face now – at the very beginning of 2020 after nearly 5 years following the launch of Windows 10 – is whether Windows 10 is good for gaming.

The short answer to this is pretty simple: yes! Windows 10, at this point, is certainly good for gaming and has earned the right to be the first choice of gamers when it comes to selecting an Operating System for their computers. The long answer to this question, on the other hand, delves a bit deeper into why exactly Windows 10 is an excellent choice of Operating System for gamers. The following are some of the absolute most significant reasons why Windows 10, in today’s day and age, is good for gaming:

DirectX 12

The importance of this specific addition that Windows 10 brings to gamers simply can’t be stressed enough. DirectX is the application programming interface that games use to communicate with your computer – it’s the platform a game uses to get your computer to do what the game wants it to do. Up until Windows 10, DirectX 11 was the latest and greatest in this pretty long line of toolsets. With Windows 10, Microsoft introduced DirectX 12, bringing gamers tons of amazing new features and advantages. DirectX 12 brings the ability for graphics cards to use more than one core of a computer’s CPU at the same time (games developed using DirectX 11 or lower can only talk to one of the cores of a computer’s CPU at any given point in time), which is quite unprecedented, to be honest.

Tests conducted between DirectX 11-optimized games and DirectX 12-optimized games have shown a difference in the performance of 85-300% between the two, which is exponential, to say the least. Moving from Direct X 11 to DirectX 12 isn’t something too difficult for developers either. DirectX 12 uses a lot less power than previous DirectX iterations and can even use the integrated graphics card as a co-processor to the dedicated graphics card on computers with two graphics cards.

However, for a game to be able to take advantage of all the benefits DirectX 12 has to offer, it needs to be developed using DirectX 12. Games developed using DirectX 12 were a rare sight to see upon Windows 10’s launch, but the list of DirectX 12 games that have been developed and are currently in development is quickly getting longer. All things considered, DirectX 12 is the absolute biggest reason why Windows 10 is good for gaming.

Windows 10 is Now the Standard For Graphics Driver Development

A significant amount of time has passed since Windows 10 was first launched, and it is in this time that Microsoft has not only changed Windows 10 into the best possible version of itself but Windows 10 has also become the standard Windows Operating System for basically everything. That includes graphics driver development. All major graphics card manufacturers are now developing their graphics drivers for and on the Windows 10 Operating System, which means that graphics drivers are not tailored to the body measurements of Windows 10 and later optimized and adjusted for older versions of Windows.

Having the best graphics drivers is massively important to any gamer worth his salt, which is why Windows 10 now being the standard for graphics driver development and being the version of Windows to get the latest and greatest graphics drivers the fastest is another significant reason why Windows 10 is good for gaming.

Windows 10 Offers Better Performance And Framerates

Windows 10 offers better game performance and game framerates as compared to its predecessors, even if marginally so. The difference in gaming performance between Windows 7 and Windows 10 is a bit significant, with the difference being quite noticeable to gamers. However, the difference in gaming performance between Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 is comparatively smaller, but rest assured – Windows 10 beats Windows 8/8.1 in basically every performance test out there, even if only by a small margin.

Windows 10 Handles Windowed Gaming Quite Well

While not a quality that every PC gamer will be head over heels for, the fact that Windows 10 handles windowed gaming better than any other iteration of the Windows Operating System is still something that makes Windows 10 good for gaming. Windows 10 being able to handle windowed gaming very well means that pressing Alt + Tab while inside a game running as a full-screen window will switch you over to your Desktop in basically no time at all.

Windows 10’s Better Integration with Xbox

Windows 10 and Xbox has better integration through the Windows 10 Xbox app, which allows streaming Xbox games to the Windows 10 PC.

Windows 10 Boots Faster Than Windows 7

A large proportion of all the PC gamers out there have been biding their time using Windows 7 after seeing Microsoft’s handling of Windows 8/8.1 fiasco. These gamers should now be upgrading to Windows 10, and a significant reason why that is so is because of Windows 10 boots MUCH faster than Windows 7 and even a bit faster than Windows 8 and 8.1. And the whole world knows how gamers would like nothing more to boot their computers up and get gaming right away.

Will Windows 10 be good for gaming?

By Tyler Wilde 22 January 2015

I still use Windows 7, but I’m going to have to upgrade eventually, regardless of the terrible Modern UI-induced stress I get (what the crap is Xbox Music?). We’ll all have to upgrade eventually, because we’re going to want DirectX 12 features, right? So it’s great news for us that Microsoft will be offering free Windows 10 upgrades for a year.

To clarify, Microsoft’s poorly-worded announcement made it sound to some like the free upgrade would eventually involve a subscription plan. What Microsoft meant was not “free upgrade for the first year,” but “upgrade for free within the first year.” It’s not a subscription: it’s a free, one-time upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10, which includes free future updates, the way Windows has always worked.

