Easy Question - 2K or Not 2K?

[Lord Prism]

I'm running Win98SE and REALLY enjoy my gaming. Gaming, Gaming, Gaming.

Am I going to take a performance hit if I upgrade to Win2K?

Thanks in advance,




Does the system even make a difference?
Abit SE6 Motherboard
Pentium 3 1000Mhz Processor
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Value
ATi RADEON DDR 32MB (AGP~4x) Video Card
512MB SDRAM PC-133 Memory
Win98 SE Operating System
Maxtor 20Gb (ATA100, 7200rpm)

[dead_eye]

No, you will probably get better performance. It depends on your hardware.

[jotto84]

games seem to run smoother with less crashing in win2k if you ask me, just make sure your game supports win nt or win2k, otherwise it may not run,

if it does run [and it does not support win2k or winNT] it will have unpredictable results meaning lots of crashing and freezing. (particularily games designed to run soley on win95)

[Xayd]

For most games with latest drivers and DX, you'll get less frames by about 10, but the kicker is no frames dropped, so it's actually smoother.

98 is crap, and thankfully dying now that XP uses the NT kernel, ditch it and never look back.

[jotto84]

if i may -lord prism

what games do you play?

[Lord Prism]

Thanks for responses you guys.


U.T.
Thief 2
MechWarrior 3 / 4
Revolt
HalfLife
SW Pod Racer
DeusEx



...it sounds like the games I play are ok for 2K and I would be better off...

Am I getting that right?

[Jenni]

From what I've seen on my brother's system, most games work right, and they seem to run a lot faster. Soldier of Fortune ran so fast it was almost too fast, lol. Counter-Strike runs well too.

The only problems you might have involve hardware issues. Ask Floppyman about his printer/scanner combo and 2k, lol. HP Scanjet 5100c and Deskjet 722, never did get it working right.

Bottom line is: do you like tweaking your OS? If the answer is no, stay away from 2k. Once you get it installed and working right, everything is gravy, but getting it to that point can be a real headache!

[Lord Prism]

FLoppyman, what do you think, should I avoid 2k?
Well, I don't have either of those printers.:

Deskjet 820Cse (pp)
Umax 1220(PP)
Intel Webcam Pro(usb)
SW Forcefeedback Sidewinder(gameport)
MS Gamevoice(usb)
PalmPilot Hotsync cradle(serial)
MS Internet Keyboard Pro



Abit SE6 Motherboard
Pentium 3 1000Mhz Processor
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Value
ATi RADEON DDR 32MB (AGP~4x) Video Card
512MB SDRAM PC-133 Memory
Win98 SE Operating System
Maxtor 20Gb (ATA100, 7200rpm)

[lovitz]

Windows 2000 is simply awesome. I have checked out XP but I haven't had enough time to play around with it fully. The only thing about 2K that pisses me off is the dreadful installation process that takes about 2 and a half hours to install on this machine.

[minutrice]

one question... Why would you want 2k when you can have XP? XP is great in my opinion.

Josh

[Floppyman]

Hi guys,

To first answer your questions Josh, less compatibility issues, win2k has been around a while and has had two service packs released for it.

Lord Prism,

I honestly can't tell ya if your printer/scanner combo will work, are they daisy chained? I just happened to have bad luck with the HP722C/HP 5100C scanner combo which were daisy chained. Everything worked well in win98se, but in win2k I can't get them working daisy chained. So now I'm looking at getting a parallel port add on card, they aren't very expensive. Should you decide to go for win2k and have the same problems, you can always buy one of those cards.

Now for my opinion on win2k, I really like it. I'm not planning to go ahead to XP and not back to win98se or ME as my main OS. I might put win98se and dual boot, as I have a couple games I like to play that aren't supported in win2k. Win2k is stable, and has excellent memory management. Looking at your games I *think* the majority if not all are supported. I've had win2k run on 2 machines, one was a dual cpu machine a while back and the other now is an Athlon 1.33ghz. On machines it worked out great. I guess if I had to give you a suggestion right now, I'd say go for it. I also ran win98se before I switched to win2k, and after running win2k for a quite a while, I'm not considering switching back to win98se again.

HTH

[Lord Prism]

..they ARE daisy chained. That stinks. $20 for a PCI add on card isn't too bad.

Thanks for the quick response, F-man!

What sorts of new games aren't supported? I frequently download demos and play those.


Looks like I'll get greater stability, better OS, and NOT take a hit on the gaming. I may be making the 2K leap...

[Lord Prism]

Will Win2K take greater than 512MB of Ram?

[glc]

Win2K supports 4 gigs of ram.

[Lord Prism]

4 GBS !!!

...time to visit CRUCIAL!

[TechSkirt]

Just to further support what has been said here. I have been running Win2K for about a year and have had no problems running UT or Quake 3. Performance has been much better than Win98SE. Much better usage of memory and greater stability.

And as far as XP ... all's I have to say is LINUX

[Lord Prism]

Well, apparently, if you are on 2K, then moving to XP wouldn't be very worth-while.

For those who currently have Win2k, the transition may not be as worthwhile,

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?threadid=19514n