Advice from Win2K vets please

[riordan 0]

I really want to move to Win2K at home, but being an Intel flunky at work(you know how that is), I am loathe to 'try' it on my Athlon. I have heard the horror stories associated with KT133 and Win2K. Also with ACPI. I would appreciate some advice from those who have been running it awhile on this platform.

 

KT133/686b

T-bird 900, stock spd

384MB CAS2 RAM,PC100

Geforce DDR-DVI,32MB

SBLive!

Intel Pro100B

 

1) Is it worthwhile to play games on? I run ME now, and really love the gaming performance. Am I going to lose alot of 'p'?

2) Am I going to be chasing compat. issues in circles, or are there tried and true ways to run Win2K on this platform?

3) Am I going to lose much gaming 'p'?

 

Yes, I know, you ask, why so much gaming concern? Cuz I do all my other stuff (besides surfing) on Linux. So besides the stuff I know works (Studio 6.0, other MS Stuff, graphics apps, etc.) I am only worried about losing gaming performance drastically. A little is a small price to pay for stability, but alot is not acceptable to me. Small delta, ok, large delta, I'll stay with 9x.

 

Thanks for you help, if you have any to offer.

[Xiven 0]

I suggest that you check the compatibility lists for games on NT Compatible to find out which of your games will work. Make your decision after you have done this

[riordan 0]

Thanks for the quick feedback, but I really was looking for hardware advice first, gaming perf second. I have check alot of my games out in the db. However, I need some advice on running 2k on this hardware. I don't want to spend weeks tracking down fix after fix just to get it run stable.

[Brian Frank 0]

You might want this patch here:

 

http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon-duron/amd_win2k_patch.html

 

All it does is stop crashing in games for Athlon/Duron based Win2k.

 

Get Service Pack 1.

 

Get the 4.29 Via-4-in-1 Drivers.

 

Youve got enough ram, So I wouldnt worry about it.

 

With that SBLive! the ACPI may cause a problem. Win2k using ACPI has most of the devices on one IRQ--This is normal!

So dont sweat.

 

Gaming at that speed and ram youve got, you probably wont be able to tell the difference. If you notice too much of a slowdown in the graphics apps, up your ram to 512.

 

There are tweaks by the busload for Win2k, but I suggest getting this little utility called Xteq X-Setup. Some very good tweaks are in there.

 

If you're really worried about Win2k being an issue, you could always setup a dual boot, and use the FAT32 filesystem for it instead of NTFS.

[riordan 0]

Thanks for the informative reply. I have already installed 2k. I was unable to install sp1 after installing 4.29v ok. I installed the PCI Latency 'patch' for my 686b southbridge and my pc stopped locking while installing sp1. got the agp hotfix, official 2k nvidia's, and still stock sblive drivers(MS, i know they most likely suck). installed most fixes and am now going to see how t2 plays. nice to have 2k on at home, but the issues with this mobo bother me. hopefully they dont come back.

 

thanks again!

 

riordan

139

[DavidJonesIGI 0]

I have had not a single problem with any game in 12 months of 2K and Athlons, and the performance, well, there are games that I couldn't run well in Me, so I shifted them to 2K and voila, success, I think the better memory management is a real boon for gamers.