Even VISTA 64 I took. Also this version you could - at least as a player - abgewinnen something, namely DX10.
However, Windows 7 had since Windows 2000 (Windows XP was not my style) the first Windows that I also really like to use again. And I stand and was critical of Windows 8. The UI looks terrible. And yes, I will again have Aero Glass. And I the tiles on the PC not get anything.
But anyway I have now - migrated to Windows 8.1 - at least for my game installation.
Because so bad the GUI is also - and this is really - the inner life has improved significantly.
As for the GUI, with a small program like "Classic Shell" can be produced on the whole Windows 7 look and feel. Aero Glass, although I miss but still. And yes, it is a joke, in fact, that Microsoft the user can not be the choice.
But let's get to the interesting. And there are many, but it is only at second glance.
On the one hand there is now much more useful system information. You can see that the revised Task Manager or even to the statistics from the copy dialog.
Windows 8.1 will boot much faster and feels more quickly overall to.
The real killer feature - and the reason for the Windows 8.1 purchase - is significantly higher performance in multi-threaded applications. Here are increases of up to 50% compared to Windows 7 in it. The Task Scheduler is (again) completely revised. This happened even from Windows Vista to. 7
And as a normal PC user to get well anyway with only one type of multi-threaded applications in contact. Namely with games. However, not this also applies to all the current games, but Battlefield 4 and Crysis 3 benefit greatly from Windows 8.1. And since the new consoles have all Octacore and rather low clock, at least all cross-platform titles will benefit therefore in the future. That is a sure-so in the future.
My conclusion: For the work I still take Windows 7 with Aero, but ...
Players get with Windows 8.1 significantly improved performance in multi-threaded games.
And thanks to "Classic Shell" can even get along well with the new GUI!