Understanding gaming PC Operating System

Given Microsoft’s Windows vast market penetration, driver availability, games availability and software compatibility there’s not much of a choice here, specially if you already have an Operating System like Windows XP. Older Operating Systems usually cease production so we should choose Windows 7 as our Operating System for our new gaming PC or if we plan to upgrade. Some reports state that Windows 7 is more stable than Vista, the previous Microsoft’s Operating System. Remember that we should have at least 4GB of RAM in our gaming PC, so we should choose a 64 Bit Operating System. We will analyze three Microsoft’s Operating Systems in terms of 3D performance. Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. You can feel free to make your choices based in our analysis.

1) Windows XP – provides great stability and driver availability as well as 3D performance and is very popular because of that. This one is the best of the three in terms of RAM usage. There are thousands of games and applications available for this Operating System and lots of them are still being developed. The 64 Bit version of this Operating System added support for more than 4GB of RAM at the cost of stability. As this Operating System became older, better drivers were produced and stability improved a little. Windows XP 32 Bit version is the best one of the three for gaming. . If you have the 32 Bit version of this Operating System you can save some money by keeping it instead of getting a new one.

2) Windows Vista – this operating system started with the wrong foot in the stability department and didn’t comply with Microsoft’s expectations about its popularity because of that. The 64 bit version of this Operating System was also a failure because of stability issues and driver availability. 3D performance reports mentioned a decrease of about ten frames per second making it bad for gaming. Ten frames per second are crucial when the games you’re running in your system are barely getting a desirable FPS. Also it uses too many RAM like 2GB just to boot the Operating System and about the same amount to run 3D games. That reason and the decrease in frames per second makes it the worst of all three for gaming. For those reasons Microsoft decided to stop development of this Operating System so people who wants to get a new Operating System should get Windows 7 instead. People who not so happy with this Operating System should think about upgrading it to Windows 7.

3) Windows 7 – you can consider it as an enhanced version of Windows Vista. Stability improved and driver availability is good and improving. It uses less RAM than Vista but more than XP so it is in the middle in that department. The 64 Bit version of this Operating System is the most stable of the three making it the best choice for people who want to experience the benefits of a 64 bit Operating System. As this Operating System becomes older its stability should improve as well as its driver availability. This Operating System is better than Vista for gaming but is not at the level of XP yet. This is the Operating System of the present so it should be the choice for our new gaming PC. People who’s thinking about getting a new Operating System or upgrading their older ones should choose Windows 7.

Conclusion about Operating Systems

Windows XP – this Operating System doesn’t require much RAM and today’s games use about 2GB of RAM so if you have the 32 bit version of this Operating System you should keep it. If you plan to upgrade you should get Windows 7.

Windows Vista – if you're not happy with this Operating System you should upgrade to Windows 7.

Windows 7 – stability and driver availability is good and improving. The 64 bit version of this Operating System is the most stable of the three. It requires less RAM than Vista. We should pick Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit as the Operating System for our new gaming PC.

We finally made it. We managed to analyze and explain every important feature for every basic component of a gaming PC. Newbie users who have read the entire tutorial should now be able to make smart hardware picks for their gaming PC based on their budget. However if you still have any questions about what hardware you should pick we encourage you to contact us. Refer to the installation tutorials for instructions about how to put together your recently acquired high performance hardware. Once your gaming PC is assembled, we encourage you to visit our PC games reviews section for tips about which games you should get. There’s also a lot of great PC games that you can download totally free. You can get them from any of the following sites. Contact us with any comments you have about this site, the sites we mentioned before or any game you got from them. You can also write some comments in our blogs if a review is available for the game you want to comment on. We really hope that you enjoyed reading this tutorial as we enjoyed writing it and we encourage you to keep reading our other cool sections as we update them.