Windows 7 or Windows 8?

Need some help here. Having some issues with Windows 8 and I don't like the UI and Metro and lack of the start button, but I also feel if I use W7 I'll miss out on performance increases and stuff. When I had W8 I immediately downloaded applications to bring back the start button and disable Metro (Classic Shell) but I was BSOD'ing and I formatted back to W7.

What does everyone reccomend? Does it really matter? Should W8 just be skipped?

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Originally Posted by Princey

Need some help here. Having some issues with Windows 8 and I don't like the UI and Metro and lack of the start button, but I also feel if I use W7 I'll miss out on performance increases and stuff.

What does everyone reccomend? Does it really matter? Should W8 just be skipped?

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There's some minor differences, but for the sake of playing a game, they're not relevant ones. (The video card drivers you get for Windows 7 are often the same ones for W8 and W8.1) , Network card drivers are more different however. Not that I think that would change anything.

I'd think that windows 8 is more bloated because of that awful Metro interface, but all the underlying stuff for it also exists in Windows 7 except the interface itself, so that doesn't really mean much.

If buying a new computer, everyone will eventually have to take whatever future version of Windows exists, but for now I'd avoid Windows 8 unless it comes with the system, which if it does, then it's pointless downgrading.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

I'd think that windows 8 is more bloated.

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This cant be any more inaccurate. Microsoft completely started from scratch with Windows 8 with a brand new kernel. The performance gains are drastic. Windows 8 machines boot up in about 5 seconds and this is just one of the benefits of the brand new kernel.

To the OP, from what i understand, Windows 8.1 will release soon and addresses your concern with the start button =).

I just built a new PC with windows 8 and I can say it is significantly LESS demanding on resources.

with 8gb of RAM windows 7 bare install occupied 17-19% of ram, while windows 8 occupies 14% ram and consumes less cpu cycles.

I was hesitant about upgrading to 8, but it was well worth it. It is also extremely stable. No crashes in the 4 months the PC has been assembled.

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Originally Posted by Andvari2297

I just built a new PC with windows 8 and I can say it is significantly LESS demanding on resources.

with 8gb of RAM windows 7 bare install occupied 17-19% of ram, while windows 8 occupies 14% ram and consumes less cpu cycles.

I was hesitant about upgrading to 8, but it was well worth it. It is also extremely stable. No crashes in the 4 months the PC has been assembled.

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If you built a new pc with better hardware it stands to reason that 8 uses a small percentage, if, for ex your old pc had 4gb ram and 7 used 19% and your new has 8gb and 8 uses 14%, overall 8 is using more

Win 8 boots faster on most systems mostly because of how it uses the extra swap file it creates--if you delete it, you loose it's psuedo hibernation file it uses to speed up booting and it bogs it down until it is recreated after the next boot. It's increase is also tied into the BIOS integration (which, IIRC is also available with Win7). So it's more than just a new kernel--they've redone the bootstrap process in general.

As for the Metro crap... you can get around that. Sourceforge has the free Classic Shell that restores most of the start button, and you can customize it to function a lot like the old one (can break out documents, control panel, etc. as menus and such). They have custom icon packs for the graphics too (the default is a sea shell icon), so you can make it look like a Vista or Win7 start button and such.

Once you get that in place, for the most part you can make it behave like Win7 (once you tweak the UAC and crap). Wasn't too fond of the new web browser and email either... thank heavens for Firefox and Thunderbird.

But, that's all about the interfaces for Windows. Game-wise---I don't really notice anything different between my XP box and Win8 (outside of the Win8 having much better hardware thrown at it).

Minor differences between the two besides 8 and 8.1 has performance improvement. In 8.1 the start menu is back. In 8.0 you can get free software that will make it work (visually) like windows 7.

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Originally Posted by Will01

If you built a new pc with better hardware it stands to reason that 8 uses a small percentage, if, for ex your old pc had 4gb ram and 7 used 19% and your new has 8gb and 8 uses 14%, overall 8 is using more

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Not entirely sure where you came up with 4gb.....I stated "with 8gb of ram".

Use windows 7 it has less .... crap to deal with.

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Originally Posted by Isox21

This cant be any more inaccurate. Microsoft completely started from scratch with Windows 8 with a brand new kernel. The performance gains are drastic. Windows 8 machines boot up in about 5 seconds and this is just one of the benefits of the brand new kernel.

To the OP, from what i understand, Windows 8.1 will release soon and addresses your concern with the start button =).

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No they didn't, and nobody does that. Type "ver" at the command line.
Windows NT 3.5, 4.0, 2000, Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 are all Windows NT kernels.

Any performance gain you think you are seeing is imaginary.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing...rclocking-site

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Originally Posted by Princey

I also feel if I use W7 I'll miss out on performance increases

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I lol'd.

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Should W8 just be skipped?

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Yes.

My personal advice to you, stay away from 8 and stick with 7. Who knows what will happen with 8 in the future, but for now i would stick with 7.

(Just a quick personal note to my friend D, cheers mate!)

stay with 7, 8 should be avoided unless you want a touch monitor and trashes your mouse

With all the negative comments on win8, and horror stories, I was hesitent in getting win8, but the performance boost, how ever minimal, pushed me into getting win8.

Now that I have it, and messed with it, its really not a big deal even in the slightest. Any annoyance in comparison to win7, is so abysmally small, I have to say go for win8.

Every upgrade of windows annoys me with small things, as did XP, Vista, win7, and win8, and its just that the annoyances to win8 are harder to overlook, when the interface changes, but its so simple to work with/avoid its not even noticeable after 1 day with the OS.

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Originally Posted by ShannaraAK

In 8.1 the start menu is back.

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Yes and no, the button is indeed back, but pressing it is exactly the same as pressing the Windows key - you get a fullscreen metro style menu come up.

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Originally Posted by Andvari2297

Not entirely sure where you came up with 4gb.....I stated "with 8gb of ram".

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It was an example, in your post you stated that Win8 uses less resources on your new PC. It stands to reason that if your new pc is indeed better than your old one (I assume it is, why else would you upgrade), it would have more resources to begin with, so win8 uses less of the more abundant resources would be common sense really.

Thank you all for your answers.

I personally use W7, I have the upgrade for W8 but I don't want to deal with the headache of relearning and tweaking W8.

Performance gains are going to be fairly negligible between the two when it comes to running a game. So unless you're barely scraping by in terms of specs, use whatever you are most comfortable with.

I used to have vista and tons of people skipped over that for great reason, just wish I had done it too.

A friend of mine was having issues with frequent 90000 disconnects while on Windows 8. He went back to Windows 7 and that frequency has maybe dropped to 1 per night at best.