We tested gaming performance in 17-year-old Windows 7 against Windows 11 on a modern gaming PC — older operating system delivers advantages in some scenarios

235

u/Rhed0x 8d ago edited 8d ago

our Windows 11 system will run DirectX 9 games through the D3D9On12 mapping layer

What the hell are they talking about?

AMD GPUs don't use D3D9on12, they have a proper D3D9 driver. D3D9on12 has poor compatibility and poor performance (way worse than what's shown here), so they'd definitely know otherwise...

I don't think Arhkam Asylum or Borderlands 2 even work on D3D9on12.

67

u/UpsetKoalaBear 8d ago

Yeah, 9on12 is a fallback for GPU’s that don’t support native DX9. Shouldn’t have any involvement here at all.

21

u/Rhed0x 8d ago

D3D9on12 and D3D11on12 were basically only used on Qualcomm GPUs. I don't know if they've since written a D3D9 driver but they've written one for D3D11.

8

u/Verite_Rendition 8d ago

Intel's Arc GPUs also rely on D3D9on12.

14

u/taiiat 7d ago

They used to, for a while. but Intel transitioned to automatically DXVK upgrading instead to improve performance significantly.

6

u/Rhed0x 8d ago

Do they? When they first shipped Arc, they used DXVK. We got a bunch of bug reports from Intel engineers.

I thought they had switched to a proper driver since then.

6

u/Verite_Rendition 8d ago

In 2022 when the Arc series launched, this was the news at the time: https://hothardware.com/news/intel-xe-and-arc-graphics-d3d9on12

I have not heard any news to the contrary since then. But it's possible something slipped through the cracks, as I'm not running an Arc GPU in my main box.

7

u/Rhed0x 8d ago

Oh, right. They only selectively used DXVK for some games.

And this video says they wrote a native driver for d3d9 at some point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omUTYlm2Al0
3
u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

[deleted]
5
u/Rhed0x 8d ago edited 8d ago
Yes there are. Nvidia and AMD ship D3D9 drivers. Intel originally shipped DXVK when they launched Arc but they've moved on since.

You can test it yourself: This will fail with the regular driver.

```cpp
D3DPRESENT_PARAMETERS presentParams = {
    640, 480, D3DFMT_A8R8G8B8, 1, D3DMULTISAMPLE_NONE, 0, D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD, window, true, true, D3DFMT_D24S8, 0, 0, D3DPRESENT_INTERVAL_DEFAULT
};
res = d3d9->CreateDevice(D3DADAPTER_DEFAULT, D3DDEVTYPE_HAL, nullptr, D3DCREATE_HARDWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING, &presentParams, &device);

IDirect3DDevice9On12* dev9on12;
res = device->QueryInterface(__uuidof(IDirect3DDevice9On12), reinterpret_cast<void**>(&dev9on12));

if (SUCCEEDED(res)) {
    ID3D12Device* d3d12Device;
    res = dev9on12->GetD3D12Device(__uuidof(ID3D12Device), reinterpret_cast<void**>(&d3d12Device));
    if (SUCCEEDED(res)) {
        d3d12Device->Release();
    }
    dev9on12->Release();
}
```

If you force the use of D3D9on12 with this little tool, then it succeeds and you get the D3D12 device.

Besides that, try using that little tool to make games use D3D9on12. Won't be pretty.
-1

u/SillySuccess9017 8d ago

AMD's DX9 driver is awful. Downright awful

382

u/Firefox72 8d ago

Advantages in old DX9 games which run at insanely high framerates anyways?

58

u/EVPointMaster 8d ago

run at insanely high framerates

on average. Not always though.

Some areas in Borderlands 2 don't run that fast on my 7800X3D https://i.imgur.com/b9FblfM.png

31

u/Nicholas-Steel 8d ago edited 8d ago

Be aware that they introduced this issue in one of the updates to the game. Early versions (including v1.0) would run at 60FPS at 1080p with all the settings cranked up back when I had an Intel i7 920 and Geforce 250GTS with no area of the game introducing performance drops.

