Building a gaming pc for 2014 should i get windows 7 or 8.1 OS?

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bradsctt
Its a matter of personal preference, however Windows 8.1 improves performance in some games, eg: Battlefield 4, due to support for DirectX 11.2 and better multi-core utilisation.
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Waaaaaaaat! What about the extreme 6?

 
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Get windows 8.1 cuz most mobo manufacturers stopped releasing windows 7 bios updates and if your graphics card is fairly new, you will most likely need a bios update. I just got a gtx 760 and i tried to update my bios on windows 7 but it was almost a year old so i had to update to windows 8.1 and then update my bios
 
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Windows 8.1 starts (full boot) really faster than windows 7 or other previous windows versions and have a very good price for students (look at the internet for the student version before buy it).

Windows XP was my good option for pure game systems for many years ago (I tried even the XP64), but it has been discontinued by Microsoft. So, if you have to pay for Operational Systems, I would like to suggest you to pay for the newest one: Windows 8.1 Pro. Remember it: for students!
 
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A few things.:

Window 8.1 if you must, but don't pay extra for "pro" unless you need to login to a domain controller (what gaming system needs to do that)? The home edition version is fine for a gaming rig.

Nvidia updated their graphics driver to work better with older versions of DirectX that run on Win7. The newest DirectX version only offered on Win8.1 doesn't offer much of an increase, if at all, to older versions of DirectX on Win7. At least that's been my experience playing BF4 on both platforms. I wonder why Nvidia did that :)

AMD released the Mantle graphics driver. I doubt AMD would build Mantle to favor Win8.1, but I don't have anything to document that.

Personal experience #1 is that my Bluetooth headphones work on both Win8.1 and Win7, but when playing BF4 only with Win7 did bluetooth work. That was probably a driver issue, but you'd think Microsoft would have worked that out with ASUS' bluetooth implementation on the p8z77-i.

Personal experience #2 was that my SLI configuration had few problems with Win7. With Win8.1 i had to turn off 50% of my graphics processing power after every upgrade to BF4 such that I was forced to go back to Win7 to regain functionality. All my driver issues have dropped to zero now with Nvidia's drivers (this after 2 BF4 updates that i've noticed). My system is 2 years old.

One could argue I should have spent more time finding and fixing the problems i was having with Windows8.1. Fair enough, but I just want to game, not become a Windows8.1 sysadmin. That simple desire might be one of many reasons why Nvidia increased performance with older versions of DirectX and AMD released Mantle.

So all that said, I vote for Windows 7. Let Microsoft keep fixing Windows until it becomes obvious they've finally succeeded.
 
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I have found that Windows 8.1 has high DPC latency. So even though the OS is faster than Windows 7, it is less smooth.

This is the primary reason I am going back to Windows 7 on my next computer. Another reason for going back is because Windows 8.1 is extremely hard to customize - you often need to resort to hacks just to change basic settings.
 
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I hate windows 8.x it wastes too much screen real estate but it is faster. Other then that it is ok. Anyone who likes windows 8 either does not use it or would like a bad teacher because s/he is suck up.
 
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I should prefer windows 8 bqz if a game doesn't work you can still right click>Resolving Compatibility Problems and launch it with an older windows his service pack.

and if you still have some problems so what??? Just go on google;"How to..." or "How do i fix..." and you should come out on some good forums.


(srry for bad english, i speak normally dutch)
 
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Back on topic...
I would say Windows 7 for it's compatibility and user interface, however windows 8 will be the new standard in a year so newer software and games will be more compatible with windows 8 in the future.

Another fact you guys might not know about, in some circumstances, windows 8 can consume up to 25% of your GPU's memory! So potentially uou can have a beautiful desktop that whizzes around, then games that perform below average unless you get a high end graphics card.

You windows 8 fanz' will argue that you haven't experienced this or don't care about ther performance drop but it is a possibility.
 
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I had no problem running games on W 8.1 + i can run in vista, win 7, xp mode...
Windows 8.1 in running smooth when you have 4GB+ ram a good video card and a quad core cpu or better.
 
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You should go with Windows 7 because windows 8 does not benefit 4 core CPUs so far. You only see a major speed difference if you are running a CPU like the AMD FX 8350 or an AMD FX 9590 (what im getting).

I would say for a final answer to upgrade to windows 8 when you upgrade components or when windows 9 comes out and it's practically free.
 
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Hi I love Window 8.1 it runs super quick and runs the latest direct x. I'm running Nvidia
GTX 770 2gb. Ram is 16gb, I'm using ssd as my boot up drive also my cpu is a 8 core
Amd 4.7ghz each core boost up to 5ghz. I did modification to my laptop so it can look better
I hate the new interface of Microsoft so I replace it with Classic shell I patch uxtheme and running
a theme. Beautiful. Doing so I think it's heck of upgrade from Window 7. So much good things.
People right now is closed minded that ignoring window 8. I can't wait for Window 9.



 
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Get Win 8.1. It is faster for gaming, as many have stated, and you will be able to get a free upgrade (from my understanding) to Win 9, when it is released.

An OS usually evolves, not devolve as some seem to think. Win 8.1 is better for, faster with, gaming than Win 7. Win 7 is a very solid OS, however. One could say, the next best. :)
 
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This can be a trick question like Sony EverQuest runs slower on wim8.1 and with some other! But other games run betters Hold out for Windows 10 unless you have money get Win8.1
 
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8.1 is more efficient if you have the correct hardware. You risk incompatibility for marginal efficiency in 8.1, and DX 11.2 features. Windows 7 is ensured stability and compatibility for the most part, and a much better OS interface.

You decide which is more important to you.

P.S. I used Win 8.1 Pro and it crashed some of my games quite often with an AMD 7970M. I really hated the OS interface, even with shell add ons its not the same in the way it handles certain shell tasks and shortcuts that were invaluable in Win7.
 
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Yes, some games dont working good. I recommend windows 7. :)
 
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Your Computer Specification are good so I think you should go to windows 8.1 its faster than windows 7 but in windows 8.1 there are some games errors but some errors can be fixed . I'm telling you this because am using windows 8.1.
 
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