Introduction

Microsoft Windows 8, the year's biggest tech launch, is on course for a late-October launch. Before consumers can get their hands on the new operating system, Microsoft made its fit-for-market version (RTM) available to industry partners and enterprise clients. We got our hands on the new operating system.

Windows 8 is more than a new operating system with a new user-interface. It is based on the new Windows 6.2 kernel and comes with a new driver model; in particular, a new display driver model (WDDM 1.2). The new DDM changes the way software interacts with graphics hardware, meaning that Windows 8 could have a different graphics performance from Windows 7.

Meanwhile, the two leading gaming GPU markers, NVIDIA and AMD, have both claimed to be the first with drivers certified to work with Windows 8. We took this opportunity and installed Windows 8 RTM on our VGA test-bench, picked a high-end graphics card from each of the two camps, here the GeForce GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970, and made them work with drivers NVIDIA and AMD recommend for use with Windows 8. We put the two graphics cards through our VGA gaming benchmarks with these Windows 8 drivers and came up with two objectives for our review:

• To find out what difference in graphics performance Windows 8 makes over Windows 7
  
  and
• How NVIDIA's and AMD's drivers recommended for Windows 8 fare

Test System

Benchmark scores in other reviews are only comparable when this exact same configuration is used.

• All video card results were obtained on this exact system with exactly the same configuration.
• All games were set to their highest quality setting unless indicated otherwise.
• AA and AF are applied via in-game settings - not via the driver's control panel.

Each benchmark was tested at the following settings and resolution:

• 1280 x 800, 2x Anti-aliasing. Common resolution for most small flatscreens today (17" - 19"). A bit of eye candy turned on in the drivers.
• 1680 x 1050, 4x Anti-aliasing. Most common widescreen resolution on larger displays (19" - 22"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
• 1920 x 1200, 4x Anti-aliasing. Typical widescreen resolution for large displays (22" - 26"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.
• 2560 x 1600, 4x Anti-aliasing. Highest possible resolution for commonly available displays (30"). Very good looking driver graphics settings.

Alan Wake

Alan Wake, released in 2012 for the PC, is a highly successful third-person horror shooter that revolves around the adventures of novelist Alan Wake who has to battle the "darkness" which takes over living and dead things. Alan's signature flashlight is used to strip the forces of darkness of their protection to make them vulnerable to conventional weapons.

The engine of Alan Wake uses DirectX 9, but features complex lighting effects, making it a quite demanding title. We benchmarked with the highest settings possible.