Win2k Pro or WinXP Pro?

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

I've got a new HD and I wanted for once the "fastest" operating system for me to play OFP on, so it's either Win2k Pro or WinXP Pro... I wondered which one allows me to play better? Windows 2000 Professional has inferior system requirements, and is less "multimedia" than Windows XP Professional, so I figured that that should be the OS to go for... but then I heard from a PC techie that WinXP Pro manages resources better than Win2k Pro... Knowing that always when playing OFP (or running any other kind of program) the operating system always keeps running "under the hood", I was wondering which one of them is less demanding of the PC, ergo, which one lets me play OFP better? My specs are a bit obsolescent (AMD XP 3k CPU, 2x 512mb 333mhz DDR, but the HD, is the Western Digital Raptor SATA I WD 360)... Any clarifying answers appreciated!!    

[Placebo 29]

This is OT more than anything else.

[Mr_Tea 0]

I`m using Win2k Pro and will do so until an final of Vista is available.

It`s all running pretty well on my system. WinXP need more system resources for itself. On many game covers you can find in the system requiremands, that the game will need 256MB Ram with Win2K and512 MB Ram with WinXP.

Installed Oblivion a few days ago, runs fine too.

I can`t see why you should waste money on WinXP Pro. Win2K Pro should be cheaper, and i doubt that OFP will run better with WinXP Pro than with Win2K Pro.

[crashdome 3]

WinXP is based off of the same platform as Win2k but allows for significantly more capabilities especially for standard home users. There are improvements and definately security benefits but as far as gaming goes... that all depends.

WinXP is better overall than Win2k... don't let anyone tell you different. Will you experience any benefit playing a specfic game or using some specific software? Maybe or maybe not.

Anyone who says Win2K is faster/better/more reliable than WinXP is basing their argument on situations which are clearly created to benefit their argument only and do not represent the hundreds of other situations where WinXP truly shines. The truth is that overall WinXP allows for a much better experience - especially when you run into problems which will most certainly happen. The fact that they are so similar (many patches/updates work for both systems as is) suggests that the difference is minimal, but to some users something simple such as having a built-in firewall is important enough to warrant a huge difference. Because of this, WinXP will give you everything Win2K gives you and more. If you do not want more, WinXP is certainly downgradable to Win2K level, but that is something I do not recommend.

Why would you ever want to downgrade??

Is it really that important to give up all those features for a possible 1 frame per sec difference?

[EDIT] I like how you say your system is obsolete. Truth is, your system is average to above average. You should experience no noticible speed improvement between the two OS. Especially when the system requirements for both of them are far FAR below what you have. It's like asking if a sprinter would gain any speed by having someone running behind them and blowing on their back.

[kegetys 2]

I have used both quite alot, and currently am using XP, and I would prefer going back to w2k if I could. w2k's lack of hyperthreading support "forced" me to switch to XP... They are not really that much different, except XP has all these new features that you cannot disable that only serve to constantly annoy me. And the XP explorer has some bugs too that do not seem to ever get fixed.

[EiZei 0]

Does'nt really matter with that kind of hardware, maybe if you really hate/love the XP interface...

[M4XSs 0]

I don’t think the actual gains of switching from windows xp to win 2000 will meet your expectations, personally I didn’t notice any.

You can easily improve XP overall performance by disabling lots of those services that you really don’t need.

And remove some of those unneeded system components which you can’t remove in the ordinary ways

Open windows\inf sysoc.inf and delete all the hide words there.

Example

IEAccess=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,ieaccess.inf,hide,7

IEAccess=ocgen.dll,OcEntry,ieaccess.inf,,7

Save and exit.

Then you can see them listed in add/remove windows components.

Use windows classic theme if you want to save couple mbs of ram!

Many other things can be done to boost windows XP performance.

Plus moving back to older OSS by Microsoft like the win 95 code base systems Win95/Win98/WinME is not wise either.

[crashdome 3]

I have used both quite alot, and currently am using XP, and I would prefer going back to w2k if I could. w2k's lack of hyperthreading support "forced" me to switch to XP... They are not really that much different, except XP has all these new features that you cannot disable that only serve to constantly annoy me. And the XP explorer has some bugs too that do not seem to ever get fixed.

So the fact that a newer OS has a newer feature thus 'forcing' you to switch? lol...

Anything in XP can be disabled to virtually resemble Win2K.

[shadow 6]

XP might be faster or slower than Win2K for games, but like has been said earlier: XP has far better resource management which benefits the user when he or she is doing anything else than playing games.

