WinXP or Win2k pro:Which is better for a heavy gamer?

[pr-man 1]

Thx

[DosFreak 2]

;(

 

XP wins slightly due to it having a few more Application Compatibility Fixes in it's .sdb than 2000 does.

 

It also wins slightly in it's NTVDM Sound support for Doom/Build Engine games and the few hacked Vesa modes that are included within.

 

That's it.

 

Use the Search function to find more correct/incorrect information in the forum.

[pr-man 1]

how about speed and stability?

[DosFreak 2]

Speed is the same (as far as gaming). As for the XP UI and general XP experience on the desktop I have always seen it as slower than 2K, IMO.

 

Stability is as always dependent upon hardware. Since 2K and XP drivers are in almost all cases interchangeable then the hardware stability found by most users on 2K as opposed to XP or XP as opposed to 2K is mostly due to ignorance on the users part on driver/system setup.

[pr-man 1]

so what would be a reason not to go back to win2k pro?

[DosFreak 2]

Depends on the user.

 

The most major benefit to go back is less "fighting" with the OS. Depending on how much you use your OS then XP may be too frustrating when trying to perform simple tasks that you may want to revert back to 2K. This is the way it is in my case.

 

I do not have the time to document all of the reg fixes and such that would involve getting XP to a 2K like state. So I mostly use 2K. I've been forcing myself to use XP to see if I can like the changes but I do not....as soon as I start to say.."Well, I guess I can deal with this..." then XP pulls something out of it's nether regions to **** me off.

 

 

XP offers "more" compatibility. (not enough to move from 2k, IMO).

 

XP has more of a future. (2K support will end before XP but since they are pretty much the same OS then what goes for XP will also go for 2K).

 

XP is cheaper. You have the crappy home edition, which even tho it is a crippled Pro it is still faaaarrr better than 9x overall and considerably better than ME. Probly another MS conspiracy. Releasing the craptacular ME before the release of XP so that the common user would think that XP was far superior to 98 whereas at least with 98 you have more compatibility with with software......

 

More development. More and more software companies are developing on 2K/XP boxes. In fact alot of games nowadays are performing worse and more buggier on 9x boxes simply because the devs do not perform as much testing on 9x as they do on NT boxes anymore. Even the supposed devs who keep the 9x'ers in my still dev on NT boxes.

 

 

In any case. For most of the users out there XP should be their choice, but the power user or those who actually perform some work they should definetly give 2000 a try on their work machine and perform the same tasks between both OS's before making the choice.

[adamvjackson 0]

DosFreak, you're right on the money with that post... I agree 100%. I always like to have the user (when possible) reach their own decesions. I personally, am partial to 2k, but my choice is not everyones.

[Mr.Guvernment 0]

I am personal to Xp - as in my other pst i had afew crash issue with 2k - likely hardware probs.

 

i ran 2k from its beta days and loved it, then switch to XP. i game alot and just like XP over all. - as said u got the cpu and memory go for XP.

[Tomay 0]

I like 2k, but it has some localization issues wich xp doesn't have. In some programs (word, IE...) when I use or import documents (coreldraw 8 into word) with localized characters (e.g. š???ž, you probably won't be able to read this) it doesn't use the correct charset or something like that. Me and a couple of my friends haven't been able to fix this and sp3 does nothing. I experienced more crashes with xp than I have with 2k wich seems faster. Hope sp4 will do something bout it. BTW has anyone had simmilar problems.

[pr-man 1]

Well I used win2k when it was in beta and also with SP1. Have the improvements to the OS via SP3 been that much of an improvement?

[pr-man 1]

Well my understanding is that win2k runs cleaner, takes less tweaking. XP has better gaming support for older games. Now my question is since win2k pro and winXP each have essentially the same core should games etc that were made to wrok with XP work just fine on Win2k whether M$ stops supporting win2k or not?

 

I own both OS's but think I might benefit from going back to win2k because XP seems to get "junked" up so quickly

 

any thoughts?

[DosFreak 2]

There are no "games that were made to work fine with XP but don't with 2K". Games that have XP support also have 2K support.

 

The whole "XP is more compatible with older games speel" is just the fact that MS has updated the Application Compatibility database more in XP and have left the Application Database in 2K to rot. The fixes are easily portable if you just load up the ACT 2.6 and use the Compatibility Database to view the fixes in XP and then apply 'em in 2K. As for the rest of gaming compatibily? The crappy sound support they implemented in NTVDM for DOS games, VDMSound is much better in that area. The few more VESA modes they hacked in to XP that don't really make all that much difference anyways since the games that DO take advantage of such modes run terribly or not at all in XP, and finally the only REAL 100% looks like someone at MS invested about 10mins of their time into old game compatibility is the support for DOS4GW games to support SFX which NT4/2K do not....only thing is it runs crappily under XP so you may as well just run a DOS/XP dual-boot.

 

There's your whole compatibility 2K vs XP in a nutshell. Now will you please just hurry up and decide.

[pr-man 1]

LOL am I driving you crazy Dosfreak?

[pmistry 0]

By looking at the XP database I couldn't muster up a fix for NFS High Stakes and putting it into the 2000 database, I couldn't copy all the lines for the program compatibilility since some of the lines involve non-exe files and matching files. Is there some unformal way of doing this? Can you extract a fix out of XP and dump into 2K?

[shihonage 0]

DOSFREAK is 100% correct.

 

XP's tauted MSDOS sound emulation is completely useless.

 

Also constantly fighting with the OS and guessing what's going on behind my back lead to the kind of frustration and paranoia that... I quickly switched back to Win2k.