Is XP or Windows7 better for gaming using bootcamp?

[Awesome-Possum]

Hi, i'm currently deciding whether to download Windows 7 or XP on my Mac Air 13 to play games. My question is does XP really run faster? Also, does the DX10 update in Windows 7 make a large difference when playing games? Will the fact that i'm using a Mac Air 13 make a difference when using bootcamp such as lag?

Information:
Game: League of Legends (If it makes a difference)
Model: Macbook Air 13 (The newest model)

Help appreciated!

 

[Intell]

Depending on which Macbook Air model you have, you can only run Windows 7. Go with 7, XP will be dead to Microsoft in two years.

 

[Grannyville7989]

Gaming on Windows 7 is just fine. I never understood people making comparisons of which Windows OS to run for gaming. I've never been able to tell the difference, even when I was using Windows Vista.

 

[throAU]

7 is fine, except for perhaps compatibility with very old Windows games (like, earlier than 2004 ish?)

AS said, Windows XP is out of support soon, and it really is getting long in the tooth. Also, if your mac is reasonably new, you may only have boot camp tools for 7. You CAN hack another version of Windows onto the box by manually extracting the drivers out of the boot camp setup and figuring out which one applies to which device by trial and error (I did this to get vista on my MBP a while back, as I own a spare copy of Vista), but its a real pain to do so.

Performance wise there's little difference. 7 has better 3d performance in some things but uses a little more RAM. On a modern machine the difference is not worth worrying about, and certainly not worth picking XP for.


edit:
above poster: vista got a bad rap, mostly because in the very early days (2006-early 2007) driver support sucked. once drivers were available and optimised, it was perfectly fine - i ran it between 06 and 09 until the RC of 7 came out...

 

[Grannyville7989]

7 is fine, except for perhaps compatibility with very old Windows games (like, earlier than 2004 ish?)

AS said, Windows XP is out of support soon, and it really is getting long in the tooth. Also, if your mac is reasonably new, you may only have boot camp tools for 7. You CAN hack another version of Windows onto the box by manually extracting the drivers out of the boot camp setup and figuring out which one applies to which device by trial and error (I did this to get vista on my MBP a while back, as I own a spare copy of Vista), but its a real pain to do so.

Performance wise there's little difference. 7 has better 3d performance in some things but uses a little more RAM. On a modern machine the difference is not worth worrying about, and certainly not worth picking XP for.


edit:
above poster: vista got a bad rap, mostly because in the very early days (2006-early 2007) driver support sucked. once drivers were available and optimised, it was perfectly fine - i ran it between 06 and 09 until the RC of 7 came out...

Ah, fair enough. I didn't get Vista until summer 2007 so I guess many of the problems were resolved by that time.

I would also like to say that I've had games from 1999 run on Windows 7 64-bit run perfectly fine without having to tinker with compatibility support.

 

[throAU]

Ah, fair enough. I didn't get Vista until summer 2007 so I guess many of the problems were resolved by that time.

Yup, the big issues were either that a driver simply didn't exist, particularly if you ran 64 bit (my wifi card until say march 07 had a 32 bit driver but no 64 bit version) and that due to big changes in the audio/video subsystem, drivers didn't perform well until a few months in...

I would also like to say that I've had games from 1999 run on Windows 7 64-bit run perfectly fine without having to tinker with compatibility support.

As have I - it really does depend how the software was written. I still regularly play Falcon 4.0: Allied Force, and Falcon 4 BMS - both of which are based on Falcon 4 from 1997.

Conversely, other games like Scarface from 2005 or so will not run properly (graphical bugs), but maybe that's an Nvidia driver issue...

In my experience, if the game doesn't run without messing with the compatibility settings, trying to get it running messing with them very rarely helps