I never bothered to use Win2K on a gaming computer. Back when I was considering it it had very poor support for some HW (don't recall what it was now).

I believe XP is easier to deal with on installing hardware. It has alot more native support for a variety of hardware.

Thus I think XP is the superior product.

[kegetys 2]

So the fact that a newer OS has a newer feature thus 'forcing' you to switch? lol...

No, the older OS not being updated "forced" me to switch. With HT enabled you get a quite big performance hit in w2k because the scheduler doesn't know its not a real seconday processor. I call it a bug, MS propably calls it a feature

Quote[/b] ]Anything in XP can be disabled to virtually resemble Win2K.

Well, how do I disable these:

- The windows explorer sometimes leaving file handles open when you select a file that is corrupted, which results in not being able to delete/move/rename etc. the file except from command prompt after killing the explorer process.

- The windows explorer doing some 'smart' changes to the order by menu, by for example removing the 'order by date' option entirely when in a directory with alot of mp3 files.

- The windows explorer search feature not finding anything inside files anymore.

- The windows explorer search opening much slower than in w2k, with alot of 'load' on the system it can sometimes take 5-10 seconds for the side bar to come up

- The windows explorer randomly crashing

- The windows explorer always enabling 'show in group' when browsing a CD/DVD, if I disable it then it goes back on when I go to a subdirectory. There's also some odd feature that sometimes puts me in a some sort of virtual directory under my home dir when browsing a CD/DVD drive.

- Windows randomly choosing not to start everything in the startmenu startup or registry run key on login

- The application crash window being quite crappy by design, you cannot copy text from it for example.

The XP explorer also seems to use alot more memory and cpu time than the w2k one, like mine is using over 40MB of memory right now even with no explorer windows open...

There's propably more things that have annoyed me, but those are the ones that come to my mind right now.

[Donnervogel 0]

I love w2k. It uses much less memory than XP (unless you heavily modify default XP theme/design but even then it still uses more) and thus my computer almost never runs into problems despite having "only" 512 MB of RAM. XP just brings many eye candy and automatation features I don't want and you can't turn them all off. It also annoys the shit out of me with the way it handles things more the "casual computer user" way even though it says "pro" on the package. For my needs it never offered any advantage so I stay with w2k and a faster system. You can tell me what you want but I never had any security troubles I wouldn't also have with XP and I haven't found any feature in XP that would make it any better considering my limited memory. XP just eats up all the memory. slowing everything down and doesn't offer anything I couldn't do with w2k.

EDIT: Yes I used XP on this computer too and I have to deal with it on a daily basis on other computers with more ressources. I still dislike it.

[berghoff 11]

:/ Nothing compared to Win Vista where you need at least a fully supported DX9 card with 64mb. I really never used 2k but I'm happy with XP but like Kegy said it has some weird explorer crashes sometimes. Before XP I used 98 which I still remember had many BSOD hehe.

[456820 0]

im also in this same situation not sure what i want, i would normally got with 2000 but i dont have a video editing software which is any good so thats why im thinking of getting XP for windows movie maker thats about the only reason.

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Noo, don't get XP just for Windows Movie Maker

Theres far, far better editing software about, Pinnacle Studio is cheap, and is nice to use (one of the first video editing programs I used).. A friend as college uses Adobe Premire Elements, which looks better than I first though (not used it though, almost entirely use Final Cut Pro now, which I recommend, but costs kind of a lot Final Cut Express is cheaper, but Mac only).. WinMM works, but there are huge limitations on it, and I find it hard to work in, but thats just me..

I'd still recommend XP though, but if you have Win2K, and are only upgrading because of WinMV, I'd recommend buying a full editing program

As for the operating system.. If you are ONLY going to play games, and only using the OS as a place to put the shortcuts to the games, then yeh, Win2K is probobaly best.. Buut, as said, WinXP handles things like hardware, and networking better, same with media (mp3s/videos) etc..

If your wanting a decent desktop OS, get WinXP (You can switch to "Classic windows" in the display properties, which looks like Win2k, or use something like StyleXP, if you dont like how it looks).. But if your wanting a completely dedicated gaming machine, use Win2K, as I said, it doesn't have the stuff that handles the hardware/networking/media better, so must be faster

But in all honesty, I really doubt you'll see much of a difference between the two OS's while gaming, and non-gaming stuff is far easier in XP

One thing that confuses me.. People are saying their sticking with 2K till Vista.. Why? It seems like XP, with more shiney-graphics (From an athetical viewpoint anyway, I know there's security improvements, among other things), and the hardware requirements are far higher than XP, and it seems one of the biggest reasons to use 2K is the lower hardware requirements..