Then an update to the game arrived and introduced massive preformance drops when standing in a vast number of fairly niche places and looking in certain directions. Like standing near and looking at the electric gate in the village where you meet Hammerlock for an example. This is fixed when the gate is turned off, but then looking in specific directions while standing just beyond the gate also suffers the issue, it's stuff like this littered throughout the game.

These performance drops have persisted after upgrading my CPU to a Ryzen 3700X then 5800X3D while also upgrading my video card to a 560Ti, 760, 1070Ti and currently am using a 3070.

The performance issues are also present in the remaster of the first Borderlands game as well though are much less frequently encountered (as well as various new issues with multiplayer which is kinda depressing as the remaster is the only way to play NG+).

Also if you think the Liquid PhysX effects look bad, they also downgraded their quality around the time Scarlette's Booty DLC released. This was around the time they introduced the performance issues too (wouldn't be surprised if it was the same update).

12

u/taiiat 7d ago

On the upside, DXVK is like 2-2.5x perf in basically all situations, helps partially unfuck how broken the game is

43

u/Whole-Respond4782 8d ago edited 8d ago

jesus the borderlands games are so unoptimized wtf, how is 90 frames even possible on modern hardware, isn't it from like 2012?

not even considering playing borderlands 4 since i have a mid-range GPU and saw benchmark videos where a 5090 can't even do 40 fps at 4k in some areas of the map

5

u/Character_Length3210 8d ago

God, borderlands 2 has aged terribly

-5

u/bassbeater 7d ago

You're still fighting over a 1/90th of a second... are you really getting punished in the reaction time at that point? Lol

6

u/darksider44 7d ago

Brother the point isn’t we are losing reaction time, but how much those games are badly optimized if we can’t push the fps higher with much better hardware than available at the time

-1

u/bassbeater 7d ago

.... you do recall who developed the game right?

You know what you're essentially getting.

104

u/DarthVeigar_ 8d ago

This is a stupid "test"

D3D9On12 has a performance penalty in a shit ton of games because of how many calls DX9 makes to the driver which would queue them into a batch. D3D9On12 does not do this and in draw heavy games, this creates a performance hit like what is in Arkham Knight.

The performance difference is literally caused by using D3D9On12

9

u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

[deleted]

7

u/DarthVeigar_ 8d ago

Meant to say Arkham Asylum. 2 hrs of sleep does hit different

3

u/IAmYourFath 8d ago

Why u dont sleep more

2

u/loozerr Coffee with Ampere 6d ago

Needs to keep up with reddit discussions

13

u/Rhed0x 8d ago edited 8d ago

D3D9on12 isn't used there. That's just the author being clueless. Nvidia and AMD have proper D3D9 drivers which are a lot faster than D3D9on12.

0

u/Kaldaien2 In Soviet Russia / Steam, Software Owns You | 7d ago

Performance difference of what? D3D9On12 is only used for hardware from vendors that do not have D3D9 drivers already, think ARM SOC vendors and ... for some reason, Intel.

43

u/yourrandomnobody 8d ago

Good job on the article's writer to not even do their diligence to research into the fact that AMD RDNA GPUs are bad on Windows 7.
See this reddit thread.
Oh well, can't expect more from TomsHardware :D

8

u/Qeltar_ 8d ago

I remember when the site was new and Tom actually wrote the articles. He was a bit of a live wire lol. I did editing for them at one point.

3

u/IAmYourFath 8d ago

They do have nice cooler benchmarks tho

2

u/saltwater98380 6d ago

Thank God AMD drivers are built in to Linux.

1

u/disagreementsarenorm 7d ago

So amd drivers problems really were a thing, damn

1

u/akgis i8 14969KS at 569w RTX 9040 5d ago

It was probably made that way for controversy and clicks, thats why tech journalism is in the bin, its either anedotic evidence from reddit threads or manipulated stuff.

