Games only, any reason to load 7 over XP3?

[Shivetya]

Considering the only Windows games of interest I have are LOTRO and the upcoming CIV5 release. I currently use Parallels 6 to instance Windows copies

 

[Intell]

I'd suggest using Boot Camp. It's much better for gaming. Also Windows 7 has Direct X 10 and 11. Xp only has 9.

 

[Dr McKay]

A decent version of 7, 'proffessional onwards' will be able run games in 'XP Mode' this way you get to keep playing your old games, and keep up with Modern games when companies decide to start moving on from XP when DirectX 9 is holding them back. As mentioned above, DirectX 10 + 11 are not supported by XP.

 

[ayeying]

A decent version of 7, 'proffessional onwards' will be able run games in 'XP Mode' this way you get to keep playing your old games, and keep up with Modern games when companies decide to start moving on from XP when DirectX 9 is holding them back. As mentioned above, DirectX 10 + 11 are not supported by XP.

XP Mode is just Windows Virtual PC. It's worse off then Parallels or VMware Fusion for Mac.

If you want games thats built for XP, the best you can run within Windows 7 is to use "Windows XP Compatibility Mode" under settings. Even then, there's no guarantee how well it'll run.

 

[bobnugget]

A decent version of 7, 'proffessional onwards' will be able run games in 'XP Mode' this way you get to keep playing your old games, and keep up with Modern games when companies decide to start moving on from XP when DirectX 9 is holding them back. As mentioned above, DirectX 10 + 11 are not supported by XP.

I've tried XP Mode on a couple of systems. XP Mode is absolutely useless for running games, and is slow for even basic desktop apps compared to VMWare Player. Luckily, you can use VMWare Player to run the XP Mode machine, and you then get slightly faster graphics, and a very usable XP desktop.

However, this really is no good for any even moderately graphics intensive games unless you have very powerful hardware.

 

[Shivetya]

OK, so basically only for newer versions of Direct X

 

[vistadude]

It depends what computer you have. If you have a macbook pro, for example, the graphics chip is underpowered so the direct X version makes no difference, so you might as well go with XP so games will run faster. If you have a mac pro and a very good graphics card, windows 7 makes more sense since it can support more ram than xp.

 

[oplix]

Win 7 should have slightly better performance when it comes to games than xp.