Windows 8 Being Quickly Adopted by PC Gamers

Early adopters and enthusiasts drive most new technology in its first few months on the market. Windows 8 is proving to be no different as the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey shows Microsoft’s newest operating system picking up steam on the service.

Valve recently released the data it collected in January on its users’ hardware and software setups. The operating system chart is by far the most interesting because it shows that all versions of Windows except for Windows 8 is declining in usage. Granted, there are no huge declines or huge gains here, but it shows that Windows 8 use is growing among PC gamers.

Going into the numbers, both Windows 8 and Windows 8 64-bit saw a collective increase of 1.83 percent with the majority of the increase going to the 64-bit version. All in all, Windows 8 is now 8.76 percent of all Steam users’ PCs. Windows 7 is still in the the lead, however, as both 32 and 64-bit versions make up 69.73 percent of the Steam user base.

Windows 8 Adoption Increasing Among PC Gamers | WebProNews

 

[justmetoday]

PC Gamers an endangered Species

In response to this;

Hi there
I'm not a gamer so I might be saying total B/S here - but aren't most intensive games driven from a dedicated GPU so the host CPU itself isn't needed so much to perform the gaming.

So it really depends on how the dedicated GPU works with the computers BIOS and CPU. On some machines you probably would be hard pushed to tell the difference in performance whatever OS was being used (assuming there is enough memory).

Bad / slow disks will probably kill any game that requires a lot of auxiliary storage--slow disks these days account for almost ALL bad performance problems on reasonably modern hardware -- especially hideously slow 5400 RPM laptop HDD's.

Cheers
jimbo

An earlier post of mine, I stated I was a gamer, what I should have said is "I am PC Gamer" and in keeping with your statement, yes much of that is true "for PC's", but today's gamer's are on Playstation's, X-Box's, Wii, Gameboy, etc., and;

PC Gamer's are a dying breed. I get on now-a-days and complain that I can't seem to dodge this or dodge that, and my fellow players ask are you on a PS or a PC? I state PC and they instruct me to turn off all my battle graphics, flying text, etc. to acquire better frame rates. I guess, I am just old school, I get embarrassed when I complain to my guild that we should have Teamspeak (PC voice chat), I am politely ignored, most of them use Razor Comm an app for iPhones and Android phones to communicate while playing their PS3, PS4, X-box's.

Old gamer's used to boast about how they had this or that, now that is irrelevant. Many game developers stopped creating games for PC, it has only been in the last year that there has been some new offerings. But, why go PC when for a few hundred bucks, you can get a dedicated unit with the fastest processors and graphics available for gaming. Explains the Playstation Vs. XBox Wars.

 

[LovingWindows]

Hi there
I'm not a gamer so I might be saying total B/S here - but aren't most intensive games driven from a dedicated GPU so the host CPU itself isn't needed so much to perform the gaming.

So it really depends on how the dedicated GPU works with the computers BIOS and CPU. On some machines you probably would be hard pushed to tell the difference in performance whatever OS was being used (assuming there is enough memory).

Bad / slow disks will probably kill any game that requires a lot of auxiliary storage--slow disks these days account for almost ALL bad performance problems on reasonably modern hardware -- especially hideously slow 5400 RPM laptop HDD's.

Cheers
jimbo

It depends on how the game was developed and coded. For example, Source games (such as DOTA2, L4D2, TF2) rely heavily on the CPU over the GPU.

Other games like Crysis 3, which uses the CryEngine, will rely heavily on the GPU over the CPU (which is why Crysis remains the benchmark game for GPU stress testing).

But for the most part, a lot of games will use both GPU and CPU quite a lot.

I do get better performance on Windows 8.1 than I ever did on Windows 7, upwards of 40% improvement over Windows 7 on a lot of games.

 

[Shallow]

In response to this;

Hi there
I'm not a gamer so I might be saying total B/S here - but aren't most intensive games driven from a dedicated GPU so the host CPU itself isn't needed so much to perform the gaming.

So it really depends on how the dedicated GPU works with the computers BIOS and CPU. On some machines you probably would be hard pushed to tell the difference in performance whatever OS was being used (assuming there is enough memory).

Bad / slow disks will probably kill any game that requires a lot of auxiliary storage--slow disks these days account for almost ALL bad performance problems on reasonably modern hardware -- especially hideously slow 5400 RPM laptop HDD's.

Cheers
jimbo

An earlier post of mine, I stated I was a gamer, what I should have said is "I am PC Gamer" and in keeping with your statement, yes much of that is true "for PC's", but today's gamer's are on Playstation's, X-Box's, Wii, Gameboy, etc., and;

PC Gamer's are a dying breed. I get on now-a-days and complain that I can't seem to dodge this or dodge that, and my fellow players ask are you on a PS or a PC? I state PC and they instruct me to turn off all my battle graphics, flying text, etc. to acquire better frame rates. I guess, I am just old school, I get embarrassed when I complain to my guild that we should have Teamspeak (PC voice chat), I am politely ignored, most of them use Razor Comm an app for iPhones and Android phones to communicate while playing their PS3, PS4, X-box's.

