MeanBruceThat’s not showing off. This is showing off:

Maximus V Extreme .......

KantasticBecause he's targeting a demographic that prides itself on tweaking things out of the box...? This is a PC enthusiast forum, from the moment our parts arrive, we start thinking about how to milk it for everything it's worth. We replace coolers, we replace thermal compound, we even replace fans on replacement coolers, and we overclock the shit out of everything, from processors to monitors. Yet, after spending hours upon hours doing all of that, you're bashing Windows 8 because it requires 5 minutes to tweak to make faster than Windows 7? Really? :banghead:

PopcornMachineThere is no need for touch screen on a desktop system.

Maybe it's a great OS for tablets, but nothing more than that. I guess they are scared of Apple's interface and think they can take that market away from them. Good luck.

Microsoft is trying to trick/force/cajole people into thinking they need touch screen desktops when they don't.

Would have thought they learned their lesson with the whole Vista debacle, but I guess not.

After testing both AMD's Radeon HD 7970 and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 on Windows 8 using 19 benchmarks, we can confirm that both Windows 7 and Windows 8 offer the same gaming performance. Some games at low, CPU-limited resolutions show Windows 8 lagging slightly behind Windows 7, which is a sign that there is some mechanism at work here that increases CPU time or otherwise limits the system from sending information to the graphics cards fast enough to achieve higher framerates. This difference is very small though and barely noticeable, especially at higher resolutions like full HD or 2560x1600. The same performance is, at higher resolutions, pretty much the same as in Windows 7. The difference we noticed would be smaller, or go away, with a weaker graphics card at lower resolution as the slower GPU will limit framerates in such a scenario.

In terms of driver quality, I have to commend NVIDIA for releasing a perfect-working, rock stable Windows 8 driver, even though it is still marked as beta. AMD's first Windows 8 WHQL certified driver doesn't do so well here. We spotted a significant performance loss in Crysis 2, limiting maximum FPS to 63 - no matter the resolution. Other games work fine though; this seems to be a limited issue.

Overall, there is no reason to upgrade to Windows 8 just for a performance gain in games. There are certainly other reasons that make the OS upgrade interesting like faster boot time, UEFI support and Storage Spaces. There are, on the other hand, some turnoffs like the Metro UI that many users describe as clunky.

Support for DirectX 11.1 is, at this time, useless because there are no games that support it, nor have games with support been announced.

Easy Rhinotpuers should be ashamed of themselves for being so backwards.

rpsgcAs opposed to cheering for a tablet OS on the desktop? Yeah that's so hardcore. Look I can haz big colourful squares on my screen! Awesome. Why don't you just buy an iPad?

The only people who should be ashamed are those few who think too highly of themselves and have no respect for other people or their opinion and thus feel the need to belittle, mock and attack them.

Like calling people here "sheeple" and "noobs".

Grow up.

erixx1. Color matching is easy, my mother does it all the time when making dresses and curtains :)

2. Those pics were taken before you installed all the nasty little cables for USB, fans, front panel audio, etc....

PopcornMachineYeah. That's the only problem with it. No start button. Otherwise it's the best OS ever.

KainXSthis has nothing to do with tech communities like ours who have shown resistance for whatever reason, this is about casual users(especially older ones) do not like 8, after showing it to like 11 "normal" people only 2 liked it, the did not know how to use it or did not like it, they probably did their own tests to see if "normal" people take a liking to it and the results were bad.

this is what I have seen

but for tablets it works very well, after using one.

I personally might use it though as it did give me a little boost and is a cheap upgrade, other than that thats all it is.

Easy Rhinofine, stick with your older and slower operating system. it took me 5 minutes to find a start menu, install it and have it working. tpuers should be ashamed of themselves for being so backwards.

EarthDogLOL... Yeah the 'performance' upgrades are astounding. I should rush out right now and buy it so I can.................wait what did you claim it does again? :confused:

Dos101Aweful lot of complaining about what small thing then :rolleyes: They took the Start Menu from the corner and made it a screen, once people suck it up and get over the change they'll realize how much it can benefit them.

Dos101The faster startup/shutdown times and better battery life (on laptops/tablets) have already been documented, gaming performance will increase with more mature drivers. Isn't this stuff common sense anymore?

3870x2I will say that if win7 was stripped down as much as 8 is, it would boot as fast if not faster I bet (having to load the metro on top takes longer)
The OS isnt really optimized in speed within the system, it is just more stripped down, less services and such that launch automatically compared to 7.

I am not sure better drivers will help anything. AFAIK the drivers are the same for each architecturally, so there cant really be any performance increase.

sheeple!

MeanBruceThat’s not showing off. This is showing off:

Maximus V Extreme 3770K 4.8Ghz Dominator GT 2133Mhz, extended heat sink fins

Less than 10db auditory output, 27C CPU idle with H100

...and you should see my girlfriend, oh my.:D

WrigleyvillainFirst of all, get some real cooling. And as for seeing your gf, I think we just did.

iLLzFor everyone complaining about the lack of Start Menu, I just don't understand what you need it for. Even Microsoft found that noone launched applications from their anymore with the exception of certain things like Control Panel, and Administrative Tasks.

Easy Rhinofine, stick with your older and slower operating system. it took me 5 minutes to find a start menu, install it and have it working. tpuers should be ashamed of themselves for being so backwards.

Dos101The faster startup/shutdown times and better battery life (on laptops/tablets) have already been documented, gaming performance will increase with more mature drivers. Isn't this stuff common sense anymore?

xenocideI don't think anyone is arguing that Windows 8 isn't optimized well for Laptops\Tablets, but the gaming performance gains remain to be seen. I remember when people swore Vista would get dozens of times better when it came to performance, it would just take a bit--apparently they meant when it was replaced by Windows 7 :laugh:

I see no reason to upgrade to Windows 8, maybe next build I do will use it, but as of now it seems pointless.

SyborficalAll people really need is valve and a few other big developers to poor [sic] some money in to an open and free API that is like direct X for Linux.