Ever since the first information on Windows 7 leaked there have been intense discussion surrounding the performance of the operating system. The current Windows Vista was anything but fast when it arrived and especially gamers avoided it at any cost. The development has improved things with Windows Vista but many are hoping that Windows 7 will become Microsoft’s “performance OS” and now that the system has gone gold the labor bears fruit.
At Firingsquad they have published a triple shoot-out between Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP where gaming performance is the focal point.
The performance with one graphics card is often pretty much the same between the three system, but in a few games (ARMA II) we witness how Windows XP takes a bit lead.
Overall though, Windows 7 is ready to take over as the performance OS and the greatest difference comes when you use multiple graphics cards. With NVIDIA SLI or ATI CrossFire there are several games that both Windows Vista, and especially Windows XP gets whipped pretty badly.
The performance speedups are even more dramatic when you scale from one to two cards running SLI. Windows 7 64-bit ran a whopping 21% faster than Windows XP x86 at 1600×1200 at 19% faster at 1920×1200. Windows 7 was faster than Vista too. SLI performance was 9% greater with Windows 7 when comparing the 64-bit operating systems at 1600×1200 and 5% at 1920×1200.
Windows 7 looks like a stable gaming operating system and those with multi-GPU should should definitely upgrade to get the most from their hardware.
:: Gaming Performance Compared: Windows 7 vs Vista vs Windows XP.
AMD Radeon CrossFireX configuration
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