Advice on Win 7 vs Win 10

[Pretolkos]

The time period for the free upgrade to Windows 10 is winding down, and I'd appreciate information from people who upgraded to Windows 10 on whether it's stable, especially from a gaming perspective.

My situation:
My computer is crashing intermittently (monitors go blank, weird buzzing coming from my sound system) and the reliability monitor is blaming a video hardware error, so I'm currently planning on getting a gtx 1080 once the supply issue has resolved.

My computer has a fairly significant svchost memory leak, such that it'll gobble up 7-10 GB of RAM. It would eventually take more, but a reboot resolves the issue for a few days. (I'm 99% positive this isn't a virus since it ramps up slowly over time like a true memory leak, the actual processes are legit windows 7 processes, and they're located within the Windows 7 folders appropriate for their processes.)

Would upgrading to Windows 10 be beneficial?
I hesitate to upgrade because I still have a number of Steam (read: old) games that I want to play someday, and typically that gets harder to do as you upgrade operating systems. I did read online that Windows 10 seems to do fine with certain games, but most of the articles were written right before its release a year ago or immediately after, when a number of bugs may not have been found.

When I was discussing this with another group, one of the people said that their experience with Windows 10 is that it has more memory leaks than Windows 7, which is a major reason why I'd consider the upgrade.

tldr What has your gaming experience been with Windows 10? Have you had trouble with memory leaks or anything else that would make you prefer Windows 7?

Thanks for any info you can share!

[Sonick]

I just upgraded about 2 months ago and I had a BAD scvhost memory leak once I upgraded. A quick google search lead me to a registry key that I had to change and I have not had a sinlg eproblem with windows 10 since. I don't remember what I had to change but I may still have the link bookmarked.

As far as performance, I haven't noticed a difference, good or bad. I am always wary of changing OS. I skipped vista and stayed on xp pro until 7, and skipped 8 and 8.1 and went from 7 to 10. I do however use a couple programs that make my windows 10 look and feel like windows 7. They are low resource programs that don't affect my pc's performance (that I have noticed).

[Evolutious]

I have been using Windows 10 Home since it went official release. My primary motivation to move to it was due to me using SSD in RAID0 and Windows 10 having TRIM support for it (previous versions of Windows did not). I have had the occasional issue (I think I have had 3 blue screens since i installed Windows 10 due to a drive conflict). Outside of that, it has ran great for me.

By comparison in performance, I have not had any issues playing WoW or Overwatch at Ultra settings; although my rig is a bit on the high end. By comparison of performance, Windows 10 is WAY better than Windows 8/8.1 (yes, i ran them for a while!) and I would consider it on par with Windows 7 (although the aesthetics are better in Windows 10, imo).

[Sebart]

I e been thinking about making the upgrade as well. I'm currently on a 7 year old laptop though so I don't know if it'll be more harmful than beneficial lol

[KillerPotato]

Windows 10 is worth it, I'll even venture forward and take the risk saying its better than 7 (bring on the hate), it works better with newer harder, (as Krazy mentioned above) SSD's benefit greatly from TRIM support in it, it has better multi-core management.

It even works better on some older computers.

I've held on to Windows 7 for a very long time, I didn't use 8 or 8.1 on my personal computers, even downgraded my laptop to 7 and client computers that came with 8/8.1 to 7 because I found it to be an extremely annoying OS, it wasn't bad, it was just a downgrade to 7 in all aspects but (some) hardware support.

I now have Windows 10 running on (almost) every client machine, rest will be upgraded soon enough, close to 100 people overall so far, the ONLY complaint I've gotten was the usual "I need to get used to this now....", performance wise, not a single peep.

So yes, do it, get it while it's free.

The memory leaks are usually on older systems or due to a driver issue that gets "messed" up during the upgrade, there is a working solution for it.

Me personally, when it comes to OS I always prefer a clean install to an upgrade.
Yes, you have to reload your programs, but, thats not always a bad thing, it also means to get to NOT install all the programs you don't use and just sit there.

TL;DR: DO IT! It's well worth it.

[Packhunter]

In a rare instance for me, I might be a bit on the blunt side, and if I offend anyone I am sorry in advance.

That being said it'll be a cold day in the Molten Core, and we'll be opening up Bikini beaches in Ice Crown before I consider using Windows 10!

I use Windows Media Center (Not in Windows 10)
I value my privacy (Windows 10 loves to spy on people)
I like having control over my system (whoops not happening in Windows 10)
I like to play old video games, which mean virtual console time (can we say it again not in Windows 10)

This is just stuff I can think of off the top of my head.

On a closing note, I feel Microsoft has crossed several lines with giving away Windows 10, and I am not going to reward them by taking this OS when they've been so pushy to give it away. Makes me wonder what will happen when the other shoe drops.