Yep. Windows7 is considered to be better than winXP in terms of eye candy and much better than vista in terms of performance.
if you have no problems with XP then why upgrade? Also never upgrade, always reformat and perform a clean install, its less trouble.
does dx xx.x even a factor any more for pc gaming? pc gaming has shifted and went to the consoles. this is probably why we don't see a big push by microsoft to make dx specific games nor is microsoft pushing heavily on dx xx.x. the last game i played that had dx 10 was lost planet and gears of war for pc. but at the time, most users we're probably running games in dx 9 as opposed to dx10 due to the problems vista's had. i don't know if most pc games today have this separation of allowing people to decide either dx9 or dx10 for games they intend to play. but if such distinction still exists and continues to exist, then dx isn't a factor any more as people will chose the dx version that they are capable of playing with on their os that they are using. isn't dx 11 cross compatible with vista? for gaming purposes only, i'd say you'd probably don't need it. for all around purposes, you'd probably should as windows 7 will probably offer better security and more robust features.
Direct X 11 works with XP, Vista and 7. And to use most of the tricks that Direct X 10 has (nothing has used DX11 yet), you have to have a powerful system, as DX10 takes up a lot of resources. We're reaching a point where making a huge jump in graphics doesn't happen anymore, this is why consoles are having longer life cycles compared to the jump from PSX to the PS2/N64 to the GC. Same goes with PC hardware, we can't advance the graphics department since we're reaching higher and higher graphic fidelity in games. Also, there's so little difference with DX9 and DX10, seriously, look at comparisons. And DX10 usually comes at the price of performance.
Agreed, Nuff said. Windows 7 and Vista use a lot more Handles and Threads compared to WinXp as well. Let along the Ram Whore-ish consumption it has. Thankfully you have okay specs so it shouldn't affect you to bad. But if you want to be able to run decent games, you'd probably have a better chance with XP.
Well that depends, if you have vista, upgrade. As almost all(if not all) of the games that can run on vista can run on win 7. So basically you will have a newer, prettier os
