The first thing we had an issue with for Windows 8 on the system we chose was a problem with the audio driver. It did not want to install (it is a Windows 7 driver so we were not really surprised) we did manage to shoehorn it in using compatibility mode though. After that things we easy, AMD has Windows 8 drivers for their 58xx series (see the system specs below) so we had no problems with the GPU that we noticed.

The games we used were Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, FarCry2, Crysis 2, The Darkness II, Bioshock 2, Medal of Honor, and Skyrim. With these we had a good selection of games to try out and see what we were going to get out of Windows 8.

Once we got things started though we quickly ran into trouble. Biosshock would not start at all. The game was looking for Windows Live Games, which is not available in Windows 8. We were not able to find any solutions to this. Microsoft could release patches to fix this (and they really should) or we could end up seeing 2K Games patch this for Windows 8 users.  Our next hiccup was with The Darkness II; for whatever reason the game refused to identify the audio card on the X79-UD3. This prevented the audio subsystem from working and while the game was “playable” it was not the full game without the audio.

Now our group dropped from 7 to five games. We have the performance numbers below and also have a video we shot of the actual game play on our test system. We will be running the same tests with an nVidia GTX 470 just to see where they are in the driver development stage and hope to have that information to you soon. For now, check out our video coverage of an intro to gaming on Windows 8.

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