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!

Игры все чаще требуют новую версию Windows 10 или почему Windows 10 LTSC не годится для игр

Думаю, многие из вас помнят времена, когда Windows 10 захватывала место на рынке ОС и главным ее противником была Windows 7. Одним из главных аргументов за переход на Windows 10 был в наличии у нее поддержки DirectX 12, которую требовали новые игры.

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Но никто не мог подумать в те времена, что поддержку DirectX 12 добавят в Windows 7 (Blizzard добавила DirectX 12 для своих игр в Windows 7), но при этом для новых игр будет требоваться актуальная версия Windows 10. А старые версии Windows 10 и Windows 10 LTSB/ LTSC останутся «за бортом».

Особенно обидно такое положение дел для пользователей Windows 10 LTSB и LTSC, ведь они отлично подходят для игр из-за отсутствия UWP-компонентов и многих функций ОС, «дергающих» накопитель и загружающих память и процессор. Именно Windows 10 версии 1607 (и версия LTSB) считаются опытными пользователями и геймерами самой «FPS-friendly», а все что выходило дальше, становится только хуже.

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И это несмотря на специальные функции Windows 10 для игр, такие как GameBar или «borderless window». Чтобы понять масштаб проблемы, достаточно погуглить по запросам «1809 latency issue» или «1909 latency issue».

_{Высокий уровень dpc latency может легко превратить топовый ПК в «тормозящий» и «фризящий»}

Первое время Windows 10 LTSB и LTSC оставались за бортом игропрома из-за отсутствия Microsoft Store, но умельцы быстро научились интегрировать «Магазин» в эти версии Windows 10 довольно простыми методами. Но теперь главным ограничителем для запуска новых игр становится именно версия Windows 10 и рубежом актуальности часто становится версия 1903 или Windows 10 May 2019 Update.

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Давайте посмотрим на системные требования игр в Microsoft Store и составим список игр, которые идут только на Windows 10 определенных версий.

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Первой на глаза в Microsoft Store попадается Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition с требованием Windows 10 версии 18362.0 или более поздней. 18362 — это версия 1903 или Windows 10 May 2019 Update.

Недавно вышедшая стратегия Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition тоже требует Windows 10 версии 18362 (1903).

Cтратегия Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, которая была первой в списке переизданий серии Age of Empires, тоже требует Windows 10 версии 18362 (1903).

Авиасимулятор Microsoft Flight Simulator требует Windows 10 версии 18362.0 (1903).

Шутер Gears 5 тоже требует Windows 10 версии 18362.0 (1903).

Приключенческий шутер State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition требует Windows 10 версии 18362.0 (1903).

Теперь давайте пробежимся по играм, требующим Windows 10 версий от 1607 до 1809.

Популярная гонка Forza Motorsport 7 требует Windows 10 версии 15063.0 (1703).

Популярный автосимулятор Forza Horizon 4 требует Windows 10 версии 15063.0, также известную как Creators Update или версия 1703. Я хорошо помню по отзывах на форумах, что для многих именно симуляторы Forza Horizon 3 и 4 стали важным толчком для перехода с Windows 7 на Windows 10.

Популярный шутер от третьего лица Gears of War 4 требует Windows 10 версии 14393.0 или Anniversary Update (версия 1607) и одно из самых низких требований версии в нашем списке.

Еще из игр-хитов последнего времени на ум приходят: Death Stranding, в системных требованиях которого значится просто «Windows 10», но, как пишут пользователи, игре для нормальной работы требуется Windows 10 версии 1803 и выше.

И Horizon Zero Dawn, в системных требованиях которой тоже стояло просто «Windows 10», но игроками была отмечена нестабильность на ранних версиях Windows 10. В конце концов игра получила патч, проверяющий наличие Windows 10 версии 1809 и выше, а более низкие версии отмечены, как вызывающие нестабильность в DirectX 12.

Detroit: Become Human, игра — интерактивное кино, требует Windows 10 x64, но при этом может запускаться на Windows 7 с сильными «лагами».

