Windows 10 Vs Windows 8 Game Performance Review, Major Titles On Microsoft's New OS
Xbox App & Conclusion
Yet beyond performance, Windows 10 offers a few other goodies for gamers. The included Xbox App allows gamers to take in-game screenshots, record/capture PC games while playing and even capture the last 30 seconds of gameplay as an afterthought. This function is very similar to NVIDIA’s Shadowplay feature, which is exclusive to NVIDIA GPUs (600 series and above). AMD users can also find a similar feature in Raptr’s AMD Gaming Evolved program. Each of these established solutions offers much longer “after-thought” video capture than the embedded Xbox App. Capture your last 10min of gameplay with the latter Raptr/AMD solution, while the former Shadowplay offers up to your last 20min of gameplay to be recorded.
Adding insult to injury, the Xbox app requires you to run your game in Windowed Fullscreen, otherwise you will not be able to see the UI that pops up when you press WinKey+G. Hopefully Microsoft will fix that requirement with an update.
Adding insult to injury, the Xbox app requires you to run your game in Windowed Fullscreen, otherwise you will not be able to see the UI that pops up when you press WinKey+G. Hopefully Microsoft will fix that requirement with an update.
Wrap Up
So, should gamers dive in and upgrade to Windows 10? That depends. Our tests results show, there is no added performance gain—a frame or two will go unnoticed during actual gameplay. Of course, all this will need to be revisited when other benchmarks and games begin to support the new DirectX 12 API.
Beyond the lukewarm bench results, we’ve had no problems or
crashes with Windows 10. It boots faster than Win8 and the UI is clean and
intuitive. We don’t miss the touch-focused tiled environment and the reprised,
updated Start Menu is very welcomed. Speaking solely for gaming enthusiasts,
however. Our upgrade was fairly painless and now we’re ready for DX12. More
scrutinizing gamers may want to wait and see if the new API delivers on its
promise in real-world games, but for now it at the very least looks like Windows 10 won't sap any performance and in fact might offer a frame or two of additional bandwidth in spots.
Have you upgraded? Let us know how the new OS is working for you.
