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Gamers of the World Rejoice! Windows 7 Frame Rates Good on DX10 Games

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By now, it should be clear that Windows 7 is going to be better than Vista by leaps and bounds. Windows 7 is lighter on resources, bug free, and aesthetically pleasing. So far it looks better than Vista in terms of productivity, usability and hardware compatibility. Most importantly however, Windows 7 is going to excel in the arena we all truly care about–gaming. The dork-o-nets have already been hard at work benchmarking video cards on Windows 7, and happily, frame rates are looking promising.

The good folks at extremetech did the community the service of firing up a handful of new games on Vista and Windows 7 with some popular video cards. Extremetech’s battery of tests included the latest NVIDIA and ATI video cards in action on Crysis, Left 4 Dead, World in Conflict, Company of Heroes, Far Cry 2, and some popular benchmarks. The 3DMark Vantage test yeilded identical results in both Windows 7 and Vista. From a strict hardware point of view, Vista and 7 power video cards equally well.

A benchmark test, however, is never as reliable as a hands-on test with some demanding games. On the whole, NVIDIA’s GeForce 9800 and GTX 285 achieved similar framerates on both Vista and Windows 7 on most games. Unlike GeForce, Radeon’s cards performed substantially better on Windows 7. Take a look at Radeon’s performance on the system crusher, Crysis:

I’m expecting Radeon’s video cards to perform even better by the time Windows 7 goes gold. Today, AMD released an update to their ATI Radeon Catalyst drivers that include support for the Windows 7 Beta. The drivers address specific games and their performance on 7, among other things.

2009 might just be a good year for gamers, and it looks like I might finally bid a fond farewell to XP on my gaming machine. Fore more on Windows 7, read our review of the beta. Otherwise, check out more on games, hardware and tech on our blog:


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