Win2k or XP Pro?

  • Thread starter Thread starter R Thompson
  • Start date Start date
R

R Thompson

I have a recently rebuilt maching, GA-7VAX, AMD Barton 2500XP, 512
Ram, 480W p/s, and newer HD's, but an old Radeon 7200 and Win98 SE.
I'm about ready to buy either a 9600 Pro or 9800 depending on prices
after x-mas is over. I've been using Win98 for years and have had
good luck with it, but...

When moving up to a new ATI card it seems I would get better overall
performance from updating my OS as well. I have Win2k Pro but haven't
installed it yet. Is 2k good for gaming or should I just bite the
bullet and move up to XP Pro? I've read 2k isn't always stable with
gaming, is that true?
I use the computer for low end office stuff and heavy-duty gaming.

I have a Toshiba laptop with XP Home with a P4 1.6 and it runs so-so,
lost speed after the SP1 update. My old machine with a T-Bird 900 ran
faster than the P4 laptop, so I'm concerned about how XP may drag down
overall performance.

Any thoughts appreciated.
 
If you have 2000 now and its legit then use it.....however the rumors about OS's being unstable in gaming is unfounded...mostly
driver issues or years of hardware upgrades and no fresh install of the OS. XP is as good as its drivers, just like any OS, and this
will become an issue, in awhile, as the support for 2k is dropped.

Laptop issues of 'speed' I found are related to the huge amounts of background programs running... mucho power related stuff. and
'not so great' memory amounts.
 
R Thompson said:
When moving up to a new ATI card it seems I would get better overall
performance from updating my OS as well. I have Win2k Pro but haven't
installed it yet. Is 2k good for gaming or should I just bite the
bullet and move up to XP Pro? I've read 2k isn't always stable with
gaming, is that true?
Click to expand...

Windows 2000 is the best OS Microsoft have ever produced. With Windows XP
they simply took 2000 and bloated it by building in things like messenger,
cd burning and unzipping apps, movie maker and all kinds of other crap. All
kinds of stuff that takes up system resources and that you have better apps
for anyway.

People who way that XP is faster are talking BS. Both OSs are built on the
same kernel and use the same model for the device drivers. Just think of
Win2K as XP lite

XP looks pretty tho..

K
 
People who way that XP is faster are talking BS. Both OSs are built on the
same kernel and use the same model for the device drivers. Just think of
Win2K as XP lite
XP looks pretty tho..
Click to expand...

I'm a Win2k user and have been for 3 years, I always sing the praises of
Win2k and I think it's a good reliable OS, but when it come to games I have
found that WinXP is actually faster, and that is using a WinXP default
installation without shutting down any services!!

I think it's all down to drivers.

Even when I tweak Win2k, I still cannot meet the performance (gameswise
ONLY) of WinXP.

Don't take my word for it, read the MANY technical online reviews that say
WinXP **IS** faster/better for games.
 
Windows XP has a higher compatibility for games. If you don't want that
extra stuff, shut it off. If you need a server though, Windows 2000 is more
stable for a server. Windows XP is still stable as heck. I have never had
a BSOD.
 
R said:
I have a recently rebuilt maching, GA-7VAX, AMD Barton 2500XP, 512
Ram, 480W p/s, and newer HD's, but an old Radeon 7200 and Win98 SE.
I'm about ready to buy either a 9600 Pro or 9800 depending on prices
after x-mas is over. I've been using Win98 for years and have had
good luck with it, but...

When moving up to a new ATI card it seems I would get better overall
performance from updating my OS as well. I have Win2k Pro but haven't
installed it yet. Is 2k good for gaming or should I just bite the
bullet and move up to XP Pro? I've read 2k isn't always stable with
gaming, is that true?
I use the computer for low end office stuff and heavy-duty gaming.

I have a Toshiba laptop with XP Home with a P4 1.6 and it runs so-so,
lost speed after the SP1 update. My old machine with a T-Bird 900 ran
faster than the P4 laptop, so I'm concerned about how XP may drag down
overall performance.

Any thoughts appreciated.
Click to expand...

I have 5 machines. Four of them are "game ready". 3 of them have XP Pro
and one has W2kPro. Needless to say, MY machine has W2kPro.
 
I have a recently rebuilt maching, GA-7VAX, AMD Barton 2500XP, 512
Ram, 480W p/s, and newer HD's, but an old Radeon 7200 and Win98 SE.
I'm about ready to buy either a 9600 Pro or 9800 depending on prices
after x-mas is over. I've been using Win98 for years and have had
good luck with it, but...

When moving up to a new ATI card it seems I would get better overall
performance from updating my OS as well. I have Win2k Pro but haven't
installed it yet. Is 2k good for gaming or should I just bite the
bullet and move up to XP Pro? I've read 2k isn't always stable with
gaming, is that true?
I use the computer for low end office stuff and heavy-duty gaming.

I have a Toshiba laptop with XP Home with a P4 1.6 and it runs so-so,
lost speed after the SP1 update. My old machine with a T-Bird 900 ran
faster than the P4 laptop, so I'm concerned about how XP may drag down
overall performance.

Any thoughts appreciated.
Click to expand...

I play games happily on an win2k Pro installation with SP4, I only had
problems during the time that SP1 was out... LONG ago! Nowadays..
Win2k is as stabile, usefull and gaming friendly as it can be!

