Is Windows 10 a Good Choice for Gaming?
Gamers account for a significant portion of all the Windows users out there, and with PC gaming on a meteoric rise, the folks at Microsoft have had to keep their video game playing consumers at the forefront of their minds while developing products for the masses. Gamers were really happy with Windows XP and Windows 7 as both Operating Systems were extremely stable and furnished as far as gaming was concerned. However, along came Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, both of which put the relationship between Microsoft and PC gamers on the rocks. Gamers, to say the least, weren’t happy with all the issues and problems Windows 8 and 8.1 had waiting for them in the early days of the then-latest and greatest iterations of the Windows Operating System.
The time of Windows 8 and 8.1, though, has long since passed – now is the time of Windows 10. With Windows 10, Microsoft tried their best to avoid the mistakes they made with its predecessor and tried their damndest to minimize issues and problems with the Operating System upon launch. Unfortunately, Microsoft wasn’t able to hold to their ambitions and Windows 10 was only a little short of a catastrophe for the gaming community upon launch. Chief among the hordes of problems gamers experienced after upgrading their Windows computers to Windows 10 (which was free to owners of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 for an entire year after launch) were compatibility issues with games, optimization problems, a wide array of issues with graphics cards and their drivers, and worst of all, a massive decline in the game performance and framerate.
To be fair, the description above is what the situation was like upon Windows 10’s launch. When the newest version of the Windows Operating System was launched, the whole world could see that it was crude and had curves and edges which needed to be and were polished post-launch. Microsoft has since done an amazing job of turning Windows 10 into the premiere choice of gamers when it comes to versions of the Windows Operating Systems for their computers. So, the question gamers face now – at the very beginning of 2020 after nearly 5 years following the launch of Windows 10 – is whether Windows 10 is good for gaming.
The short answer to this is pretty simple: yes! Windows 10, at this point, is certainly good for gaming and has earned the right to be the first choice of gamers when it comes to selecting an Operating System for their computers. The long answer to this question, on the other hand, delves a bit deeper into why exactly Windows 10 is an excellent choice of Operating System for gamers. The following are some of the absolute most significant reasons why Windows 10, in today’s day and age, is good for gaming:
DirectX 12
The importance of this specific addition that Windows 10 brings to gamers simply can’t be stressed enough. DirectX is the application programming interface that games use to communicate with your computer – it’s the platform a game uses to get your computer to do what the game wants it to do. Up until Windows 10, DirectX 11 was the latest and greatest in this pretty long line of toolsets. With Windows 10, Microsoft introduced DirectX 12, bringing gamers tons of amazing new features and advantages. DirectX 12 brings the ability for graphics cards to use more than one core of a computer’s CPU at the same time (games developed using DirectX 11 or lower can only talk to one of the cores of a computer’s CPU at any given point in time), which is quite unprecedented, to be honest.
Tests conducted between DirectX 11-optimized games and DirectX 12-optimized games have shown a difference in the performance of 85-300% between the two, which is exponential, to say the least. Moving from Direct X 11 to DirectX 12 isn’t something too difficult for developers either. DirectX 12 uses a lot less power than previous DirectX iterations and can even use the integrated graphics card as a co-processor to the dedicated graphics card on computers with two graphics cards.
However, for a game to be able to take advantage of all the benefits DirectX 12 has to offer, it needs to be developed using DirectX 12. Games developed using DirectX 12 were a rare sight to see upon Windows 10’s launch, but the list of DirectX 12 games that have been developed and are currently in development is quickly getting longer. All things considered, DirectX 12 is the absolute biggest reason why Windows 10 is good for gaming.
Windows 10 is Now the Standard For Graphics Driver Development
A significant amount of time has passed since Windows 10 was first launched, and it is in this time that Microsoft has not only changed Windows 10 into the best possible version of itself but Windows 10 has also become the standard Windows Operating System for basically everything. That includes graphics driver development. All major graphics card manufacturers are now developing their graphics drivers for and on the Windows 10 Operating System, which means that graphics drivers are not tailored to the body measurements of Windows 10 and later optimized and adjusted for older versions of Windows.
Having the best graphics drivers is massively important to any gamer worth his salt, which is why Windows 10 now being the standard for graphics driver development and being the version of Windows to get the latest and greatest graphics drivers the fastest is another significant reason why Windows 10 is good for gaming.
Windows 10 Offers Better Performance And Framerates
Windows 10 offers better game performance and game framerates as compared to its predecessors, even if marginally so. The difference in gaming performance between Windows 7 and Windows 10 is a bit significant, with the difference being quite noticeable to gamers. However, the difference in gaming performance between Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 is comparatively smaller, but rest assured – Windows 10 beats Windows 8/8.1 in basically every performance test out there, even if only by a small margin.
Windows 10 Handles Windowed Gaming Quite Well
While not a quality that every PC gamer will be head over heels for, the fact that Windows 10 handles windowed gaming better than any other iteration of the Windows Operating System is still something that makes Windows 10 good for gaming. Windows 10 being able to handle windowed gaming very well means that pressing Alt + Tab while inside a game running as a full-screen window will switch you over to your Desktop in basically no time at all.
Windows 10’s Better Integration with Xbox
Windows 10 and Xbox has better integration through the Windows 10 Xbox app, which allows streaming Xbox games to the Windows 10 PC.
Windows 10 Boots Faster Than Windows 7
A large proportion of all the PC gamers out there have been biding their time using Windows 7 after seeing Microsoft’s handling of Windows 8/8.1 fiasco. These gamers should now be upgrading to Windows 10, and a significant reason why that is so is because of Windows 10 boots MUCH faster than Windows 7 and even a bit faster than Windows 8 and 8.1. And the whole world knows how gamers would like nothing more to boot their computers up and get gaming right away.
