Game performance on Windows 7

[troub]

Is anyone seriously debating drivers or the OS preventing the fan from running? 99.9999999999999% of the time when a fan stops running it’s due to a blockage, motor short, or a bad bearing (the most likely of the three). Does the fan spin completely freely when you turn it with your finger, or does it feel “bumpy?” Does it start spinning when you tap it?

My gaming PC is a relative old clunker:
3.2 GHz P4
3 GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce 8600GT, slightly overclocked

It runs games at least as well or better on Windows 7 (and Vista Ultimate before that) than it did with XP. I play Bioshock, Half-Life 2 (ep1 and ep2), CS:S, Company of Heroes, ARMA, and Left 4 Dead 2 on that machine, and have taxed it with Crysis and Flight Sim X. Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff out there my machine can’t run, but any performance problems are definitely not due to Windows 7 itself.

[Palooka]

@Dead_Badger

I’ve had the slowdowns, and it seems to relate largely to load times. These slowly increase to ridiculous levels during long sessions, but if I quit and restart, it’s back to normal. I’d be very surprised if it were due to any sort of overheating as a result; I certainly don’t give the system time to cool down before reloading. I’ve also noticed this on both my Win7 machine and my friend’s Vista box (both x64). We’ve both got ATI graphics cards with updated drivers, and neither machine has a problem with excessive temps.

This is consistent with a memory leak causing stuff to hit the page file.

[DWMarch]

Windows 7 hasn’t been good to me for gaming.

My monitor software, which automatically adjusts so that the games fill up the whole screen does not work on Windows 7. LG support has told me they’ll get around to releasing a Windows 7 version… eventually.

Command and Conquer Yuri’s Revenge will not run on 7 for love nor money. It runs fine under Vista but 7 won’t give it the time of day. And it’s not like this is a demanding game in any way, shape or form.

[SenorBeef]

Your video card drivers or monitor should scale the image to fit the screen.

If you have an Nvdia card, you go to the Nvidia control panel, select adjust desktop size and position, and choose either Use Nvidia scaling or Use Nvidia scaling with fixed aspect ratio (I wold prefer the latter between the two - but I wouldn’t scale at all personally). Or you can select the use my display’s built in scaling option.

I don’t know what the exact procedure for ATI cards is, but it should be similar.

You could also instruct your monitor to scale the image in the monitor’s on-screen options. It’s generally better to do at the graphics card level.

As for your game that has problems, have you tried right clicking the program and selecting some version of windows XP under the compatability tab?

[Palooka]

Nvidia scaling rarely works under Win7.

[Dead_Badger]

@Palooka

This is consistent with a memory leak causing stuff to hit the page file.

Yep, agreed. I’m taking it as a feature that reminds me I’ve been playing too long, and should probably wash, sleep or eat.