I added startisback to my widows 8.1 and it feels just like win 7 the way I have it set up and it boots so much faster, I agree in standard just installed format it stinks for gaming rigs but with a few setting changes it's great and when there is a Steam fail and we need to reboot I'm always the first one rebooted, friend has a very close system as mine except he's got an I7 and windows 7 and mine boots much faster. I like win 8.1