Computer Upgrade (for gaming)

[stuckless]

So, I ended up buying the AMD 7850 during the black friday deals... So now, I have a couple other questions....

1. Should I upgrade to Windows 8 (currently running Windows 7)? My son doesn't want it, but will it make the games run better?
2. When I install this card, do I need to install/re-install directx? I'm not sure which version the machine is running, but should I just go out an download and install the latest version?

My son uses Steam for about 95% of his games, so I'm not sure if Stream takes care of ensuring that DirectX is up to date or not.

[Fuzzy]

windows 7 already ships with DirectX 11, the most recent major version. I wouldn't worry about it. I also wouldn't worry about windows 8 at this point, unless you are also buying him a good touchscreen (which is where win8 really shines).

You don't have to reinstall directx after changing hardware - it is all dynamically handled. A reboot is all that should be necessary.

[panteragstk]

I put windows 8 on a computer I built my nephews and all I can say is the UI is retarded...for a desktop. If it were a touchscreen it would be nice, but with a mouse it's just dumb. Just my opinion of course, but W7 works great so I have no reason to "upgrade" any time soon.

[Tiki]

The First time I saw Win8, I thought it looked terrible. Then I tried loading one of the consumer previews into a virtual machine, and pretty much confirmed that I didn't like it. But, I gave it one more try (I upgraded a 4-year old laptop that was running XP) and I'm pretty happy with it.

I think it is a worthwhile upgrade over XP or Vista. If you are buying a new machine that comes with 8, I would keep it; but if you already have 7, I wouldn't bother upgrading right now.

On my older laptop, 8 is a huge performance boost over XP. Startup and shutdown times are significantly faster (I still have a regaular HDD in this laptop, but the improvement in startup time was comparable to the boost I got when I upgraded a different Win7 PC from HDD to SSD).

Win8 is still pretty new. Most software and drivers that work in Win7 will work, but not all. It will take some time for manufacturers to update their drivers and as with any upgrade there may be a few legacy products that never get proper support in Win8.

The "desktop mode" of Win8 is almost identical to Win7, but there are a few improvements - the Task Manager has been completely overhauled and is dramatically better. File Copy dialogs are also improved. Supposedly a lot was done at the core to make things more efficient and more secure.

There are a few things that have moved around, but it really doesn't take that long to re-adjust. For example, the "start" icon has been removed from the lower left corner of the desktop. But, you can still press the "windows" key on your keyboard or just mouse into the lower-left corner and click on the thumbnail that appears to get to the "start" screen. It's a screen rather than a menu. You can still just start typing to start a search from the start screen (similar to how you could do this in the Win7 start menu). To get back to the desktop from the start screen, <win><d> is the fastest way.

With Win7, I would open the "start" menu, then go to the shutdown combo-button to tell the computer to shutdown, restart, or sleep. This has been hidden somewhat in Win8. I have found the easiest thing is to press <Ctrl><alt><del> and there is a similar button in the screen that pops up.

I don't spend a lot of time in the "metro" ("modern", "win8", "tiles"?) mode, but it seems like it would be nice on a tablet. I don't have a touchscreen on that laptop, but it is very easy to navigate with a mouse and keyboard. One oddity is that the tile interface is designed for horizontal scrolling. Most mice have a scroll wheel designed for vertical scrolling, but those wheels will work to scroll left-to-right in areas where it is appropriate.

If you have a desktop PC with a large monitor and spend a lot of time in office productivity apps or writing code, the traditional windows interface where you can open multiple windows and copy and paste from one to another is indispensable. But for more casual users that just surf the web, listen to music, and play games, the new Win8 UI (which only allows 1 or 2 non-overlapped windows at a time) makes a lot of sense.

Where it really makes sense to me is tablet computing, where you spend most of your time holding your tablet and using the touchscreen interface in the tile interface (one app at a time), but occasionally drop into desktop mode with an external keyboard and mouse (or stylus) to do some more intense work. There are a lot of people for whom I think this would be a killer use case - especially in the next few years as hardware improves to get more power with longer battery life.

[stuckless]

Thanks Guys! I'll stick with Windows 7 for now, since that is what the machine is running. My only reason to upgrade would be if I got a significant performance boost for games in Windows 8, but that doesn't seem to be the case, so I'll just keep Windows 7. I thought that I had read somewhere that DirectX 11 was only going to be available/updated in Windows 8, but I could have just as easily dreamed that

Thanks,
Sean.

[Naylia]

You should check out Steam's Big Picture mode - provides a tv friendly UI. I've been meaning to check it out for all my games that support controllers.

My 6850 has been excellent so hopefully the 7850 doesn't let you down!

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Naylia

You should check out Steam's Big Picture mode - provides a tv friendly UI. I've been meaning to check it out for all my games that support controllers.

My 6850 has been excellent so hopefully the 7850 doesn't let you down!

Yeah, I think I might give that try during the holidays and see how it works. I notice the card has an hdmi out, so i assume it's pretty trivial to hook the computer up the the tv.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by stuckless

Yeah, I think I might give that try during the holidays and see how it works. I notice the card has an hdmi out, so i assume it's pretty trivial to hook the computer up the the tv.

Yep, hook it up, good to go. May have to configure audio out, but usually it will just recognize that you are now using hdmi audio.

[david1234]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I used to be a "hardware" guy, but I just can't keep up any more

This is exactly why I get my help for this stuff from my kidless, single geek friend

And, then I buy whichever ATI card seems to have the most gpu cores running between 150 and 200. It's a personal thing I'm sure, but I've always had fewer issues with ATI cards, and I like that I can hook 3 monitors to one card (not that I do, but that I could)

[stuckless]

So, yesterday I gave the AMD 7850 to my son for christmas, and he was pretty excited (although at first, he had no idea what he was opening )

We spent a few minutes installing the card and then installing the drivers from cd, and then updating the drivers over the internet... and the results were awesome. He's able to play his games at full resultion, high detail, and he was just amazed by how great they looked and silky smooth they played.

The card also came with digital download for Far Cry 3, so we downloaded that as well, and he spent most of the day playing that game. I bought a wireless 360 controller for the PC as well, so now it's like having another gaming console.. I might have to hook it up to the TV to see how well it works

Thanks for the hardware help....

[panteragstk]

Glad it all worked out for you.

[ccsmoke]

Congrats on the upgrade, major improvement

I would also vote to stay on Windows 7.

As far as Direct X...not all games are DX11 though it is becoming mainstream. Games that use DX9/DX10 are generally better to run in DX9. This is usually done in the INI file and adjusting and saving with notepad. I usually grab the full redistribution DX9.0c from Microsoft. DX10 is like the Vista of Direct X

If you like to grab the Steam pack deals at the end of the year like I do, you may have to do this for older titles. Games like Neverwinter Knights 2 for example will have problems without this. For whatever reason DX 11 doesn't have the full version of DX9.

Steam may update this...I'm not sure, I usually update drivers manually. But if you have a game that crashes after opening credits or gives you a DX error, this will most likely be the case.