Windows 8 would have most if not all of those drivers to get rudimentary support wouldn't it?
Ok guys well as far as I can tell, nobody has managed to install Windows 7 onto a new MBA due to everything in these machines being USB3 and Windows 7 not having any native USB3 drivers, so the keyboard and trackpad are both dead and you can't get past the installer.
Until someone figures out a workaround there won't be any Windows gaming results..
Windows 8 would have most if not all of those drivers to get rudimentary support wouldn't it? Or slipstream drivers into a Windows 7 install media?
is that something Apple could update with the Bootcamp installer?
I am confident the new MBAs will be able to run modern games at a comfortable framerate and quality to satisfy all casual gamers. You don't buy a MBA for hardcore gaming.
I ordered a new 13"/i5/8gb to play some current games (wow, league, diablo), as well as being able to run interesting future releases (elder scrolls online) at enjoyable settings. The i5>i7 upgrade didn't seem feasible to me to squeeze out an extra 5-8fps under more graphic-intense gaming conditions...on an MBA. If you care about that, build a dedicated gaming desktop and put that $140 upgrade money towards it.
Fantastic!
I'm really impressed with how well it's handling a recent game like Black Ops 2.
Now if someone is able to do Bioshock Infinite that will be lovely jubbly..
EDIT
I've just seen Crysis 3 being tested on the Air..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaqVGXuuWSQ
Yeah Windows 8 should do it but 1) I have never used that demon and I don't know if I want to start now and 2) I can imagine the GPU drivers will be a lot less optimised than the Windows 7 counterparts. It took years for Win 7 to catch up with XP in GPU driver performance.
Do you know how I can slipstream drivers onto the boot stick? I have never done such a thing.
what you said about win8 is worse for games comparing to win7 is hard for me to believe. i have played games on win7 (my gaming pc is windows) for years and upgraded to win8 right when it came out. i did not notice ANY difference. (starcraft, black ops, civ 5, battlefields, etc.)
i used to do boot camp on my mac, but have moved to vmware because it's just WAY easier to use vmware. no performance loss whatsoever for me (office, adobe, etc.). for gaming i stay with my desktop windows machine.
You should be able to slipstream a few USB3 drivers into an installation ISO, similar to what a lot of people used to do for the XP-SATA drivers.
If you have a parallel or dedicated Windows machine to work on, it should be fairly straight forward. This link provides a great walkthrough:
USB3 slipstream into Windows7
This will be my first venture into a dedicated OSX machine, but looking forward to some of the MBA2013(i7) tests and benchmarks!
Keep in mind, the USB3 drivers are manufacture based - so you'd need to add multiple drivers to the ISO. I'm not sure who the board manufacturer is for the MBA, but it would most likely be their drivers.
Windows 8 will work, though... Despite it being annoying.