Windows 7: A Great Gaming Platform?

[Peaches]

July 27, 2009 12:15 PM PDT -

Windows 7: A great gaming platform?

by Don Reisinger

With the release of Windows 7 in October, PC gamers will finally have

another platform on which to play their favorite games. Those who didn't

quite enjoy Windows Vista as a game platform or have stuck with Windows XP

are probably looking forward to the opportunity to buy some new hardware,

install Windows 7, and get the most out of their favorite games.

But is Windows 7 a promising gaming platform? Now that its development is

over, it's time to ask questions. What kind of gaming experience will it

offer? Does it have features that will help it beat out Windows Vista or

Windows XP in the game space?

Let's take a look:

DirectX 11

DirectX 11, which is set to run on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista, is

highly anticipated. A recent blog post on Advanced Micro Devices' official

blog asserts that DirectX 11, "in combination with new graphics hardware,

and in some cases Windows 7, brings significant changes to the computing

experience, changes that mean upcoming games and other applications are

about to get a lot better."

AMD believes that with the help of "a beast called the tessellator," game

developers will be able to create even better-looking games. The company

contends that titles will be "smoother, less blocky, and more

organic-looking."

Thanks to better support for multithreading and GPGPU compatibility, game

developers should be able to get more out of their games on Windows 7 than

any previous version of the operating system.

AMD contends that games will have "higher frame rates" and "more realistic

characters." It also believes that game development costs might be kept

down, thanks to a simplified, more efficient Windows 7.

Performance

In a recent posting on the Windows Partner blog, Intel's Brandon LeBlanc

wrote that Windows 7 will be a far more efficient platform than its

predecessor. According to LeBlanc, Microsoft worked with Intel to implement

"a new feature called SMT parking, which provided additional support for the

Windows 7 scheduler for Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, enabling better

performance on hyperthreaded, multicore Intel processors."

Nvidia product manager Chris Daniel wrote on the Windows Team blog last week

that Windows 7 is "the first Windows operating system to treat the

graphics-processing unit as a real peer to the CPU." He went on to say that

Windows 7 is doing a fine job of making its platform more appealing to

gamers.

full story: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10296339-17.html