Windows XP Professional vs. Home Edition

[DrX 0]

I think that Home Edition will run games much better because Professioanl is cluttered with all this crap for Enterprise networks that is worthless to home users and takes up valuable RAM and CPU resources. Home Edition will be trimmed down and optimized to run applications and games.

 

But I like professional. I just would like to know what services are running on the Home Edition so I can disable the ones that I don't need under XP. I already read a tweak guide that shows the minimum number of services you need to play games and stuff but I'd still like to know how Home Edition is set up so I can emulate it on Pro. Any ideas?

[JP- 0]

I dont think home edition will run anything faster than professional edition. Home just seems to be professional minus a few useful features that i might actually need. I thought home just had a few less apps included in it and i doubt that 1 or 2 extra services are really going to affect framerate.

[DrX 0]

I think there are certain key changes at the kernel level to optimize running applications over network performance. Also I suspect that it's not just 1 or 2 services we're dealing with but somewhere along 20 that aren't necessary because they deal with domain controllers and "smart card" (makes me want to go out and buy one but... no) readers. I really do believe it will affect frame rate because Millennium ran games faster than 2000 or XP Pro did. I wouldn't think Microsoft would release an update to an operating system that would run games SLOWER than its predecessor... that certainly wouldn't make for impressive PR.

 

-drx

[DrX 0]

I have no proof of my claim of course but neither do the people that claim Home is identical to Pro minus a few applications. Removing SMP support requires changes in the OS kernel and that means that Home and Pro already have different kernels, I would wager that there are more kernel enhancements in XP Home for home users. Something to think about.

[Sandaasu 0]

If there is a difference, it will be small, and could be made up by some system configuration changes really.

[DosFreak 2]

LOL! Removing SMP from XP Home just required removal of the SMP Kernel files.

[DremNeonBlack 0]

Quote:

A bit of Queensryche there for you Dr. X... from the tune 'Revolution Calling', one of my all-time favs!

(Sorry, had to do it...)

*

APK

I LOVE the Operation Mindcrime album!

[JP- 0]

<Rant>

I already mentioned this in another thread but i feel that the only reason games run faster on 9x/ME is that games were writen with 9x in mind so of course it will run slower on NT. Also as i have said before the drivers for 9x are going to be alot better for 3d apps and therfore faster, you can see the improvement in performance with almost every new driver for NT now. It can only get better. XP Pro and XP Home are essentially the same thing minus things like SMP support and if you think home will run games faster i would just say you are plain wrong.

 

</Rant>

[Dream97 0]

I don't have a link unfortunately but I came across a site that benchmarked both XP Home and XP Pro. Both had basically the exact performance with apps and games. The major difference between the two isn't services but really additional features like SMP support, remote desktop, NTFS file system, etc. As far as performance goes, you're not better off with one or the other unless you have multiple processors. Ignoring those included features, you will have the exact same performance with Pro and Home.

 

And the reason behind the performance difference between Win2k/XP/NT and Win9x with games is exactly what Carbine said. Games and 3D card device drivers have always been designed with the old 9x OS core in mind because those were the home OSes. Games and drivers will probably be like that for another year *after* XP is released too but after that you'll start to see performance begin to even out. This has very little to do with services bringing down your system since WinME actually has just as much bloat to go with it. Just because it doesn't have "services" doesn't mean it doesn't have multiple operations running in the background. Heck, System Restore and PC Health probably take up more CPU cycles and memory than any networking services in Win2k or XP.

 

Ultimately, if a few services taking up 400k of your memory really bother you and you honestly feel like they'll bring your Quake Arena framerate down .8 or something, you could do what Sandaasu suggested and turn off what you don't need anyway. It's not like they're always running wether you want them or not. You *can* turn them off and run a very streamlined NT-based OS.

 

</rant>

[DrX 0]

NTFS isn't supported in XP Home? You must be kidding me...

 

And come on remote desktop? I'm pretty sure "Remote Assistance" is, isn't that kind of the same thing?

[JP- 0]

Ok here are the differences, and i cant beleve that NTFS is not supported in home.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/whichxp.asp

 

Just take a look at that, i dont really think any of those differences are very major and they certainly are not going to affect the speed of the os.

[CUViper 0]

"Remote Desktop Connection" will allow you to connect to a Terminal Services enabled server, as well as other WinXP clients (assuming they have that option enabled, of course). As far as I can tell, it's not "watered down" at all...

[Dream97 0]

AFAIK, the difference between Remote Desktop and Remote Assistance is that XP Home can only be a client but XP Pro can be a server or a client.