Как видите, список обширный, постоянно растет и если вы до сих пор используете Windows 7 или Windows 10 LTSB, то лишаетесь многих новинок игр. Microsoft поставила нас в такие условия, что геймерский ПК, который может запускать все новинки игр, обязательно должен иметь самую актуальную версию Windows 10. А если вы используете видеокарту с поддержкой технологии RTX, то выбора у вас совсем не остается.

Выхода из этой ситуации нет, единственный способ и поиграть, и при этом пользоваться устаревшей версией Windows — это ставить актуальную версию Windows 10 Pro второй системой специально для игр. Но я заметил, что в такой «связке» ОС обычно начинаешь пользоваться самой актуальной из них.

Пишите в комментарии, какой версией Windows пользуетесь вы? И как у вас обстоит дело с совместимостью игр?

[Guide] Games for Windows Live (GFWL), Steam, Windows 10 and You

Introduction

Thanks to, Ackis, who is an Xbox Community Ambassador. He has created a helpful guide to help you get your PC games working. This has been taken from his thread here: https://forums.xbox.com/thread/7d065256-342c-4eb0-9866-21ee9fbfb4b4

Details

GFWL can work on Windows 10, however it may take a bit of additional work to get it working fully.

Purchased from Steam:

Steam is a wonderful platform — you buy the game, install it and it should just work. Well with GFWL that’s not always the case. The reason is that Steam is required to redistribute the exact version of GFWL that came with the game. This means that you’re getting older versions when you install from Steam.

To fix this you need to install the latest version of GFWL. You can see instructions under the Windows 10 header.

GFWL Achievements on Steam:

If you’re worried about achievements for GFWL there is still a way to get them.

Some games on Steam (Ms. Splosion for example) allow you to install the Steamworks version or the GFWL version. Other games (Batman Arkham series, Toy Soldiers, and many more) have patched GFWL out completely. You won’t be able to get the achievements for these games anymore.

These games may aiuto-update to non-GFWL versions, however there is a way you can prevent this:

1. Select the game from the Steam list of games.
2. Right click, and go to properties
3. Click the Updates tab
4. Under automatic updates select «Only update this game when I launch it»

This will prevent the game from getting updates automatically, however you’d still need to update it when you try to play it. You can get around this by setting Steam to offline mode when you launch the game.

Windows 10:

Getting GFWL to work on Windows 10 take a bit of extra work. This can be fixed pretty easily by:

1. Removing GFWL, the Marketplace, etc. from your PC
2. Reboot
3. Download the latest version of GFWL from http://www.xbox.com/en-CA/Live/PC/DownloadClient
4. Install it
5. Reboot

Now with GFWL this doesn’t have a 100% success rate. However you can try the exact same steps and it’ll work the second or third time you do it. Pretty annoying, but at least you get to play your game.

DLC:

Any DLC that you have purchased in the past will still be accessible and you can download it. However you cannot purchase anything new. There are a few ways around this. For example Dirt 3 has a physical copy that includes codes for all the DLC.

If you have a DLC code it should still work, you just need to enter it via the GFWL client.

GFWL Log File Locations:

The log files for the GFWL client may provide some insight into what’s breaking with GFWL. These files are located here:

You can access/view these by:

1. Press the Windows Key + R
2. Type in: C:\Users
3. Press enter
4. Find your user name.
5. Navigate to AppData -> Local -> Microsoft -> GFWLive -> Logs
6. Right click on the log file and choose Open With
7. Select Notepad (or another text editor)

The default Windows Notepad program will let you see the contents, however due to the nature of the log files they may be hard to read. I personally use a program called Notepad ++ ( https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ ) which makes the log files a bit easier to parse. Right now I have one line in my log file that is 48849 characters which turns out to be 14 pages.

What to look for in the log files:

This is hard to say without knowing a specific problem, however searching for the word «error» may help. As I mentioned above, some of the log lines may be quite long, and you’ll have to use your judgement on if they provide any information that’s of use.

Games for Windows Live Release Date Activation:

Sometimes when you install a game that uses Games for Windows Live it’ll ask you to verify the release date of the game online. When you click the accept/next button it gives you an error that you’re not connected to the internet.

Thankfully there may be a very simple fix for you. Change the date on your computer to be in the same month/year that the game was released. For example, Batman Arkham City was released on October 18, 2011. Changing your system clock to October 30, 2011 and then trying the activation will work.