Windows 10 Vs Windows 8 Game Performance Review, Major Titles On Microsoft's New OS

by Shawn Sanders — Tuesday, August 18, 2015, 12:02 PM EDT

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3DMark Fire Strike & API Overhead Benchmarks

As mentioned on the previous page, DirectX 12 supported games and synthetic benchmarks are few and far between. Out of our cache of benchmarks only Futuremark’s 3DMark new API Overhead feature test supports DirectX 12 in a fashion, though the new and currently very green "Ashes of Singularity" does as well (unfortunately, it wasn't available at the time of testing). However, this Futuremark test compares API performance across a given graphics and CPU platform.

Futuremark API Overhead Test

Synthetic DirectX 12 Draw Call

Games make thousands of draw calls per frame, but each one creates performance-limiting overhead for the CPU. APIs with less overhead can handle more draw calls and produce richer visuals. The 3DMark API Overhead feature test is the world's first independent test for comparing the performance of DirectX 12, Mantle, and DirectX 11. The number of draw calls increases in steps. The test result is the number of draw calls per second achieved before the frame rate drops below 30 fps.

Take it in folks. The API Overhead test easily shows the most variation between our entire suite of tests, as you'll see shortly. The draw call throughput makes a tremendous leap from just under 2 million in both Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 DirectX 11 tests, to a staggering 17.9 million in the multi-threaded DirectX 12 test on Windows 10. Granted, this is only a synthetic test. More reliable gaming performance will have to wait for a few honest DirectX 12 supported titles to launch. Yet taken at face value, a compelling argument can be made for PC enthusiasts to take the Win10 plunge.

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike

Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Fire Strike Extreme is an enhanced version of Fire Strike designed for high-end multi-GPU systems (SLI / Crossfire) and future hardware generations. In addition to raising the rendering resolution, additional visual quality improvements increase the rendering load to ensure accurate performance measurements for truly extreme hardware setups.

3DMark FireStrike Win10

Here it begins. After running this test we observed very little variation in game performance between the two OSes—each coming within mere points of each other. For what it’s worth Windows 10 officially takes the win here by a hair.