Best O / S? Win 98, ME or 2000? Do you have Win 98 now, what if I change? [amd duron 850] [3d mark 2000]
Q: Best O / S? Win 98, ME or 2000?
Got Win 98 and now with 3D Mark 2000 is my rating is the standard benchmark 4712. I get better performance with ME or 2000?
Will I get problems with programs and games if I change O / S? All of them better for games than the other?
My System: Duron
ASUS A7V133
AMD 850
256MB PC133
ASUS 7100 / T GF 2 32MB PCI MX
SB 128
Opinions?
Re:2k is my OS of choice, great memory management, stability, and every day games are becoming more and more compatible. I love it
Re:you can convert a FAT32 partition to a NTFS partition, but not back. the command is CONVERT c:\ fs:ntfs where the c: drive is the drive you want to convert. Could be D or whatever. Have to run it from a command (looks like dos but isn't) prompt box. Start>Run and type CMD in the box. Just so you know, if you are running in windows 2000 it won't start converting until you reboot. Files in use and all.
As far as SMP goes it would be easier in the end to format and reinstall thoguy because changing from a single processor HAL to a SMP HAL is a pain. Haven't done it but seen it done. Definitely format and reinstall. Less problems that way, and if you change to NTFS now you can always go back to FAT when you reinstall. LUCK!!!
Re:im so eager to try w2k, but i gotta reformat, so i gotta back cuz i want nfst instead of fat32…
if i then install 2k, then setup a smp, do i gotta format yet again?? i heard there is a simple right click on my computer and some clicks and it detects it, is it true?
Re:Thanks for the replies guys!
Lol, ahh a fellow Duke fan! Yep it's not all about latest graphics
. That's a reason for me to hang on to my old 98 a bit longer, the old favourite games I wanna be able to play. Even toguy there might be a way around those problems I think I'll just keep an eye and ear out there for more 2k feedback for now.Re:WinME is definately 3rd place, and it only ranks that high becuase you only put 3 choices. I'd put WinME behind Win95 as well, perhaps about even with WinNT4. NT4 is much better, but runs less programs the average user wants to run. I agree WinME is not worth the download time and price of a blank CD.
Win98 is second place. It's relatively stable if you set it up carefully you shouldn't have an insane amount of crashing or anything. And it will run most software.
Win2k would be first place. It's not perfect by any means, and there are some things that are easier to do in Win98, and you won't get a performance boost from 98 to 2000 (thoguy you won't get much of a performance loss either). If you look at the benchmark numbers (which people do far far to much IMHO) Win2000 can't quite stack up to Win98, but if you ignore number and just play the damn games, most people will be happy with Win2k performance. I have a TBird 850, 256MB RAM and a V5-5500 and I find my Win2k performance to be good enoguy.
But in all that Win2k and Win98SE are pretty even, a bit of a performance edge to Win98SE, and a bit of a stability edge to Win2k (edit: If you are interested, I haven't found a Windows game yet that won't run in Win2k, WinG (win3.11 games), DirectX, Glide, OpenGL are all fine; Games that need a DOS SoundBlaster 16 will run only without sound thoguy).
The reason I boguyt Win2k yesterday (after using a warez copy for some 3 months to evaluate it) is becuase it is NT5. Windows XP is NT5.1 and that is a huge piece of crap (I got my hands on the beta, and regret the waste of a CD 
). WinXP is to Win2k as WinME is to Win98SE, IMHO.
Microsoft is pushing towards a unified market under the NT5.x kernel (home users and business/professional users will use the same NT5 core) and I think Win2000 Pro is a better NT5 than WinXP will ever be. Win2000 is not perfect but it's very good. And esepcially with SP2 just around the corner I expect it to be a year after release before XP can reallly catch up to 2k.
<< I don't think you'll be able to get higher scores on Win2k since it's not a gaming platform. >>
Make no mistakes, Win9x wasn't designed for gaming either. Games were designed for Win9x because that's what most home users use. And most game players are home users, as Microsoft transisitions home users to WinXP game designers will optimize for that, and therefore Win2k.
Over all I'd take Win2k, it's not perfect, but especially in the future it will be the better OS by far.
I actually run Win2k and Win98SE, thoguy I don't use Win98SE much, it's mostly for Duke3D, Warcraft1 and Hexen because I couldn't get DOS sound to work in Win2k, there is actually a hack for it but I haven't tried it yet (yes I still play those old games, they rule!).
Re:I don't think you'll be able to get higher scores on Win2k since it's not a gaming platform. I've tried several games on Win2k Pro vs Win98 and things get very jerky in Win2k Pro. Not sure bout WinME, but I don't really have confidence in it coz it crashed big time on me when I installed it until I had no choice but to go back to Win98.
Re:Don't waste your money on ME.. and if you are getting it for free, it truthfully isn't even worth the download or blank CD.
You won't notice much improvements as far as speed in stuff like games in 2000, but with 256MB ram you'll notice things run pretty damn sweet in 2k.
I convinced my friend to use 2k after about 10 minutes of him messing around with something as simple as mp3's. Just more stable.
And since you have a geforce card, nvidia's drivers work well in windows 2k.
There's a few rare games these days that won't work with 2k, most of them being EA Sports (boo hoo hoo).
Check out NTCompatible.com (http://www.ntcompatible.com) for games and their status with windows 2k.
Use Windows 2000 exclusively for a week or so. Remember that you probably didn't even need to reboot or have a BSOD.. You won't go back to 98.
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Tags: 3d mark 2000, amd duron 850