Windows 2000 and XP Home

[mattg1981]

I have Windows 2000 Professional on my machine now, but I am thinking of installing XP Home instead. Will I see a decrease in performance between the two systems? I dont do any video editing or anything like that ... all I do really is program with Visual Studio .NET, play games and use programs like Photoshop 7, Flash, etc.

 

[rmrf]

at a developer's stance, I would recommend either staying with W2k or going all the way to XP Pro. Just my view though.

 

[digitalman]

as long as you are not running a dual cpu machine you will see no difference in performance between XP pro and home. They are the exact same os at the core. the difference bettween the two of them is in some of the functionality that pro has. Pro was built with features designed for people on a Active Directory Domain and connecting to a server to authenticate for rights, resources, etc. A lot of these features are removed from the home version. they also took out some features like password protection, dual processor support, dual monitor support, remote desktop, etc from the home edition so the end user not connecting to a domain would have a reason to upgrade. But still at the core they are the same opperating system.

So based on the apps you use, it shouldn't matter if you upgrade to home (if you want to call it upgrading). although there may be features in 2000pro that you would miss and may want to consider pro.

 

[mattg1981]

when you say dual cpu .. that doesnt mean HT ... that means two physical cpu's right? or is HT only in Pro? Win2k doesnt even have HT support right?

 

[digitalman]

hyper threading is definitly different the dual cpus. while p4/xeons with ht support mimmic a dual cpu machine there is still only one cpu and the machine shows that in the device mangler. i am not sure if the ht is done in 2000 but is in xp pro and 2003 and i would imagine in home.

i have oftern found myself wondering how much performance increase the a p4 with ht enabled is vs the same machine and cpu without runinng HT. personally i think that it could very well be a sales gimmick from intel. although in theory it really does sound great.

 

[EeyoreX]

Windows XP Home/Pro are essentially the same OS, as was mentioned above (though I will correct one error I noticed, Windows XP Home does indeed support dual monitors). There should not be a performance drop in switching to either version of XP. Here is Microsoft's take on how you should choose which version of XP is a better choice. Personally, I go for Pro all the time, just better to be safe than sorry.

As for HT, both versions of Windows XP support HT, and Windows 2000 does, to some extent, though tget the best use of HT you should run either version of XP. Intel recommends disabling HT for all other Windows based OSes (Windows 2003 Sever should work with HT, though I would think having a "real" dual CPU machine would be a better option in a server role). AFAIK using HT with 2000 may actually hurt performance rather than help it, but I could be wrong as I don't own any current Intel products. (Not unless you could 3 PIIs "current" )

\Dan

 

[Canterwood]

I've been told by both Microsoft and Intel reps, that Win2K will make use of HT, but its not as optimized as XP is for it.
XP was coded with HT in mind, whereas 2k wasn't.
Basically 2K cant tell the difference between a physical cpu and a logical one, so it thinks a HT P4 is two physical cpu's.
This affects licensing more, as a 2000 server with a 4 cpu license and 4 HT xeon cpu's would only use the 4 physical cpu's.
Whereas the same 4 cpu license on 2003 server would use the 4 physical cpu's and the 4 HT logical ones.
2K pro (2 cpu license) will see a HT P4 as two physical cpu's, and will work happily with it.

Back to the question, you wont find any difference between 2K an XP home for what you want to do with it, so I'd save my money and stick with 2K.
If its all working well and good then why change it?