Hey all!
 
I am getting a new PC and was thinking of getting it with Win 7 pro, but maybe 8.1 has been around long enough to be stable with Sonar Platinum and bunches of plugins. I searched the forum but found nothing recent about this. I'm sure that with a newer processor and more RAM, it will run smoother, but Win 7 is fairly stable (unless I have too many soft synths going on).
 
TIA
 
Andy

Switched from W7 Pro to W8.1 Pro on my studio PC about 6 months ago when I built a new rig. W 8.1 has been on one laptop for 2 years, my work computer and my other laptop for 1 year.  No issues whatsoever with Sonar Plat or any other programs. I even use the W7 drivers for my ancient Tascam and EMU audio interfaces.
 
W8.1 may be a little bit faster in certain areas like disk access.
I never see the Modern interface (tiles) since I boot to the desktop.
The only complaint of any kind I have is that WMP no longer plays DVDs and that is really, really minor since there are plenty of free DVD players.
I just put W10 on my old studio PC. So far that is OK too, but have not tried that with Sonar yet.
 

For your new PC, I strongly advise at least one SSD for the OS regardless of which one you end up with. If you can afford it, get a 2nd SSD for your sample libraries. SSDs make a really big difference and you can get a 120GB for 50-60 bucks.

Thanks for the reassurance! I think I will go with W 8.1. One thing I didn't like (I had it, now have 10 on my internet computer) is the signing in that it requires. And it could be that I missed something in setup for that.
 
The new PC is built for music and comes with a small SSD with the OS, and I have one on my current PC that I will install on the new one as well as a new one I got during cyber week

I have 8 PCs on my network so I have always used logins even with XP. Login is default for Vista and above for security reasons. If you really must auto login there are several tweakers that allow this. Look at Tweaker 3 or TweakUI. 
This should work too..
http://www.howtogeek.com/...r-logon-automatically/

Sonar runs smashingly well on 8, 8.1 and 10.
 
Windows 8.1 has some pretty significant changes to thread scheduling and memory management and sports greatly improved multi-core performance compared to Windows 7, and XP just isn't in the same league. To me the only valid reason to stay with Windows 7 is if you like the Aero desktop. But that's just me; I'm an inveterate upgrader with mommy issues.
 
To round out the story, Windows 10 further improves these functions and also has code to improve DPC latency issues by pushing stuff like network and video interrupts to other CPU cores, letting audio have CPU0 for its interrupts. The team's stated goal is to make DPC latency issues for audio apps just a bad old memory. I'm not sure how far along that path they've gone yet, but I believe there is some of that work in the current release.
 
There are also major improvements to the audio stack itself, making WDM performance pretty equivalent to ASIO. If you use ASIO, you won't see much change, except for perhaps being able to run with a somewhat lower sample setting. There are new application level opt-in features in the audio stack for even better performance. It will be interesting to hear Cakewalk's plans for leveraging those features.
 
Anyway, it's an exciting time for audio on Windows, whether you go 8.1 or 10, and Cakewalk has a great history of making full use of the improvements MS builds in to each new release.
 
Your mileage may vary, best of luck whatever you do! 
 
Edit: Oops, just saw that you decided to move up to 8.1, good choice!
 

Thanks guys!
 
Yeah, I understand why Win versions have the sign on, but I'm home, and don't want to be bothered with different accounts. And thanks Kevin for the Win course. I wasn't aware of the improvements, but always thought Microsoft was cleverly devious to use its own customers as blind beta testers. My current Dell with the i7-870 cpu (4 core, 8 thread) has always had an issue with audio while connected to the wireless or even hard wired to a router, so I have gotten used to turning the net connection off when doing audio. It sounds like Win 7 and my hardware must have had some poor planning when it came to the network card's needs over audio- I couldn't even play an mp3 if it was activated without it skipping and crackling. So I'm happy to see that Win 8.1 addressed that. And the cpu I'm upgrading to is i7-5820 (6core, 12 thread), as well as more RAM. And I will still stay off the network while working...it's probably safer...
 
Cheers!

I just built an I7-5820 with 32G DDR4-2800 OC'ed to 4.5Ghz. You will not be disappointed !

I can't wait! Just looking at the cpu stats made me drool!
 
10 year old technology:
Oooops, link removed. You can find them on Intel's page...
 
2014:
 
 

I replaced an 8 year old E8400 Core2 Duo system with the 5820.
I have a jazz project with about 30 tracks and 8 buses. There are 6 audio tracks, AD2 multi-outs, Session drummer, 4 DimPros, SI-Bass, 2 Si-pianos, TTS-1, maybe 20 plugin FXs, and many,many (50-ish) pro-channel FX.
On the E8400, the perf meter was about 60-85% on both cores. If I even moved the mouse during playback, I got pops.
On the 5820, the first core is about 4-5%, the other 11 cores are 0-1%.
The 5820 is a beast !