Windows 2000 Pro vs Windows 98SE

[Gandalf90125]

I seem to recall seeing gaming benchmarks comparing Win98SE to Win2K Pro somewhere a few years back. Can someone point me to a URL?

 

[BlueWeasel]

Read the OS Comparison Guide for Gaming at Tom's Hardware

 

[EeyoreX]

Without reading the article (refuse to travel to Tom's Hardware) I believe, performance wise, Windows 2000/XP is probably a little bit better. I think the only real issue some have is Windows 2000/XP's seeming inability to run older games (however, everything I have tried to run on a Windows XP box has worked with proper settings in Compatability Mode. From the original Doom to Redneck Rampage to Duke Nukem. I doubt the performance differance is really worth spending the money right now on a new OS, unless you use the PC for things other than gaming. If you do graphics or video work for example as well as game, spring for a newer OS.

\Dan

 

[BlueWeasel]

Summary of Article
(pasted from T'sH)

The tests show that there's no reason today to use Windows 98/ME in a new system. In many of the benchmarks, XP and 2000 are ahead - albeit only by a small margin. The biggest advantage of 2000 and XP, however, is in the more modern architecture, which, thanks to the increased stability and safety from crashes, allows for a much more relaxed work environment - and, of course, increased demands on the hardware as well.

98/ME users might ask if it is worth spending the money on XP and the additional RAM required for 2000/XP. This depends, above all, on how you plan to use the system. If you're only going to play games on it, then you can continue to use ME or 98SE. Most of the manufacturers no longer offer driver support for 98, but support for ME should still continue for a long time. All ME drivers work on 98 without a hitch (the naughty ones say that ME is only the retail version of a service pack for 98 SE...).

For those who use their PCs for other purposes as well should turn to XP or 2000 - with regard to performance, there's no difference between them. Games now run on both systems with optimal performance, and they mostly run faster than on the older operating systems. Only the 60 Hz problem (http://xp-refresh.net/) puts a considerable damper on the gaming experience. Here, the only thing that will help is to turn to the freeware tools mentioned at the beginning of this article. In the following, we list the freeware tools for the most widely used graphics card series. For Windows XP, there's Service Pack 1, which many users are reluctant to use, for various reasons.

 

[Schadenfroh]

in short, use windows2k pro and ntfs, you wont regret it.

 

[tcsenter]

The tests show that there's no reason today to use Windows 98/ME in a new system. In many of the benchmarks, XP and 2000 are ahead - albeit only by a small margin.

Many people some how read-out the above highlighted portions when they read or regurgitate the THG article.

The idea is that, if given the choice between XP/2000 or 98SE/ME when purchasing or building a new system, go with XP/2000. IOW, why spend $100 on 98SE/ME when you can have XP for the same amount? If you already own 98SE/ME, the added expense of purchasing XP/2000 may, depending on individual circumstances, decrease the soundness of this logic.

Even more important than cost is selecting the right tool for the job. If one makes their living with Photoshop or Illustrator or AutoCAD or Macromedia Flash Developer, it never did make any sense to use Win9x and it still doesn't unless as a cross-platform test system. There are lots of people who formulated an highly flawed opinion after having attempted the equivalent of using a screw driver to pound a nail, then concluded "This hammer sucks ass! Its an inferior hammer." Yes, well, that's because its a screwdriver, not a hammer. DOH!

The 'stability' of Win9x seems to vary quite widely from user to user. I have no stability problems with Win98SE or ME, except when I make the mistake of installing a known suck-ass application like Real Player, which certainly isn't limited to Win9x in its crash-causing propensity.

If you use your PC as a traditional 'home' or 'SOHO' PC, there is really nothing wrong at all with 98/ME; web surfing and email, word processing, playing games, entertainment or educational titles, finance or book-keeping, personal tax software, the occassional spreadsheet or presentation, consumer level photo editing, scanning, whatever (you know, the stuff like 90% of all home PCs are used for).

I work with a lot of photos, none more than 10MB in size, most less than 5MB. There comes a point when one is simply asking too much of a consumer and SOHO grade operating system and should be using a more suitable platform.

 

[Gandalf90125]

Thanks for the link to the Tom's article. It was good to see that, generally speaking, Win2K is not a liability when it comes to speed vs Win98SE.

However, I wasn't aware of the 60Hz problem. That could certainly put a damper on things.

A couple of notes regarding the Tom's article:

1) They ran benchmarks at 85Hz. Obviously, they must have used the freeware utilities that they mention. However, they neglected to say which one(s) they utilized in their testing.

2) I wish authors of such articles would learn how to write. It may be that in Lars Weinand's case, English is not his first language, but I've also seen problems with many articles posted here over the years. But that's neither here nor there as it has nothing to do with the OS comparison.

 

[kurt454]

http://www.pagehosting.co.uk/rf/
This will fix those refresh problems.

 

[Gandalf90125]

I played around with a Win2K SP3 machine here last night. Installed MadOnion's 3DMark 2000 and Blizzard's Diablo II demo. Played with each, then checked the vertical refresh rate via the monitor's front panel buttons. In both cases, the refresh rate remained at 75Hz, which is what I'd set the desktop rate to be.

Did Microsoft fix this problem with SP3? Or am I missing something?

 

[nutxo]

AT the risk of sounding idealistic do you really think we should be patronizing THG at this point in time?

 

[mattg1981]

I got a quick question/problem to ask. I run Win2k and even after running the refresh rate fix, I can only max out at 60fps in DOD/CS. I have used the 'fps_max 99' in console, but I am still frozen on 60. Can anybody help me with this ... I heard this was because of the limiting refresh rates.