EVE General Discussion

TL;DR Windows 8 is not noticeably better or worse than Windows 7 for the purpose of Eve

I decided to do a comparison of how Eve performs on Windows 7 vs Windows 8 (both 64-bit). I used an older laptop I have lying around and the OS were 'free' since I'm a University student (free bs, they just build it into my tuition). Did a fresh install of both and then installed Eve and ran a kind of bench test using the performance monitor (CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+M)

Date: October 30, 2012
Eve Version: 8.10.437302
System Laptop, 4 years old, used heavily for 2.5
Processor: Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53GHz
RAM: 4 GB DDR2 @ 400MHz
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 256MB
Hard Drive: Seagate SATA II 7200rpm

I ran the tests using the default graphics settings. First in Full screen, then in Fixed window. The reason for a fixed window test was because I personally use it all the time for easier Alt-Tabing.
Steps of my test

Start Eve

Open/Close performance monitor (ctrl+shift+alt+m >> performance tab)

Open fps (ctrl+f)

Undock

Warp to asteroid belt

Dock back up

Switch to hangar (default is CQ)

Open monitor and take screenshot

What I found was there was no noticeable performance difference at all going from Windows 7 to Windows 8. According to the screenshots there may have actually been a slight increase. See for your self if you like.
Full Screen mode comparison http://i.imgur.com/qQSqP.png
Fixed Window mode comparison http://i.imgur.com/pOGY5.png

I know that the real test would be doing a bench mark of some kind of fleet fight but those are not very repeatable in the sense of being the same each time. Also I'm not about to run a fleet on my old computer and not quite ready to install Windows 8 on my main desktop. I'll give them a while to get the bugs out first. My overall impression of Windows 8 is that it feels snappy and responsive on a general use level so I'll leave it installed on this old laptop.

If anyone else wants to do a similar benchmark test comparing Windows 7 & 8 I would love to see you're results.
Feedback is welcome

Uh, off-topic question, but you've got first-hand experience OP: My job standardized on Ubuntu and thankfully I can install and run Fluxbox instead of that ****** Unity tablet-ass crap. Can I do the same with some sort of "classic" mode for Windows 8?

On-topic, it's good to hear we're not heading for another idiotic Vista episode.

TL;Dr Testing with dual boxing and a higher quality system

I had some free space on my data hard drive so I made a partition and ran a similar benchmark; this time on a much better computer. This test was run with max graphics where as the previous was run at default settings.

Date: October 31, 2012
Eve Version: 8.10.437302
System Desktop
Processor: Intel Core i7 870 @ 2.93GHz
RAM: 12.0 GB DDR3 @ 1333MHz
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 5830 1GB
Hard Drive: Western Digital SATA III

In order to stress the system a little I had a 2nd client open in the background, logged in with completely maxed graphics in fixed window mode and character sitting in the CQ. The client I used for testing I ran using max graphics and alternated window modes. All also ran a test for each with vsync disabled.

I altered the steps of my test slightly

Start Eve

Open/Close performance monitor

Open fps

Open/Close Esc menu

Undock

Warp to asteroid belt

Dock back up

Alt tab to background client and back

Walk the length of the hall in the CQ

Switch to hangar view

Open monitor and take screenshot

Results:
Interestingly when I Alt-Tabbed in Windows 8 the FPS did not spike like they do in Windows 7. That was the only significant difference. Note that because of the spike in Windows 7 the scale is different on the left hand side.

Full Screen: http://i.imgur.com/hhaYi.jpg
Full Screen /w VSync Off: http://i.imgur.com/0XvUG.jpg
Fixed Window: http://i.imgur.com/YLMqy.jpg
Fixed Window /w VSync Off: http://i.imgur.com/Dr18A.jpg

What I find interesting is that on this one ( http://i.imgur.com/0XvUG.jpg ) the FPS spike on the Windows 7 version changed the scale of the FPS graph and makes it look totally different hehe.

Ya that's from the Alt-Tab step, I was quite surprised when it didn't happen in Windows 8.

Likewise. As a student studying a computing based course (Software Engineering) we have been given access to Windows 8 and various other Microsoft software. I was originally very reluctant to install Windows 8 however, after several of my classmates decided to install it they claim it is very to use and despite being rather small, Windows 8 has increased their Laptop performance. Nevertheless, I am still rather reluctant to install it (Windows 7 works fine so why bother?) however, it is probably only a matter of time before I bite the bullet.

This tbh

Wasn't originally very keen from what I'd read / heard, but after seeing a lot of positive feedback I took the cheap upgrade offer - actually glad I did - its better than Win7, nicer to use and faster.

I'm going to keep the Windows 8 installation on a separate partition so if anyone wants me to try something with it in relation to Eve just let me know.

I'm using Windows 8 (got a new pc and everything! It haz lights in it! ) and I'm finding no problems other than the horrid getting used to a new interface that's pretty much the same but different enough to be irritating.

Also 1 click access to my very... particular pron collection (no worries! It might be disturbing but it's all 100% legal in this country)

I never got down to the specifics of performance between the two, but I didn't see any difference in game either. My PC is such however, that I likely wouldn't be much affected by it.

I simply don't like Windows 8 much because they turned it into a Console. It's like having a PS3 OS on my PC with as much limited functionality. I like PC for more reasons than that I can play games on it. I did think it was a very smooth platform for playing games though, provided you created game shortcuts on your desktop and never bothered with the 'start' page except to click on desktop.