Haswell and win 7?

[skipsneeky2]

All the new kids will just call us old fogeys for sticking with Win7 (or for that matter XP), even when we present sound reasons for doing so.

Forums are starting to turn into XBoxLive :|

Windows 7 has been the best thing period to me,all my games and my apps work with it and its all i need as i just game and use my tower for entertainment and not work.

Even considering Windows 8 for myself is kinda silly as it offers me absolutely nothing that windows 7 already does.

 

[BSim500]

Because of how bad 8 is, I strongly suspect it will never get used in the enterprise (kind of like Vista), MS will have no choice but to extend support of Win 7, and Win 7 actually has more life left to it then 8.

Agreed. I too see the "we will cutoff support for Win7 early to force people to upgrade" bluff by MS being called in an even bigger way than XP vs Vista. Poor "Metro interface" Office 2013 / "365" sales figures go hand in hand...

MS lost the plot with Win8. It's not just the hideous Metro interface, it's the whole underlying attitude behind it of treating the core OS as a glorified "advertising billboard" (Windows Store) and trying to shove the "Metro" thing down people's throats in the form of Office 2013 combined with failed Office 365 "stop paying your 'rent' and you'll lose your right to edit documents in 8 years time"!) subscription model.

We've reached "market saturation point". Everyone knows it. Hardware upgrades are slowing down from yearly to now once every 2-3 generations for many. OS & Office software is heading the same way. It was refreshing to see the old 'gushing' "OMG you must have this!!!" yesteryear shill reviews of previous Office versions turned into "Nice upgrades, but save your cash" Office 2013 reviews as it sinks in the "Metro" interface is like Windows Vista's Sidebar - all manufactured hype as "the new thing", but zero real ergonomic improvement and will be equally forgotten about when MS try and reinvent the interface yet again for Windows 9, 10, 11, etc. It hasn't been about ergonomics for 3 years now - it's all down to manufactuing a fake "need for change for changes sake".

As for double frame-rates in Win8, but solely for BF4 - that's an issue with the game not the OS. Windows 8 still has only an 8% market share and "growth" that's barely 0.5% per month. It's hardly in a position to "make demands". If the developer of BF4 doesn't patch whatever's slowing it down on Win 7, they're going to end up with an awfully tiny PC target market...

I haven't switched to Linux mainly due to gaming. But I'll be sticking with W7 + Office 2010 for a good 8 years to come, and I say that as a consumer, a gamer, and a small business owner...

MS's attitude to forcing Windows 8 can be summed up as...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark

 

[blackened23]

I really could care less about what OS anyone uses, but there are a ton of misconceptions about Windows 8. Seeing these misconceptions and the same old tired arguments about tablets blah blah blah touch screen blah blah blah metro (which you never need to use ) blah blah blah is just hilarious. Windows 8.1 improves substantially on Windows 8, as well.

You never have to look at Metro if you do not want to. Personally, I never used the start menu in Windows 7 except once in a blue moon. I put everything on the desktop or taskbar, and Windows 8.1 makes that functionality more seamless with the Win 8.1 taskbar. Why would I ever use the start menu for launching something when everything is pinned on my taskbar or is on my desktop.

It's whatever though. If someone wants to use windows 7, go for it. As far as I can tell most anti Windows 8 folks have never actually used Windows 8 and keep perpetuating myths - these folks are way more vocal and agitated than the Win 8 users, as well, for some reason. (such as, Metro - you don't have to view metro at all, ever, in Win 8.1). I'm sure the easy comeback would be, "well I don't NEED it, i'm happy with what I have". Alrighty then! Fine with me. Windows XP diehards did the same thing - XP was good enough for them.. So did vista diehards (vista is good enough for me, etc). Some people, especially older folks, just hate change. And that's fine with me.

 

[John Connor]

I put Win 8 in a virtual machine and when I booted up I said to myself, "what hell is this?" I quicly installed Startisback. LOL!

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

You never have to look at Metro if you do not want to. Personally, I never used the start menu in Windows 7 except once in a blue moon. I put everything on the desktop or taskbar, and Windows 8.1 makes that functionality more seamless with the Win 8.1 taskbar. Why would I ever use the start menu for launching something when everything is pinned on my taskbar or is on my desktop.

It's whatever though. If someone wants to use windows 7, go for it. As far as I can tell most anti Windows 8 folks have never actually used Windows 8 and keep perpetuating myths - these folks are way more vocal and agitated than the Win 8 users, as well, for some reason. Some people, especially older folks, just hate change. And that's fine with me.

I actually don't even like the Win7 start menu much and have been using Classic Shell since day one :
http://www.classicshell.net/whycsm/

While I like the under-the-hood improvements in Win8 (although Win7's file transfer is good enough, unlike WinXP's craptastic "ZOMG there's a duplicate / error, what do I do?!" in the middle of a transfer), I dislike that Metro is present.

