Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-3547390-20161116194210/@comment-3547390-20170107205414

Heh, I sure don't feel like one. I feel like nerds don't really want to accept me.

Yeah, I had heard a lot of conflicting info. Windows 7 was apparently a demanding OS while Windows 8 takes a lot less resources, plus it pretty much is the same operating system as Windows 7 in appearance. A lot of people loathe the operating system due to the Start Menu and Charms Bar without really giving it a proper chance, I wanted to go back and try to see if adding something like Classic Shell would make the OS a lot more enjoyable. It did in that one particular way, but you may run into a metro app from time to time, which has the problem of being completely unstable on my system. My stuff was made during Windows 8's lifetime and is considered a relatively high-end build (I can imagine most would roll their eyes at that statement, it seems most people think they have a high end build, but beyond the 7200 RPM Hard Drives I have a system that has more power than the high=end PC enthusiast builds you generally see (It is relatively close, but most have a GTX 1080, which is a bit weaker than my Titan Pascal, plus I have a 4790k that performs a little bit better than an i5 model). A SSD mostly just improves on the boot time and loading of resources, so once something is loaded my computer performs well. So why did it feel like I was running an extremely unstable bootleg of Windows 7?

Honestly, the way I figure it now, Windows 8 was made as an experimental OS. It added a lot of benefits, but completely broke Direct3d. By doing that, it pretty much ruined any performance gains it had over Windows 7, resulting in actually getting worse performance. especially where DirectDraw is involved. Windows 8.1 comes out and adds a few features that makes the experience a bit less worse, but is still not where it was, and they start planning for Windows 8.2. They then abandon Windows 8 entirely to make Windows 10 after the CEO was changed. Needless to say, Windows 8 is pretty much an unstable and abandoned OS that was never really completed before they moved on to the next project. As such, it has some great benefits, but is held back not just by how it looks but how it performs. Windows 8 rarely crashes and therefore is seen as relatively stable, but what they don't tell you is the OS will freeze or crawl slowly.

So Thief is acting up on me on Windows 7, the two that failed me on Windows 8 are crashing here. Maybe they got corrupted. In any event, I still have my vanilla install of Thief 1.14, the earliest version, which works perfectly on Windows 7. So even if I couldn't load the others for testing purposes due to some random instabilities, I got the tests I needed out of 1.14. The irony is that being the oldest it also happens to be the most unstable version I have. The other two aren't big on you running a multi-core system, but may tolerate it a little bit. This one freezes right away, meaning you need to kill all other processor affinities to use it properly. As I said, I did such on both Operating Systems and I was able to play on both OS. I think Raadec used Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell, I remember him trying to convince me it was good a long time ago. As he was able to play Thief, it is indeed worth mentioning that Windows 8 won't make it impossible to play the games you used to play. It just doesn't perform as well at all in comparison to Windows 7, it is like a night and day comparison. Loading times were worse, the menus were slower (Windows 7 really shows how far we have come, the menus are ridiculous in speed, so Windows 8 actually could work well to not have things going at a really fast speed). As I said, even the gameplay was more clunky. It felt alright on Windows 8 and you probably wouldn't realize the change if you hadn't played Thief in a bit and installed it on the new OS, but once you go back to Windows 7 you will realize just how clunky it is. The best analogy is that your running speed becomes your walking speed in Windows 8.

Good to hear, I would love to stream tonight!