My hope is that mass adoption of Windows 10 will defragment the PC gaming audience—we’ll never all be on the same hardware (and wouldn’t want it that way), but at least non-Linux PC gamers can be on the same version of Windows and DirectX. Back when Windows Vista launched, everyone who chose not to upgrade missed out on DirectX 10. Vista didn’t have a lot of fans, because it was absolute garbage. If Windows 10 suffers the same fate, DirectX 12 (and I’m 99% sure the full features of DX12 won’t be available on Windows 7) will go underutilized. But why would that happen if Windows 10 is free?

I reached out to a few developers to chat about the news, and Gaslamp Games CTO and lead programmer Nicholas Vining isn’t as optimistic. Vining points out that only around 50% of Windows 7/8 users have DirectX 12-capable hardware (actually, it’s some number greater than 50%, according to Microsoft, but apparently not high enough to note the difference). And even if they do have capable hardware, he says, that doesn’t mean their hardware will perform well, and there’s no guarantee they’ll all upgrade to Windows 10 even if it’s free. Lots of people, myself included, are perfectly happy with Windows 7.

“Developers, especially smaller ones like us, cannot afford to reduce our userbase down to whatever percent of the DirectX 12 hardware owning userbase decides to migrate to Windows 10,” wrote Vining by email. “It wouldn’t be 50% of our user base; it might be somewhere between 8% and 10%, but we skew demographically older.”

Vining says that, for a small developer, the majority of the customers expect perfect performance out of the box “because Minecraft works on their machine, and it’s 3D, so ‘why doesn’t your game?’» He also points out that “if somebody gives you something free in the exciting world of computing and technology, that typically means you’re the product.”

“If somebody gives you something free in the exciting world of computing and technology, that typically means you’re the product.”

After the year of free upgrades, Microsoft will be selling Windows 10, but Vining’s skepticism is fair—we don’t know exactly what else Microsoft may be planning. But we see that free upgrade window as a push to wash away the sins of Windows 8 and get as many people as possible onto one OS. The sooner Microsoft moves past Windows 8, the sooner they can stop putting out significant updates for it, freeing them up to focus on forward progress.

Shams Jorjani, VP of Acquisition, Portfolio Strategy & Unicorn Division at Paradox Interactive, didn’t have any insight about unicorns, but did have a few things to say about DX 12. He seems somewhat indifferent to the advancement (and unsurprisingly fond of Paradox games).

«DX12 mainly means more advances in graphics—which means another step up in the technological arms race some devs/publishers enjoy participating in—and that’s fine as it leaves more room for us, the connoisseur’s choice,” wrote Jorjani. “What makes a Paradox game beautiful isn’t necessarily shaders, tessellation, SSS, or other wizardry—just good gameplay. Then again, we have a few games that do look pretty so it’s a win-win for us.»

As for that “technological arms race,” we’ve yet to see exactly how DX12 will make games better in the wild, but the evidence so far looks good. DirectX 12 is intended to improve multi-threaded performance for games and let directors code ‘closer to the metal,’ with less overhead between their code and the CPU and GPU. Not all game developers need that level of control, however.

«DirectX 12 is intended to improve multi-threaded performance for games and let directors code ‘closer to the metal'»

Intel showed off an impressive demo back at SIGGRAPH 2014, and during today’s Windows 10 reveal event, Phil Spencer said that “for CPU-bound games, DirectX 12 will increase the performance of those games by up to 50 percent.” That’s great, but it may be that the upgrade primarily matters to those who engage in the arms race—the Activisions and EAs—while the rest stay focused on supporting Windows 7.

With that perspective, it’s not really good news or bad news, just neutral news: upgrade for free to Windows 10 to get DX 12 features in whatever games utilize them, but don’t necessarily expect Windows 7 and DX 11 to be ditched. We may stay fragmented after all.

Even though I hate the sight of Windows 8, I do plan to upgrade to 10 to see what it can do. I’m a little nervous, though. Microsoft pushed a few things today that made me uneasy, such as the ability to stream Xbox One games to a PC. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the feature, but I’m wary of any more attempts to treat the PC like an Xbox companion.

Likewise, there’s nothing wrong with the functionality of the new DVR system, which will allow us to capture, edit, and share game footage, but I tend to back away from anything that seems to involve me more in the Microsoft ecosystem. Again, what the hell is Xbox Music? I want Windows to sit quietly and run my games, and I hope that Windows 10’s new features can be shushed.

As long as it doesn’t intrude too much, though, I’ll be happy to take the free upgrade offer—even if I still think it looks like an OS designed for babies. There are also some important upgrades in Windows 10 that Windows 7 might not know they’re missing—better performance across the board, much faster boot times and far better UI scaling for 4K+ resolutions, for example.

