Windows 10 Latest Build "For Gamers" Is it Ready for Primetime?

I enjoy any "Brink run" Windows site as they seem to have lots of knowledgeable,helpful people. I understand that the Nvidia Geforce Windows 10 Forum would be posters with issues but, man, SLI issues, game stuttering issues (with Directx 12?), G Sync issues, max Vram issues, lockups, etc all with a "Microsoft Windows 10 certified" Nvidia graphic driver. Also, from what I understand, the latest build of Windows 10 is pretty much final, with Microsoft working on "App stuff" now.

Are there any Windows 10 experts on this forum who are also serious PC gamers? What I'm trying to understand is whether or not there might be a lot of Kepler SLI owners ( I have Asus 770's in SLI) who are running the latest Windows 10 build with no gaming issues.

Not sure, all the PC gaming enthusiasts I know stuck to Windows 7 and won't even touch 8.

Nvidia's latest few drivers, both for Windows 10 and Windows 8.1, have been pretty terrible. I do my gaming exclusively on Windows 10 (build 10125 at the moment) and don't have many issues at all as long as I stick to the W8.1 drivers 347.88 or 350.12. Granted, I'm using Maxwell (SLI Gigabyte 970s), but I'd be willing to bet that Kepler cards will work fine as well, as long as you stick to the drivers I mentioned. Hopefully Nvidia gets things straightened out, as it's annoying having to import SLI profiles into older drivers just to be able to enjoy full performance in The Witcher 3.

Thanks for the replies. Nvidia drivers "more terrible" for Kepler owners I would say. Discussions rage on with this topic of the Geforce forums. I would definitely say Nvidia has stopped optimizing drivers for Kepler since the release of Maxwell. Maybe that will change.

So you aren't using the Nvidia Windows 10 certified driver? Not a good sign to me. As I'm sure you know, Directx12 is supposed to be the answer to our prayers. In SLI configuration, video memory now stacked as it always should have been, multiple CPU cores ( I have six) optimized to share the load.

Don't want to be negative, but expecting disappointment. I'm old enough to remember when Nvidia stopped calling them video cards and changed it to "GPU's". The huge price hike with that was because the video card would now "also take over the work of the CPU", LOL. And to this day, a major issue with PC gaming continues to be CPU bottlenecks/unoptimized cores.

Of course a major issue with PC gaming is console ports to PC, many of which like the COD series hardly recognize the second GPU. I'm hoping the Directx12 templates for developers might fix some of that.

Overall I'm just thinking (Windows 10, Directx 12/developers/Nvidia) I'll be disappointed. Hope I'm wrong.

specialkone said:

Thanks for the replies. Nvidia drivers "more terrible" for Kepler owners I would say. Discussions rage on with this topic of the Geforce forums. I would definitely say Nvidia has stopped optimizing drivers for Kepler since the release of Maxwell. Maybe that will change.

So you aren't using the Nvidia Windows 10 certified driver? Not a good sign to me. As I'm sure you know, Directx12 is supposed to be the answer to our prayers. In SLI configuration, video memory now stacked as it always should have been, multiple CPU cores ( I have six) optimized to share the load.

Don't want to be negative, but expecting disappointment. I'm old enough to remember when Nvidia stopped calling them video cards and changed it to "GPU's". The huge price hike with that was because the video card would now "also take over the work of the CPU", LOL. And to this day, a major issue with PC gaming continues to be CPU bottlenecks/unoptimized cores.

Of course a major issue with PC gaming is console ports to PC, many of which like the COD series hardly recognize the second GPU. I'm hoping the Directx12 templates for developers might fix some of that.

Overall I'm just thinking (Windows 10, Directx 12/developers/Nvidia) I'll be disappointed. Hope I'm wrong.

In the past couple of days I've learned that the Windows 10 drivers only crash on me if I have SLI enabled. That is pretty disappointing. Hopefully they'll come out with some drivers that fix that before RTM because, having used Mantle in the past with AMD cards, I'm pretty excited to see what DX12 can do.

Also, I'm aware of the discussions you're talking about on the GeForce forums. It's hard to take them seriously, though, with that one guy just spamming the same crap over and over in every single driver thread.

Yes, IMHO we have AMD to thank for their mantle development and thus helping to "push" Microsoft to develop DirectX 12.

An Nvidia WHQL Microsoft certified Windows 10 driver that only crashed in SLI, a technology that's been around for years. I'm worried.

Yes that one individual on the Geforce forums is a "wild one". However, the point, made by many others there and on the Guru3D forum IMHO is a valid one. I have seen nothing but FPS deterioration in the games I regularly play (BF4, etc) after 347.88 Nvidia drivers, drivers after Maxwell release.

blackroseMD1 said:

I'm almost considering going back to 8.1, just so I can have working drivers again.

Edit: Apparently something about Nvidia's W10 drivers and Windows 10 doesn't like overclocking, even factory OCs. Underclocked my cards by 100 MHz and I'm not getting the hard locks anymore.

I don't think that downclocking "solution" is specific to issues in Windows 10. When Battlefield Hardline came out, some 300 Windows 7-8.1 Kepler users (including me) were immediately reporting direct X lockups. Many tried underclocking their cards, some with success, some not. I refuse to underclock a factory overclocked card. It's what Nvidia sold and what I perhaps regrettably paid for.

So I now have that Windows 10 reserved icon on my taskbar. It tells me Media Center will be removed. Unfortunately I know that. It tells me 0 issues with devices and apps.

At this point, I have my doubts Nvidia drivers/SLI are working properly. On the Creative website, it says a driver for the XFI Titanium will be released in October, 2015 (LOL) and they are notoriously late in delivering from their planned dates. Not sure about my Asus USB N53 803 network adapter and keeping my fingers crossed on the dell specific stuff, like Alienware Command Center (vents, fans and lights) and tactical keyboard and mouse. Command Center (includes fan control for gaming) is hit and miss even in Windows 8.1.

You're thinking about going back to 8.1. If I have Windows 10 third party driver issues stopping me from gaming as I should I'm going back to Windows 7. That will make Dell happy as they refuse to support anything other than Windows 7 on the Alienware Area 51 ALX, even though Windows 8 came out shortly after.