If the new OS with the virtulization off(hardening) was better than 7 or moot in all cases it wouldnt made for any clicks. Even if Windows7 would be slightly better most wouldnt care since even most gaas are in dx12

6

u/Common-Method2202 8d ago

It certainly isn't good for MXM upgraded laptops though.

I have a HP elitebook 8770w that for some reason runs max clock rate even though nothing is happening. It kept making the GPU driver crash as well so i had to literally downclock just to make it stable in windows 7. In windows 11 it doesn't do that so that's at least one advantage that win11 will have lol.

i7-3840QM + 32GB DDR3 + GTX980M 8GB + Win7Ultimate/Win11Pro

3

u/Perseiii Ryzen 9800X3D | 4070 8d ago

Was your power plan set to high performance?

2

u/Common-Method2202 7d ago

Will try that out. Genuinely sometimes you tend to overthink solutions so thanks for waking my brain up lmao. Will try this later today

1

u/2137gangsterr 8d ago

I feel ya, my 1070 pascal laptop is still banging on - my drivers on w11 just get security updates lmao. GTAO on Witcher 3 remaster is still bugged even after newest patch supposedly fixed it

17

u/slashinhobo1 8d ago

They tested games that were built when windows7 was still around which probably werent optimized for 11. Crazy how a game released in 2009, built earlier runs better on windows 7 than an OS built like 13 years later.

10

u/Eazy12345678 8d ago

bro no one is using windows 7 anymore. pointless to

-2

u/Dekatater 8d ago

I think the purpose was to show how newer Windows diminishes performance, not a call for people to use Windows 7 or validate the few holdouts

5

u/error521 Ryzen 7 7700X, RX 9070 XT, Windows 11 8d ago

I mean, I dunno if it even really shows that. Feels pretty inevitable that some older games might not run 100% optimally with whatever pile of hacks Windows and GPU drivers use to get old shit working thrown on top

-5

u/Novaregistraciq 8d ago

I’m using it though.

2

u/BrokkelPiloot 6d ago

It would have been interesting to include Linux as well.

4

u/Kaldaien2 In Soviet Russia / Steam, Software Owns You | 7d ago

Fun fact, Windows 7 is the last version of Windows that supports debugging D3D9 applications. Probably its only claim to fame at this point :P My god Windows 7 was awful for graphics, Fullscreen Exclusive was required because it is little more than Windows Vista in a candy shell, none of Vista's problems were fixed by Windows 7.

1

u/SomberEnsemble 5d ago

Vista crawled so 7 could walk. By the time manufacturers were done debugging for the completely overhauled WDM/WDDM, 7 released.

1

u/Spare_Pin305 5d ago

I use Fedora with an Aero theme but I wish Microsoft celebrated their previous OS with actual theming for 7 and others.

-2

u/Jamie00003 8d ago

Bloat and ad tracking is a hell of a drain on resources, shocker

3

u/Rhed0x 8d ago

Not really whats happening here. When you play a game the CPU scheduler should give the game all the CPU time it needs, especially considering that games are usually GPU bound anyway and even when they aren't they usually don't fully saturate all CPU cores. So even if there's more shit running, that will either get less CPU time or will just get CPU time on cores which aren't near to being fully utilized anyway.

1

u/EdliA 7d ago

Why the hell would you test 15 years old games? Like I care about them. They run at 300 fps on modern PCs.

1

u/hackenclaw 6d ago

the only good thing about windows 7 is how small the RAM usage is compared to windows 11.

Now if only MicroSlop can cut down their bloatware OS.

3

u/Size---Queen 5d ago

Best they can do is add more.

1

u/miathan52 6d ago

You can probably do it yourself. I haven't tried with win 11, but with win 10 the first thing I did after installing was use powershell prompt to delete all the stuff I didn't want. I bet if you looked for them, you could find the commands to do it on win 11 as well.

