Empire: Total War is another game which runs in DirectX 9 only and so, like Left 4 Dead, our comparison is purely based on performance. To test the performance of this game we ran it at 2560x1600 with 2x anti-aliasing and 16x anisotropic filtering. All options were set to their maximum level. The performance of the various operating systems is much closer in this game with Windows 7 and Vista scoring identically and as with the other tests they both perform better than XP.
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Throughout our testing the Windows 7 build was able to outperform XP running on the same hardware. In some cases such as Left 4 Dead the performance difference was quite small however in more demanding scenarios such as World In Conflict the increase was much more noticeable. Windows 7 also performed favourably when compared to Vista although it would be hard to tell the difference when actually playing.

As well as offering enhanced performance over XP there were occasions, such as Crysis Warhead, where the ability to use DirectX 10 gave us more stable framerates in Windows 7. Additionally, in each of the titles where DirectX 10 was available there were noticeable image quality increases over the older operating system.