Old gamer's used to boast about how they had this or that, now that is irrelevant. Many game developers stopped creating games for PC, it has only been in the last year that there has been some new offerings. But, why go PC when for a few hundred bucks, you can get a dedicated unit with the fastest processors and graphics available for gaming. Explains the Playstation Vs. XBox Wars.

Yeah they are dying, that's why there is a new record of 7.5 mill concurrent users on steam and 25+ million active accounts. That's just steam as it grows. More larger than xbox live for example. In fact more have jumped to PC since 360\wii\ps3 gen ended. Now if you said retail rather than online it would be more of the truth as the preference is with online which makes sense because, well it's a PC.

Developers stopped creating games for PC? Why because GTA V isn't on it? It's just one game. Most games are multiplatform these days anyway while the PC has heaps of exclusives that get regular patches especially if you like online. Steam in particular has a massive amount of indie game developers and promoting them as well being able to play and support pre alpha games in general. Consoles also aren't the fasted processors and graphics, they are outdated before they even start shipping and continuing to do so because it's not upgradable.

There is plenty of reason to use PC over a console and vis versa. Neither will die.

 

[Rickkins]

Desperate.

Say what?

I was referring to the misleading thread title.

 

[MasterChief]

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy all sorts of games on the PC and that's why I just got the card in my specs (ASUS 7790 OC)....but does anyone else agree that there needs to be some ingenuity in regards?

Car games, 1st person shooting games, sports games, cut scene then back to actions, gotta snipe the bad guy, the aliens are coming kill them...

What I think gaming needs is a revolution; some kind of format that hasn't been done or one that has but only approached much differently.

I dunno. Like what if there was a Zelda game where you had to drive like GTA to get to a stadium to beat the Broncos, and if you do, then you can go to the strip club to get some Hohos and bring 'em back to the pad but then they get pissed 'cause you got no alcohol or 420, so you gotta rob a joint to get to a concert by {insert favorite band here} and when it's over you gotta steal a cab to go rob a sniper gun shop because the Russians are coming.

Ok, maybe it needs some tweaks, but the game would rule. lol

 

[Coke Robot]

I need another GPU...

Cryptocurrency mining is currently the latest PC game I'm playing. It's UBER GPU intensive.

 

[justmetoday]

Yeah they are dying, that's why there is a new record of 7.5 mill concurrent users on steam and 25+ million active accounts. That's just steam as it grows. More larger than xbox live for example. In fact more have jumped to PC since 360\wii\ps3 gen ended. Now if you said retail rather than online it would be more of the truth as the preference is with online which makes sense because, well it's a PC.

Developers stopped creating games for PC? Why because GTA V isn't on it? It's just one game. Most games are multiplatform these days anyway while the PC has heaps of exclusives that get regular patches especially if you like online. Steam in particular has a massive amount of indie game developers and promoting them as well being able to play and support pre alpha games in general. Consoles also aren't the fasted processors and graphics, they are outdated before they even start shipping and continuing to do so because it's not upgradable.

There is plenty of reason to use PC over a console and vis versa. Neither will die.

What is happening with Steam is that they expanded by offering non-gaming software, they also added MacOS and Linux platforms, which accounts for a good portion of the new user base you refer to. They have/are introducing the Steam Box which is their own gaming console platform and plan to go head-to-head with Sony. Just how many of those Steam gamer's will switch to the Steam console? Why are they doing this, because their core PC base was waning.

When I speak of gamer's I refer to next-gen gamer's, there are billions of PC's, laptops, tablet's that have bejewelled, Angry Birds, Solitaire, so if you count those as PC gamer's then there is no comparison. Also, the fastest growing gaming market was China, but here again are we talking Solitaire player's vs. next-gen gamer's.

Console's to date exceed the 500 million user units, and prediction's on the new X-Box and PS4's sales, far exceed the new next-gen user. There are thousands of new lndie games being introduced (via Steam), but the original posting was about Windows 8 and it's usage on Steam, which I believe is a bit miss-leading as to it's popularity.

Is gaming increasing, YES, but on what platform's, that is a bit more elusive.

Every where you look, advertising, weekly TV series, etc. it shows gamer's on consoles in front of TV screens or interacting via Wii or Kinect, not on PC monitor's.

 

[jimbo45]

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy all sorts of games on the PC and that's why I just got the card in my specs (ASUS 7790 OC)....but does anyone else agree that there needs to be some ingenuity in regards?

Car games, 1st person shooting games, sports games, cut scene then back to actions, gotta snipe the bad guy, the aliens are coming kill them...

What I think gaming needs is a revolution; some kind of format that hasn't been done or one that has but only approached much differently.

I dunno. Like what if there was a Zelda game where you had to drive like GTA to get to a stadium to beat the Broncos, and if you do, then you can go to the strip club to get some Hohos and bring 'em back to the pad but then they get pissed 'cause you got no alcohol or 420, so you gotta rob a joint to get to a concert by {insert favorite band here} and when it's over you gotta steal a cab to go rob a sniper gun shop because the Russians are coming.