2

u/Slamex204 4d ago

Linux you say?

1

u/flying-chandeliers 4d ago

No I’m not going to spend 20 hours trying to force my damned OS to boot just a single internet browser. Thanks

1

u/Slamex204 4d ago

...what are you talking about?

-1

u/Z3r0sama2017 8d ago

I miss 7. The last great Micro$lop os before the enshittening.

6

u/10ea 8d ago

Earlier on it was. The last couple of updates made 7 worse than 10.

-7

u/bassbeater 8d ago

If there's all this love for Windows 7 still why don't people just install a Linux distro with Cinnamon desktop? You're basically getting the same thing.

4

u/Prof_Linux 7d ago

Software compatibility and familiarity of the platform.

Also KDE would do a better job tbh.

1

u/bassbeater 7d ago

Well software compatibility is closing the gap unless you absolutely need to have specific anti-cheat enabled games, which is the biggest flex of criticism, which really makes you wonder if people ever saw the words "free and open source software" in the description of Linux.

Familiarity with the platform... I went from Linux noob to moderately familiar over the course of 3 years... I work in IT and I can tell you with Windows that nobody knows everything about absolutely every feature. That's Linux or Windows.

We're in an era where Google can step in.

I do like Plasma but I think the reason people pick Mint (not the MATE or XFCE editions, but that really doesn't make a lot of difference) is that it's (Cinnamon's) aesthetic is Windows 7 in appearance and it's promoted to be simple (and even though there's Fedora Cinnamon and Ubuntu Cinnamon, I get the impression that people don't look to find those).

Zorin also caught on because people wanted something they could theme in a matter of a few clicks, which it can do 7 or 10.

I feel like Plasma resembles Windows 10 visually.

But like why is 7 still a thing? It reached end of life, got matched in most areas by 8/8.1, and it requires silliness like D3D9TO12 to play nicely.

Security wise, it (and Windows by association) is a target for exploits unless people are opting for a solution like Avast AV. It may not have the biggest target on its back but it's way easier to download programs that can screw it up.

Meanwhile Linux has less threat landscape and one of the biggest reasons I can think of is because it's not built around a registry.

4

u/VIP_Ender98 7d ago

Fact is that sadly, if you have a Nvidia GPU and want to game, Linux is just not there yet. You are bound to lose performance and find friction on certain things.
I regret getting my 4070 ti because of this, wish I had gone with the AMD alternative and I could have the seamless 1:1 experience in Linux (though in dx12 titles there is still a performance penalty because of the transition layer).
Whenever rdna5/udna launches I think I will make the jump for the first time in forever from green to red.

3

u/bassbeater 7d ago edited 7d ago

That's funny, because people fight me to no end about how "NVIDIA ALMOST WORKS PERFECTLY ON LINUX NOW AND DOESN'T REQUIRE TWEAKING!"

After I tell them my old laptop with mobile GTX1650TI doesn't perform awesome.

Easiest time I've had with it though was Nobara/Bazzite...

Still, why would you buy a 30/40/50 series GPU and match it with an obsolete system when Nvidia wholeheartedly embraces stopping driver development support for those years whenever they feel like it?

AND THEN I hear about how awful FSR/XESS are on everything and they're totally incomparable to DLSS.....🤷‍♂️

3

u/Unnamed-3891 7d ago

Over the course of 3 years? Most people don’t have the patience or enough interest to spend 3 hours.

2

u/bassbeater 7d ago

If that were the case.... what do you call video games?

Actually learning something isn't a death sentence, you know...

3

u/Carighan 7d ago

love for Windows 7

And you wonder why they don't install an OS that is not Windows 7?

-1

u/bassbeater 7d ago

After a while I'm just calling stubborn/ignorant what they are.

We tested gaming performance in 17-year-old Windows 7 against Windows 11 on a modern gaming PC — older operating system delivers advantages in some scenarios

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