Stardock's CEO Brad Wardell talks to TIME about why gamers will love Windows 10.

Published on July 29, 2015 By Island Dog In PC Gaming

"In DirectX 12, every single one of your cores can talk to your graphics card simultaneously,” says Wardell. “So in our benchmarks, going from DirectX 11-optimized games, we’re seeing between 85% and 300% performance boosts.” Those kinds of leaps, any way you want to slice them, are huge.

Mind you, the game has to be written for DirectX 12, something you won’t see much of as Windows 10 launches. In fact Wardell believes his upcoming Kurzweilian homage, Ashes of the Singularity, a real-time strategy game and potential genre-upender that can juggle thousands of units simultaneously, will be the first. It’s due to be playable via Steam Early Access next month (It’s also, incidentally, the first game with a DirectX 12 benchmark, adds Wardell.)"

http://time.com/3975043/windows-10-microsoft-gamers/

Comments

Lord Xia

on Jul 29, 2015

Brad, what a braggart

hedetet

on Jul 30, 2015

It's tempting. I'll have it on a new desktop PC, but I'm not sure I'd put it on my laptop. THe battery savings sounds irrelevant (who runs games in battery mode???), and my graphics card is pretty midranged mobile version so I doubt I'll see much improvement (especially since I have an i7). If anything I'm not sure it's built to take the heat as it locked up on me when I ran the starswarm stresstest. Boot speedup is nice but not enough to upgrade for.

sareth01

on Aug 06, 2015

Looks like a smart move to me, advertise for the crossover to a new OS, show's that Stardock has definitely learned the lessons it should and are trying to push the tech so that they can in turn make better games. I for one wasn't considering windows 10 at all, this recommendation has given me pause to consider doing some research on it. I'm still going to wait for the full 6 months-1 yr. before I give it a chance though.

RavenX

on Aug 25, 2015

I still feel like the only good thing about Windows 10 is DX12. Aside from that there's no reason I'd want to upgrade. I wish they'd put it out on Win 7. It makes you wonder if it's really "impossible" for DX 12 to run on Win 7 or if they're just saying it is and not putting it on Win 7 purposefully to keep it on Win 10 and make people switch over. It's one hell of a way to force people to switch over. Give it a few years and DX 12 will be the norm/requirement and if you don't switch to Win 10 you won't be gaming.

psychoak

on Aug 25, 2015

10 is supposed to negligibly faster, but it's primary aim is towards mobile devices, so yes, if you're using a desktop, all you'd be getting is a percent or two of extra oomph. At least you would be, if application tests weren't showing 10 markedly slower than 7 for some reason...

It benchmarks great in the synthetics, but it's a dog for stuff like opening Excel?

Heavenfall

on Aug 26, 2015

RavenX

reply 4

Which is pretty much EXACTLY what they did with DX11 for windows XP and Vista. Although it was eventually released, it was initially touted as one of the reasons to upgrade. And meanwhile, people had been more or less successfully running DX11 on those OS through dll "hacking".

I mean, this is a conscious strategy. DX12 is one of the draws for win10. They want people to use win10, and they really don't want people to use win7. They have no incentive to backport DX12 to win7. And if you go "well... shouldn't you be supporting the windows I already paid for?" their response will just be "Win10 is free... you should upgrade!".

sareth01

on Sep 02, 2015

Yes just take the free upgrade so we can spy more effectively. We are in development of the most oppressive regime in history that will not be opposed, one cellphone upgrade, tweet, and Facebook interaction at a time...

Kamamura_CZ

on Sep 19, 2015

I don't think that gamers "love" Windows 10 so far, as there are tons of compatibility problems, especially with older games.

Gamers love Windows 7, and I suspect it will stay that way at least for a year...

Battleneter

on Sep 19, 2015

Windows 10 advantages (DX12) are a little situation, Ashes clearly seems to benefit but the likes of most games made for console and ported are not CPU or GPU bottlenecked on a half decent rig.

I would be very careful not to leave an impression Ashes of a Singlelarity can only be played well on Windows 10. Although Supreme Commander (including FA) were in my opinion the best RTS games of all time, the sales were relatively poor due hardware requirements of the day AND the perceived hardware requirements of the day. Many people had PC's that could run Supcom on mid range PC's if they stuck to medium and small maps, buts that message failed to get through, there are lessons to learn imo.

Some people are just stubborn with wanting to upgrade away from Windows 7 (think they are nuts myself), remembering the utter hunk of junk that was Win8, Stardock probably doesn't want to isolate these people.

Not being able to dual monitor Supcom FA on Windows 10 ATM is kinda annoying!, seems I need a new game

Cauldyth

on Sep 19, 2015

I'll be clinging to Windows 7 as long as it's viable. Once it no longer is, I'll be going full Linux and OSX. Any software that isn't available on either of those two platforms I'll then be dropping.

Even now, the only reason I boot into Windows is for Lightroom/Photoshop and a handful of games. The former are already available on OSX, and more of the latter are becoming available on Linux and/or OSX every day. I'm a strategy gamer, and Paradox/Firaxis/Illwinter/etc. already support all their games on both OSX and Linux. I see no reason to put up with Windows anymore once Windows 7 is no longer viable.

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