Ok, maybe it needs some tweaks, but the game would rule. lol

Hi there
maybe an interesting one would be for games and gamers to have a go at trying to solve the economic and political problems currently besetting planet earth -- the Politicians, Bankers and economists seem to have no clue any more so how about using all the creative energy of gamers to work on these sorts of problems.

Using Gaming to solve real life situations isn't as silly as it looks - the Military have been doing this for some time while the CIA has a whole division devoted to this -- of course though they want to achieve a particular outcome - not necessarily the best for everybody.

I'm sure even the most dedicated gamer must eventually get tired of having to find new ways of destroying things -- CREATIVE solutions are much more difficult.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[MasterChief]

Completely awesome. You are on to something with that, I am sure of it. In related news, seems there is some kind of team out there trying what you're saying, but only in the real physical world. I'm referring to the 5 or 6 dead banksters as of late.

Or perhaps this might be truth instead about their deaths.

We can only sit back and ponder. heh

 

[Coke Robot]

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy all sorts of games on the PC and that's why I just got the card in my specs (ASUS 7790 OC)....but does anyone else agree that there needs to be some ingenuity in regards?

Car games, 1st person shooting games, sports games, cut scene then back to actions, gotta snipe the bad guy, the aliens are coming kill them...

What I think gaming needs is a revolution; some kind of format that hasn't been done or one that has but only approached much differently.

I dunno. Like what if there was a Zelda game where you had to drive like GTA to get to a stadium to beat the Broncos, and if you do, then you can go to the strip club to get some Hohos and bring 'em back to the pad but then they get pissed 'cause you got no alcohol or 420, so you gotta rob a joint to get to a concert by {insert favorite band here} and when it's over you gotta steal a cab to go rob a sniper gun shop because the Russians are coming.

Ok, maybe it needs some tweaks, but the game would rule. lol

I think that game might be called The Sims...

Although yes, there needs to be something new here. I've noticed that console gaming has turned into a giant let's blow everything up to complete the mission. PC gaming hasn't quite gone to that extent yet, but is more strategy oriented. Metro 2033 is a real awesome game both story and gameplay wise.

I miss the days where games used to have really good stories to them....probably to make up for the 16 bit graphics!

 

[lehnerus2000]

I miss the days where games used to have really good stories to them....probably to make up for the 16 bit graphics!

Like the original run of "Dr Who".

The BBC couldn't afford spectacular sets or special effects, so they had to spend more time on scripts.

 

[Coke Robot]

I miss the days where games used to have really good stories to them....probably to make up for the 16 bit graphics!

Like the original run of "Dr Who".

The BBC couldn't afford spectacular sets or special effects, so they had to spend more time on scripts.

:thumb: Exactly.

 

[Wenda]

Hi there
I'm not a gamer so I might be saying total B/S here - but aren't most intensive games driven from a dedicated GPU so the host CPU itself isn't needed so much to perform the gaming.

So it really depends on how the dedicated GPU works with the computers BIOS and CPU. On some machines you probably would be hard pushed to tell the difference in performance whatever OS was being used (assuming there is enough memory).

Bad / slow disks will probably kill any game that requires a lot of auxiliary storage--slow disks these days account for almost ALL bad performance problems on reasonably modern hardware -- especially hideously slow 5400 RPM laptop HDD's.

Cheers
jimbo

Most of my games, including some which simply would not run at all on W7, worked just fine on W8.

One or two have balked at 8.1 but others work OK.

Yes, this is a laptop (a pretty fearsome one, for its time, too, see system specs) and it has not one but
two 750GB 5400 RPM spinners as standard.

This has no effect whatsoever on its gaming performance.

Its GeForce GT555M (2GB) has handled everything I've thrown at it, with no performance issues at all.


Wenda.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
I'm not a gamer so I might be saying total B/S here - but aren't most intensive games driven from a dedicated GPU so the host CPU itself isn't needed so much to perform the gaming.

So it really depends on how the dedicated GPU works with the computers BIOS and CPU. On some machines you probably would be hard pushed to tell the difference in performance whatever OS was being used (assuming there is enough memory).

Bad / slow disks will probably kill any game that requires a lot of auxiliary storage--slow disks these days account for almost ALL bad performance problems on reasonably modern hardware -- especially hideously slow 5400 RPM laptop HDD's.

Cheers
jimbo

Most of my games, including some which simply would not run at all on W7, worked just fine on W8.

One or two have balked at 8.1 but others work OK.

Yes, this is a laptop (a pretty fearsome one, for its time, too, see system specs) and it has not one but
two 750GB 5400 RPM spinners as standard.

This has no effect whatsoever on its gaming performance.

Its GeForce GT555M (2GB) has handled everything I've thrown at it, with no performance issues at all.


Wenda.

Hi there
the Disk issue will appear if your game needs to use any significant amount of Auxiliary storage. If the video card is all that the game needs then that's fine.

However having TWO HDD's in the laptop also helps as one HDD can be doing a "prefetch" (getting ready for the next read / write operation ) while the other HDD is working.

Slow HDD's will KILL any system though once you start loading it up -- you only have to read on these forums how people who have installed SSD's would not revert back to slow spinners. (For gaming though the SSD issue probably isn't relevant).

Cheers
jimbo