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
 
Desperate.
 

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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

Of course they are moving to Windows 8/8.1... you really have to be pretty dumb to stick on Windows 7 for PC Gaming. Windows 7 uses a lot more PC resources than Windows 8 so they will have an immediate performance/speed boost just by upgrading. That way you can use more games with acceptable/decent graphics without buying new hardware setups.
 

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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

Of course they are moving to Windows 8/8.1... you really have to be pretty dumb to stick on Windows 7 for PC Gaming. Windows 7 uses a lot more PC resources than Windows 8 so they will have an immediate performance/speed boost just by upgrading. That way you can use more games with acceptable/decent graphics without buying new hardware setups.

Hardly, i would venture to say most of them bought new rigs with 8 on it. I don't see much evidence for saying these people went out and upgraded their os only.
 

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Of course they are moving to Windows 8/8.1... you really have to be pretty dumb to stick on Windows 7 for PC Gaming. Windows 7 uses a lot more PC resources than Windows 8 so they will have an immediate performance/speed boost just by upgrading. That way you can use more games with acceptable/decent graphics without buying new hardware setups.

Hardly, i would venture to say most of them bought new rigs with 8 on it. I don't see much evidence for saying these people went out and upgraded their os only.

A bit of both I would think. I upgraded my desktop PC and bought a new 8 laptop. I didn't upgrade for better gaming though. Haven't noticed it to be any better on 8 versus 7 (on the same hardware)either.
 

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Of course they are moving to Windows 8/8.1... you really have to be pretty dumb to stick on Windows 7 for PC Gaming. Windows 7 uses a lot more PC resources than Windows 8 so they will have an immediate performance/speed boost just by upgrading. That way you can use more games with acceptable/decent graphics without buying new hardware setups.

Are you sure W7 really uses graphics card that much more? I assume gamers have 16GB, quadcore, SSD etc. I can't iamgine that using W7 really slows you down on such rigs. and the OS graphics requirements are minor compared to games.

I think it is more due to gamers more frequently updating hardware and at that occasion upgrading the OS. And probably the "wanting the newest" is more among gamers.
 

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Gamers are a special breed anyhow. They spend a lot more IT money than Mom Mary around the corner. Testing a new OS is a small investment for them. And Windows 8.1 is faster in some areas.

I was amazed how well Windows 8.1 performed with an Atom Z3740 CPU on my Asus Transformer.
 

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Best benefit of Windows 8.1, WDDM 1.3 drivers. Also, I'd love to see DirectX 11.2 implementation but something tells me that I'd have to wait a decade...
 

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I cannot play FIFA 13 in Windows 8.1..... Please Help ME :(
 

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I cannot play FIFA 13 in Windows 8.1..... Please Help ME :(
I suggest you make a new posting for that problem. In this thread it will not get much attention.
 

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I have been very pleased with the performance in my games, with Windows 8.1.
Granted I put in on a new system build, so all hardware was new as well, but I am a happy camper.
 

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Windows 7 uses a lot more PC resources than Windows 8

Did you just make this up off the top of your head? (Or did you read it from a poor source instead?)

Any source?

There are some improvements in 8 but the difference is so negligible that the only way someone can tell is by staring at a chart or something. In real life, there's no real difference in performance. Very minor if anything.

Take for instance, from ZDNET - OpenGL - shows better on 7:

13-08-201209-29-50.jpg


So can't be too dumb, heh.

Benchmark3d.com seems to show that Win 7 is slightly better for most games:

Windows 7 vs Windows 8 RTM: Gaming Performance ? BenchmarK3D - Page 2
 

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I am a gamer

I am a gamer and my gaming rig is definately Windows 7. As a matter of fact I am building a new gaming rig, and I wouldn't even consider using Windows 8 on a gaming machine, at least not yet.

I tried Windows 8 and had way to many headaches, but Win 8.1 may have improved on that. Most everyone I know is on Windows 7. Though some complaints may be lack of driver support, many complaints dealt with sluggish mouse control and overall performance. I tried Sid Meier's Civilization V, written for Windows 8 touch control, for me it was not a pleasant experience, switched back to mouse control and eventually removed it from the Win 8 machine entirely.

It is also a massive gaming community in our world, and I truly don't think Steam is a fair representation, there are several other gaming portals, Gamestop comes to mind, that is just as popular or GameSpy. Also, games like Final Fantasy XIV, StarWars of the Old Republic, World of WarCraft, Guild Wars, most or at the least many of the popular games aren't even on Steam. Not to be-little Steam, but to me, Steam seems to be more for companies that don't have the resources to promote their games, so they use Steam as a portal to market their wares, but not saying they don't have popular games. I have Steam installed (some games are only available on Steam), but honestly, rarely use it. What the report also, didn't mention was that Steam is also starting a huge effort to port many of the games for use on Linux. Linux users are going crazy for the recognition, which may account for some of Steam's current influx of users and popularity.

Just my opinion and observations.
 
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Windows 7 uses a lot more PC resources than Windows 8

Did you just make this up off the top of your head? (Or did you read it from a poor source instead?)

Any source?

There are some improvements in 8 but the difference is so negligible that the only way someone can tell is by staring at a chart or something. In real life, there's no real difference in performance. Very minor if anything.

Take for instance, from ZDNET - OpenGL - shows better on 7:

13-08-201209-29-50.jpg


So can't be too dumb, heh.

Benchmark3d.com seems to show that Win 7 is slightly better for most games:

Windows 7 vs Windows 8 RTM: Gaming Performance ? BenchmarK3D - Page 2

By the looks of that it was straight after W8 came out. It wouldn't have most optimized drivers and updates at that point in October. That would be my question towards this. Either way, it probably wouldn't be big difference.
 

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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
 

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Yes, most games are GPU intensive, but some games like GTA IV rely much more on CPU than all other games.

Yes again, slow hard disk really slows down the game drawing scenes.
 

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there is the fact the battlefield 4 is optimized for windows 8.1, so people move over to 8.1 for that.

I did test that proved that there is almost a 10fps difference with windows 7 having the lower fps
 

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