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Motoxmann

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 17, 2010
72
2
Expecting delivery of new iMac tomorrow and want to install windows through bootcamp solely for gaming purposes. Should I go with 7 or 8.1? I've heard a ton of mixed stuff on 8 so don't know if its worth it. Thanks.
 
I'd go with win8 at this point since you now can disable the metro interface and get the start button back. I personally prefer win7 but I'm hearing more positive feedback with win8
 
i've had both, i like win 8.1, but if you like simple go for win 7. you can always upgrade like i did. it was flawless, no need to edit the partition or anything it was like a regular upgrade. You just have to reinstall apple bootcamp drivers
 
Thanks for the replies. Gonna run over to best buy and see if I can pick up 8.1. FedEx just dropped off the imac!!
 
I'd go with win8 at this point since you now can disable the metro interface and get the start button back. I personally prefer win7 but I'm hearing more positive feedback with win8

I have Windows 7 in a VM with 2 processors and 2GB of RAM.

My school is offering a free copy of Windows 8 through one of my classes. I haven't used it and was curious to try it out. Does it run better than Windows 7 in your experience?
 
On my ageing but still running early '09 iMac (with 8GB RAM) I've had Windows 7 x64 installed and ran great. I recently removed W7 and installed Windows 8.1 Pro x64 (on same hardware) and noticed a pretty decent increase in general performance; my apps and everything in the OS itself seem to run noticeably faster and smoother. Interestingly my hardware is not officially supported to run any version of windows 8, or BootCamp 5 for that matter, but it's running both perfectly fine. :cool:

So I would say, with all else being equal, definitely go with 8.1.

On a side note; I personally hate Metro or Modern UI (whatever they call it), that monstrosity they call a start screen. On the recommendation of a friend, I installed Classic Shell 4 (link), it's a free app to replace the start screen with windows7-style start menu. In one word, it's awesome! It's a fully functional start menu (like in W7) and very customizable, letting you boot right into the desktop and disable charms etc... I highly recommend it.
 
Depends. While I prefer to have the latest OS installed, I'm downgrading to Windows 7 so I have more compatibility with software such as Solidworks, Surfcam, Mastercam, etc.

On my desktop, I haven't upgraded or even thought of upgrading since all I use it for is games and nothing else so far.
 
Windows 7 is the best windows version released to date . Most people do not like windows 8 including me . I prefer a classic desktop . Windows 8 is still a good os though but only on a tablet in my opinion . Most people who use Windows 8 only do so because it came with there new computer .
 
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