Planning to update to windows 10 or server 2016, read this first.

[System Error Message]

I post this here because this will be relevant to some, having tried the new OS and such i can post my experience covering a variety of areas.

Before you update to windows 10 or server 2016 you really need to think about what you are planning on using it for. Windows server offers quite a lot but with the new OS ever since i updated i've always had issues as far as hardware acceleration is confirmed.

AMD drivers work better on the new OS than windows 8 or server 2012 but in a lot of cases without using AMD you will run into issues where hardware acceleration is concerned. My use case for windows server 2016 was gaming, media, networking and software development. The OS did very poorly in everything except networking. At first install everything worked well but after an update (which is something you cannot avoid) the OS took forever to boot, any program that uses the hardware took ages to load and causes the OS to freeze and while safe mode worked as it should you cant fix the problem there and uninstalling updates isnt allowed either.

So windows server 2016 was a good OS ruined by updates but as far as networking is concerned it is a good OS. It is bad for gaming (dx12 was hyped, dx11 and vulkan are better, even for windows 10) and for things concerning hardware use like OBS, games and some programs (such as virtualisation for android, compilations, etc) would take forever to start and causes the system to freeze up temporarily which also made the system clock fall behind by minutes. The new GUI is better than windows 8/2012 GUI especially with regards to the start menu and the new WDDM certainly is better but hardware compatibility is always a driver issue.

windows 10 doesnt give you a choice with updates and its the same with windows server 2016. In the case with windows server 2016 i find it to be very much unfriendly as far as a production server goes as if something goes wrong especially with updates you will find yourself offline for a while till you reinstall/restore a backup and even than you will not be able to avoid the issue.

Me personally i use windows 7 and server 2012 r2. As far as what i use it for windows server 2012 r2 does some things better except for drivers as my AMD drivers always blue screen when i install them, otherwise even with updates i havent had any other issues. Using windows server for your desktop can be better than the desktop variant except for server 2016 in terms of gaming especially if you use your desktop for networking. virtualisation and even if you have more than 1 NIC and had always been better than the desktop variant except for server 2016. For example while windows vista was bad windows server 2003 (which had a lot of features in vista) worked much better.

Just thought i would put this out and see the experience of others as well. Windows server has a lot more place than the desktop equivalent but definitely never as good as a linux server. Its usable in a home/small office environment but never much in a large environment.

 

[sfx2000]

CPU, GPU, or Both?

On CPU's - I've run both Intel and AMD in the x86-64 space - and they generally work ok... AMD APU's - see below, as most of the problems I've seen there are the drivers, not the HW itself...

GPU's - Intel seems to be more stable (if slow compared to discrete's) - for discrete GPU's, I tend to favor nVidia, but even there, it's been a bit problematic from time to time unless one is either on the current or previous gen HW - for now that being Pascal (current) or Maxwell (previous gen)... nothing against AMD/ATI GPU's however - and in some cases, they're very good (openCL on certain AMD/ATI GPU's is quite good)

With the GPU driver kits - the basic drivers from AMD/nVidia/Intel seem to be good enough - it's the value-add stuff that tends to cause issues in my experience and this is both vendors...

 

[NUTW0RX]

Windows 10 is almost 2 years old. Gaming on a server OS? Come on now...just because you can doesn't mean you should. Stick to Windows 10 for gaming which I've had no problems with nVidia since release date. Used 8 and 8.1 as well. Windows 7 mainstream support ended 2 years ago. Time to let go.

You can defer upgrades for months if you run Pro version and server as well.

 

[System Error Message]

Windows 10 is almost 2 years old. Gaming on a server OS? Come on now...just because you can doesn't mean you should. Stick to Windows 10 for gaming which I've had no problems with nVidia since release date. Used 8 and 8.1 as well. Windows 7 mainstream support ended 2 years ago. Time to let go.

You can defer upgrades for months if you run Pro version and server as well.

with 1 NIC i dont have the bandwidth i need thats why i need a serverOS. My desktop's board has 2 NICs built in which i use both. This lets me do file transfers and play/work at the same time and in other cases for testing as well.

I use all 3 GPUs, intel ,nvidia and amd and amd gave me the most problems in all windows versions except for windows 10/server 2016. A server OS is much better than desktop, for windows they're both based on the same kernel. The only difference is the initial configuration and what they come with. Unlike the desktop version of windows i dont have to spend time optimising it

Its very much like saying just because you have an nvidia quadro or tesla means you shouldnt game on it. My laptop's nvidia quadro was able to overclock to over 2x the shader frequency, it definitely beats the geforce variant when it comes to performance even for gaming.

Well, i have an intel xeon i overclocked by 60% on the bus, i run games on it too and it works very well thanks to the bus overclocked giving more CPU frequency, more memory bandwidth, more CPU cache bandwidth and the obvious CPU bus speed increase as well. Gaming doesnt care about what hardware or OS you run as long as the drivers work, its just hardware running lots of code and math.

Pretty sure in a few months the same problem will still be there so i wouldnt want my work ruined because of an OS issue so delaying updates isnt really going to work. I wouldnt say that its time to let go, as i said i still use windows 7 as well. I run other OSes as well from the linux variations but in the case of windows its like as if microsoft doesnt even respect its users when it comes to windows 10 or server 2016. for me using an older OS isnt about letting go, Once you have work to do and encounter the situation i did you will understand why this is a big matter. This isnt like linux where you can do work arounds to get around the issue or in the case of pfsense vs vpn routers of spending a little more effort with pfsense for better gains, this isnt like that. Windows 10/server 2016 does not give you options to work around. Once you get a problem you're gonna be stuck for a very very long time so unless you want to be unable to do work it should be avoided.

read about the force updates where microsoft got sued as people were forced to update from windows 7 to 10 if they had automatic updates where some businesses loss money and work because of that. if things dont work on the new windows its going to be difficult for those who use their PCs to make a living.