Just install SP4 :-)
 
win2k pro...I don't have much faith in xp after an install totally
corrupted itself. May be better now that sp1 is out...
As for speed differences, I think they would be negligible...
So you get 280 fps in quake insteal of 320 (even if the speed
difference is true ) its not much of a difference..
Click to expand...

Personally I was skeptical about XP, but decided to try it, turns out to
not really be all that bad. Right now I'm trying to decide whether to
move XP to my new machine, get another copy of XP, or put 2K on it (and
before anybody says"pirate" I have for my personal use a ten seat
license for 2K obtained directly from Microsoft).

So far the only crashes I've had with XP have been driver or hardware
problems.
 
win2k pro...I don't have much faith in xp after an install totally
corrupted itself. May be better now that sp1 is out...
As for speed differences, I think they would be negligible...
So you get 280 fps in quake insteal of 320 (even if the speed
difference is true ) its not much of a difference..
 
I have a recently rebuilt maching, GA-7VAX, AMD Barton 2500XP, 512
Ram, 480W p/s, and newer HD's, but an old Radeon 7200 and Win98 SE.
I'm about ready to buy either a 9600 Pro or 9800 depending on prices
after x-mas is over. I've been using Win98 for years and have had
good luck with it, but...
Click to expand...

I compared Win98se vs Win98Pro on the exact same machine with an AMD
XP CPU... there is about a 25% performance GAIN using WindowsXP.

But beware that WinXP Activation bullshit can cause problems.
 
I compared Win98se vs Win98Pro on the exact same machine with an AMD
XP CPU... there is about a 25% performance GAIN using WindowsXP.

But beware that WinXP Activation bullshit can cause problems.
Click to expand...

So noted.

I bought xp home when it first came out, I upgrade to the latest and
greatest of video, MB, ram and hard drives probably two times a year
and every time I reinstall xp I have to call MS to activate it because
it wont activate online.
To make matters worse with activation there is an automated recording
that listens to your voice and accepts answers, it then asks you to
type in your hash key on the activation screen, each and every time I
type the lengthy hash the machine tells me that there was a problem
and that I must talk to a customer support person.
Every person that I have talked to for activation has treated me like
a criminal by asking me a barrage of questions.
"are you using this on more than one machine"
"Did you really buy this software?"
"are you using a serial key generator?"
etc etc

I am not one to brag but I do have a lot of money, it would be easy
just to pick up a new copy of xp all the time, but I'll be godamed if
I am going to pay for this software more than once, especially
something from microsoft.
Luckily the wife still loves W2k and redhat8 since I replace her
machine with a new one every time I replace mine.
 
But beware that WinXP Activation bullshit can cause problems.
Click to expand...


What kind of problems? I have been running XP since day it came out on 2
computers. I have reinstalled windows a few times on both machines and
reactivated over net all but 2 times. I called them and in 5-10 minutes was
reactivated each of the 2.
 
I bought xp home when it first came out

There's your single biggest problem right there.

XP Home is a lobotomised version of XP Pro, the real OS, that M$ made
available at a cheaper price for people who they * knew * would not fork
over the money for the 'real' OS. You'll notice on the NGs that people
reinstalling Pro for some reason get a lot less hassle than people
reinstalling Home.

DD
 
XP home is fine. It's the same as XP Pro if you don't need:

- Domain-based Networking
- Remote control of the desktop
- Full NTFS file security
 
There's your single biggest problem right there.

XP Home is a lobotomised version of XP Pro, the real OS, that M$ made
available at a cheaper price for people who they * knew * would not fork
over the money for the 'real' OS. You'll notice on the NGs that people
reinstalling Pro for some reason get a lot less hassle than people
reinstalling Home.
Click to expand...

They both have the SAME CORE... What is different is the dual CPU
function, more network tools & protocals and a few peices here and
there... oh, I think less WIZARD-LIKE functions... and of course,
5-PC limited networking.

When I get on an XP-HOME system.. its a bit tricky to find things...
cause I'm looking for the same stuff I'd find on the PRo ;)


Oh well... Windows98se is better.
 
A base install of Win XP may take up to 2GB of hard drive space BEFORE
installing anything at all.

I have been running Win 2K SP4 for nearly 16 months now with many apps and
via a change from Nvidia to ATi and it is steady as a solid rock. My C:
partition is simply 1.23Gb in size. Fast, steady, great. In work I use XP
with SP1 and that is also fine and has so far caused me no probelm at all.

I would suggest a Win 2k install as Win XP has a lot of fluff that most
people really do not need. It's a difficult answer. If your going legal
then buy the cheapest but if your not then why not try both for one month.
Ghost your first install then try the other.

As long as it works... what the hell.

P.s. Wonder what Win 98 SE would say about my 1Gb of DDR ram?
 
A base install of Win XP may take up to 2GB of hard drive space BEFORE
installing anything at all.

I have been running Win 2K SP4 for nearly 16 months now with many apps and
via a change from Nvidia to ATi and it is steady as a solid rock. My C:
partition is simply 1.23Gb in size. Fast, steady, great. In work I use XP
with SP1 and that is also fine and has so far caused me no probelm at all.

I would suggest a Win 2k install as Win XP has a lot of fluff that most
people really do not need. It's a difficult answer. If your going legal
then buy the cheapest but if your not then why not try both for one month.
Ghost your first install then try the other.

As long as it works... what the hell.

P.s. Wonder what Win 98 SE would say about my 1Gb of DDR ram?
Click to expand...

With more than about 512 MB RAM, Win98 SE dies a screaming death.

See
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/Q253/9/12.ASP&NoWebContent=1
 
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