LAGWAR | GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

As I previously mentioned, I’ve been very impressed with the Windows 7 Release Candidate v.7200 and I was curious to see what the performance differences, if any, would be while playing various PC games versus Windows XP. Most will probably agree that Windows XP turned out to be an extremely solid operating system, especially for gaming purposes. It offered excellent stability without hogging all of your system’s resources, leaving those resources available to be used by the game instead. In my experience thus far, Windows 7 has offered most of the same stability and the overall speed of the Win 7 operating system is very impressive.

The following benchmark was done with Crysis Warhead, Crytek’s follow-up title to the world renown, Crysis. You can read my review on Crysis Warhead here. Known for it’s top notch graphics engine and super fun physics, Crysis was the system killer for many PC gamer’s at the time of it’s release. One year later, Crysis Warhead, was released claiming to offer the same graphics and physics we had come to respect from it’s predecessor while offering improved performance optimization to the engine. The new optimization of the engine would allow the game to scale across a broader range of PC hardware so that the uber l337 gaming system owners were not the only ones able to enjoy Crysis Warhead and all that it has to offer.

This is one of a few benchmarks I intend on performing before the October 22nd release of the Windows 7 operating system. Crysis Warhead is a solid game that offers some very extreme FPS moments. Large explosions, an arsenal of weapons, and some beautiful physics processes in just about everything you do makes this game a great pick for benchmarking. A lot of complaints about benchmarks done on Crysis was the argument that the game was a coding mess and the engine lacked some much needed optimization. You will find people who still argue that those are the reasons Crysis requires such an extreme machine to run. All arguments aside, it appears that Crytek has cleaned up most of the messes from the original game and has released a solid product that actually scales very well in their latest release in the series.

This series of benchmarks is to see if there are any large performance differences between Windows 7 versus Windows XP while gaming. Other games to follow.

System specs of test machine:

As you can see in the screenshots below, all graphics settings were set to GAMER, which is only exceeded by the ENTHUSIAST setting. Vertical sync was enabled to match the 22” widescreen LCD monitor we used which has a refresh rate of 60Hz. DirectX 9 was used on both of the operating systems since Windows XP does not support DirectX 10. Both operating system’s tests were done on the “Shore Leave” level of the game.

Benchmarking can be tricky and the results cannot always be taken straight to heart. Many variables are involved and if even one larger explosion happens during one test that did not occur in another, it can throw the results off. So keep in mind that we tried to keep everything the same for each test, but the game play did vary at least on some minor level.

Benchmark Procedure Used: Since we were looking to compare the average frames per second from each operating system, we used the same level and starting point for each. Three, five-minute benchmarks were performed using Fraps in Windows XP and in Windows 7 respectively. We then took the three, five-minute average frames per second results from Windows XP, added them up, and divided them by three to get an overall average frame rate. Then we did the exact same thing with Windows 7. So each operating system had a total of 15 minutes worth of game play tested to allow plenty of time for slow, action, and cut-scene moments to give a fairly accurate depiction of the overall in-game experience.

Below is a chart showing the overall average frames per second from each operating system while playing Crysis Warhead, depicting three separate, five-minute tests for a total of 15 minutes of game play.

Honestly, I was surprised that Windows 7 fell even the tiniest bit short, even though both operating system’s results were neck and neck. Even though, they were so closely benched, the game still felt smoother while playing on Windows 7. Maybe that’s just some psych jumbo but it sure seems real enough.

If any of you are worried that your in-game performance may get bogged down a little by maintaining the same hardware while upgrading to Windows 7, I really think you’re going to be just fine. In my experience anyway Windows 7 has been just as fast as Windows XP and in some cases really seems to have a smoother feel to it. As we put more of these OS comparison benchmarks out, I really believe it will only reinforce the idea that Windows 7 ain’t no Vista. And that it’s actually everything that Vista should’ve been. It really looks to be a worthy replacement of the operating system we’ve all come to love and appreciate, ye ole faithful: XP.