And then there’s the crazy augmented reality stuff, but I don’t know enough about that yet to know how much I care (we’ll have more on Windows Holographic soon). Knowing what we do know, do you plan to upgrade?

The verdict is in on Windows 10 gaming performance, compatibility

By Wes Fenlon 07 August 2015

Windows 10 is out, and at least 18 million people have already upgraded to Microsoft’s new OS. The launch chaos has subsided. If you’re still waiting for the upgrade option to appear in your system tray, click here to learn how to install now. But you should know what you’re getting out of Windows 10, particularly when it comes to gaming.

Should you expect dramatically improved framerates? What about compatibility issues with new and old games? We’ve already gone over what DirectX 12 means for the future of gaming, so now it’s time to talk about gaming on Windows 10 right now. Here’s what to expect.

Gaming performance on Windows 10: a whole lot like Windows 8.1

Beyond the introduction of DirectX 12, gaming on Windows 10 isn’t much different than gaming on Windows 8. And when it comes to raw performance, it’s not so different than gaming on Windows 7, either.

Our colleagues at Maximum PC benchmarked Batman: Arkham City, Tomb Raider, and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor on Windows 7, 8.1 and 10, as well as 3DMark FireStrike Ultra. Their system? An Intel Core i7-5930K, Nvidia GTX 980 Ti, 16GB DDR4 RAM and an M.2 Kingston HyperX Predator 480GB SSD.

Their results, which you can read about in more detail here, are. pretty much identical across all three operating systems. Arkham City gained 5 frames per second in Windows 10, a relatively small increase from 118 fps to 123 fps at 1440p. Their score in FireStrike Ultra did increase 100 points between Windows 7 and Windows 10, but only 6 points from 8.1 to 10. As expected, Windows 10’s significant aesthetic changes don’t do much to affect the underlying architecture that formed Windows 8.

But that’s just three games, hardly a representation of the entirety of PC gaming. Let’s check out some other data.

Ars Technica benchmarked Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 in four different games: Metro: Last Light, Grand Theft Auto 5, BioShock Infinite and Far Cry 4. Their results mirrored Maximum PC’s. Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 performance was virtually identical, with one exception: AMD’s R9 295X2, a dual-GPU card, dropped almost 20 frames of performance under Windows 10 in BioShock Infinite, and crashed in Far Cry 4. AMD’s Windows 10 drivers need a bit of work to smooth over CrossFire performance.

Look around the web, and you’ll likely find reports of big performance bumps moving from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10, and just as many reports of framerates dropping. Performance will obviously vary game-to-game, and all sorts of factors could be causing those performance differences: driver upgrades, different background tasks eating up CPU cycles, and so on. Overall, Windows 10 isn’t going to change pure performance much. Now let’s talk about compatibility.

Windows 10 and compatibility

Every new Windows release runs the risk of breaking compatibility with the classic games of the 80s and 90s and even the last decade. Thankfully, today we have services like GOG working to upkeep a library of classic games and ensure that they install and launch correctly on modern Windows. You can usually get those same games to work yourself through DOSBox, but GOG takes care of all the fiddling.

On July 29, when Windows 10 was released, GOG posted about its compatibility: “Overall, the entire process went better than expected. We’re very happy with that fact, but we’re still only getting started. Today, roughly 85% of our library is labeled as compatible with Windows 10. These games were fully playable with no significant performance or graphical issues during our testing process and are ready to go right now. You can filter through Windows 10 games in our catalog, and the compatibility will be labeled on every game card.”

Not bad for launch day. But how are other games and hardware faring without GOG’s touch?

Modern games: There’s a huge list of games on Microsoft’s website that have been checked for compatibility, and pretty much everything is listed as playable. Only a few have notes for minor issues. And across various PC subreddits, compatibility issues seem few and far between.

SoundBlaster drivers: Windows 10 drivers/software for most Creative Sound Blaster cards are mostly unavailable at this time, and slated for August/September. You can see a full compatibility list on Creative’s site.

DualShock 4 and DS4Windows: The DualShock 4, our favorite controller for PC, didn’t work on Windows 10 right away. It doesn’t have official drivers, and the update broke compatibility with tool DS4Windows. Turns out there’s a very simple workaround: stopping and starting explorer.exe (found via reddit).

Graphics cards: Modern graphics cards pretty much all have Windows 10 driver support. Nvidia supports back to Fermi (400 series). Here’s a full list of Nvidia GPU compatibility. AMD supports back to its 7000 series cards. Here’s a list of AMD GPU compatibility.

Give us your take

Have you run into any compatibility problems? Seen framerates soar or sink? Let us know!