Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Windows 7 launched last month, and now there's a question on consumer's minds. "Is it worth it?" The answer most people will give is: "It depends on what you use your computer for." I'm guessing since you're here at Ten Ton Hammer, you're like me and play MMO games. So that's what we tested. Is Windows 7 better than Windows Vista for playing MMOGs? For more technical theory on the upgrades to the operating system, check out Dalmarus' Windows 7, Gaming, and Why You Should Care.

The way this works is pretty simple. I booted up a bunch of MMOGs on my PC when it was running Vista (64-bit) and I took simple frame rate samples from 4 resolutions: 1024x768 windowed; 1024x768 full screen; 1920x1200 windowed; and 1920x1200 full screen. Each test was run for precisely 60 seconds. I recorded the minimum FPS (frames per second), the maximum, and the average. I repeated the test three times in each resolution to help eliminate any sort of squirrely results.

Then I upgraded the exact same PC with Windows 7 (64-bit). This is of particular importance. I didn't run the tests on different computers running the same hardware - I ran them on the exact same PC, first with Vista, and then with Win7. Any background apps I had running in Vista were also running on Windows 7. The only difference, aside from the OS itself, were a couple of different drivers to support Windows 7. All drivers were updated prior to the testing on both operating systems.


I tested nine MMOGs in hopes to have enough samples to draw some conclusions. I tried to take the readings from the busiest areas of the games I could come across. In some games, there either simply wasn't a large enough population for it to matter much, or I couldn't get to the areas I wanted to go to. In either case, the variations serve as the exceptions to prove the rule. (Yeah, it was deliberate. Mmhmm.) The following is a list of games I tested, and the areas I tested them in.

Aion: Sanctum. This is the main city hub for Elyos, and probably the busiest place you'll find on the Elyos side. I took the benchmarks at the bank, although the crafting area would have also been suitable.

Age of Conan: Old Tarantia. It's been a little while since I've played AoC, but I headed to the brokers in Old Tarantia. It wasn't as crawling with people as some other games, but there was enough hustle and bustle to get realistic results.

Champions Online: Desert Crisis Powerhouse. This was probably the major exception to a "busy area." I initially went here because I remembered the powerhouses as being particularly busy at launch. I didn't take into account that the game launched a couple of months ago now, so the powerhouse was pretty empty. 12 people in a small, otherwise empty, instance made for some high framerates.

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach Harbor. Since DDO has gone F2P, there are always people in the Harbor. This was a good test.

EverQuest 2: Lavastorm Mountains. Why would I go there, and not say, Qeynos? Quite simply because the shard quest turnins are there, as well as the zone being a meeting point for some major raids, at least on the Crushbone server. Population was good.

Lord of the Rings Online: Egladil. This is the entry point for the upcoming Siege of Mirkwood expansion. Since at the time I only had access to the SoM beta, and not the live LotRO servers, this had to suffice.

Vanguard - Saga of Heroes: Leth Nurae. I don't know if there even is a busy spot in Vanguard any more. Leth certainly wasn't busy, but I don't think Telon is at any particular risk of overpopulation as a whole. I wanted to test Vanguard because it still has some of the nicest graphics of any MMOG.

Warhammer Online - Age of Reckoning: Altdorf. Even Altdorf is empty nowadays. I suppose I could have hunted for a siege somewhere, but in the interest of saving time, I just headed to Order's capital city.

World of Warcraft: Dalaran. Where else?

Onto the test results!