I am sure that there are workarounds to lobotomizing it and I will get down to qualifying it for use eventually (have a whole ton of apps and I'm anal about behaviors, preferences, etc.), but for now I'd like to continue leveraging the work I put into bringing up Win7 for my uses while the app support for Win8 matures (eg. TrueImage didn't support GPT imaging until v16, UltraMon didn't have matching taskbars until 3.2.0, etc.).

I put Win 8 in a virtual machine and when I booted up I said to myself, "what hell is this?" I quicly installed Startisback. LOL!

That's the one place where XP still shines. Still supports modern apps (browsers, etc.), runs in a measly 384MB footprint and the VHD is only 3GB or so.

 

[wilds]

Microsoft does not want Windows 7 to become the next XP. The Start Screen should not have been forced upon non-touch devices at all. Microsoft should have allowed a legacy start button from the start that behaves like W7's.

I've been using Windows 8 for awhile, and I don't mind it at all. Its a good operating system with great performance enhancements.

 

[ViRGE]

This isn't the OSes forum. Quit bitching about Windows and answer the technical question at hand.

-ViRGE

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Apologies mod. As far as the OP, I've been using HW on Win7x64 SP1 Ultimate and don't notice anything amiss.

 

[Meghan54]

I just heard haswell doesn't work well with Windows 7. Is this true?

What were the problems with Haswell and Win7?

Just asking because I put a Haswell system together about 2 weeks ago...4770k on a Maximus VI Gene...and have yet to notice any problems with the Win7 install that was migrated to it.

 

[BSim500]

This isn't the OSes forum. Quit bitching about Windows and answer the technical question at hand.

If your comment included me, then apologies mod. I already did answer OP's question back here though:-
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35597528&postcount=7

"As most of these platform level power enhancements are targeted at 3rd generation Ultrabooks/tablets it's highly unlikely you'll see Windows 7 ship on any of them." (from earlier Anandtech link).

For the OP : There is no "problem" with Haswell on Windows 7. Benchmarks vs Ivy Bridge demonstrate that (both performance & power). Windows 8 might better support Haswell's super-low "standby but connected" states, but the S0ix states don't seem to be supported by desktop motherboards anyway and seem to be a mobile-only feature (and even then vary from one motherboard to the next).

So the answer for desktops is "zero difference". And the answer for ultrabooks, etc, is "not much if you're the kind of person who turns his laptop off / hibernates when finished with it and really doesn't want his PC to be silently accessing the net when its supposed to be switched off (and can't anyway if you're out of Wi-Fi range)".

Most power consumption benefit with Haswell is overwhelmingly due to lowering the lowest SpeedStep state from 1.6Ghz to 800Mhz (and reducing idle VID to go with it), knocking up to 10w off idle power consumption, which Windows 7 supports equally well without issue. Win7 SP1 also supports Haswell's AVX2 instructions.

 

[John Connor]

What were the problems with Haswell and Win7?

Not sure. All I heard was that Windows 8 was better with Haswell. More than likely a noob who said it.

 

[Nec_V20]

I just heard haswell doesn't work well with Windows 7. Is this true?

That is complete bollocks and you should stop listening to anyone who told you that.

 

[John Connor]

To be honest it was a member here on the site from the UE. LOL! He likes Palemoon which is good, but apparently from the responses I got here he's a complete idiot on Haswell and Windows 7.

 

[ShintaiDK]

You just need Win7 SP1 that added AVX support to be sure SB/IB/HW works optimally.

 

[John Connor]

Very good, thanks!

 

[Fjodor2001]

First I've heard of it, unless you're referring to the S0ix super-low idle states which desktops lack anyway:-
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture/3

Nothing wrong with Win7 for Haswell for desktops. You might slightly better battery life out of Win8 for ultra-portables, etc, but even that depends on how you use it.

Just wondering, what could be the reason Intel decided to not include those low power states on the desktop versions of the Haswell CPU? Sure, power consumption is not as important as on portable computers, but still it would be beneficial to keep power consumption down for those use cases.

Also, at least if buying an Ultrabook, it's important to get Windows 8/8.1 to make use of the low power states, as the article you linked to says:

"Windows 8 is pretty much a requirement to get the full benefits, although with the right drivers in place you'll see some improvement on Windows 7 as well. As most of these platform level power enhancements are targeted at 3rd generation Ultrabooks/tablets it's highly unlikely you'll see Windows 7 ship on any of them."

I assume that could be a problem for some users who prefer Windows 7 over 8/8.1, but still would like to make full use of Haswell's low power states...

 

[Johnny4]

Look for one with Windows 8 that provides a "downgrade" to Windows 7. Microsoft encourages its "partners" to push out Windows 8 now.

One example is the Dell E6540 through the Work rather than Home products, that has a Haswell i5 and Windows 7 Pro.