Best way to test how my PC would run games on Linux?

Title says it all really.

I honestly have no idea how to partition drives, and don't want to screw stuff up. I am not opposed to the idea of having 1 drive Windows, 1 drive Linux. But before I commit to that, I would like to test how my PC would run a few games.

Is there a decent way to download a distro (probably Ubuntu, or something similar; read: As simple to use as possible) and run it like an application within Windows, and gauge performance, even if it's "this is how your PC would run it, but with 10% extra on top of this"