- Ben

[Mr_Tea 0]

One thing that confuses me.. People are saying their sticking with 2K till Vista.. Why? It seems like XP, with more shiney-graphics (From an athetical viewpoint anyway, I know there's security improvements, among other things), and the hardware requirements are far higher than XP, and it seems one of the biggest reasons to use 2K is the lower hardware requirements..

- Ben

Simple answer, the beta versions of Windows Vista are more stable than WinXP will ever be. I tested WinXP an different computers and had many problems with it. Since Win2K Prof SP3 is installed this problems are gone. My friends had the same problems, some say " I`ll never use an Microsoft OS again". I`m an MCP, so i have disagree. They also didn`t heard my warnings, learned it the hard way. My cousin bought a laptop, WinXP SP2 is preinstalled, so the trouble continues.

[Donnervogel 0]

One thing that confuses me.. People are saying their sticking with 2K till Vista.. Why? It seems like XP, with more shiney-graphics (From an athetical viewpoint anyway, I know there's security improvements, among other things), and the hardware requirements are far higher than XP, and it seems one of the biggest reasons to use 2K is the lower hardware requirements..

- Ben

well for me it's kinda different. If everything turns out well w2k will be the last microsoft product I'll use. Generally I like microsoft products but their plans for interfering with my privacy are something that makes me evade to mostly open source software/OS even though I'm often having a hard time with them. I guess I'll get used to them.

[Heatseeker 0]

BUZZARD @ April 10 2006,22:52)]I've got a new HD and I wanted for once the "fastest" operating system for me to play OFP on, so it's either Win2k Pro or WinXP Pro... I wondered which one allows me to play better?

Honestly i dont think it matters, OPFR should run the same .

Just use the one you feel more comfortable with? Same shit diferent smell, use the fox luke ( ), etc...

[456820 0]

Well im going to go with windows 2000 and buy a simple, cheap and good video editor. Many of the extra things whcih come with XP i will never use i rarely use word and programs like that apart from a bit of homework once in a while. Ive never had problems with 2000 but have had many with XP so im going to go with 2000 it also looks and feels much better then XP IMO.

[DBR_ONIX 0]

Hm.. I'd be interested what video editing software your going to get

Hm, you mentioned word, but espically if you don't use it much, I'd recommend Open Office, or Abiword, both free and work with word documents, and are both equaly powerfull, and has more than most features people would ever need..

Hm3, how much is Win2k sell for just now? WinXP Pro is ridiculously priced still, and Home isn't much better..

- Ben

[EiZei 0]

Hm3, how much is Win2k sell for just now? WinXP Pro is ridiculously priced still, and Home isn't much better..

- Ben

150 euros for the OEM version here at the cheapest. Pretty much the same as xp pro.

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

Thanks for your insights!

It seems that what's clear is that WinXP must be "tuned" to attain Win2k "clean-ness", so my question now is, can't Win2k be "tuned" to attain the same level of performance in terms of resource management? Because most of the multimedia stuff WinXP has built in I actually use 3rd party stuff instead (Nero instead of the WinXP ability to burn cds, Winrar to compress files, Adobe Premiere for video editing, etc etc etc), so I don't think I'll get much advantage of having the same stuff somehow "twice" on a system, kinda should only be bogging it down, no?

[crashdome 3]

So the fact that a newer OS has a newer feature thus 'forcing' you to switch? lol...

No, the older OS not being updated "forced" me to switch. With HT enabled you get a quite big performance hit in w2k because the scheduler doesn't know its not a real seconday processor. I call it a bug, MS propably calls it a feature

Quote[/b] ]Anything in XP can be disabled to virtually resemble Win2K.

Well, how do I disable these:

- The windows explorer sometimes leaving file handles open when you select a file that is corrupted, which results in not being able to delete/move/rename etc. the file except from command prompt after killing the explorer process.

- The windows explorer doing some 'smart' changes to the order by menu, by for example removing the 'order by date' option entirely when in a directory with alot of mp3 files.

- The windows explorer search feature not finding anything inside files anymore.

- The windows explorer search opening much slower than in w2k, with alot of 'load' on the system it can sometimes take 5-10 seconds for the side bar to come up

- The windows explorer randomly crashing

- The windows explorer always enabling 'show in group' when browsing a CD/DVD, if I disable it then it goes back on when I go to a subdirectory. There's also some odd feature that sometimes puts me in a some sort of virtual directory under my home dir when browsing a CD/DVD drive.

- Windows randomly choosing not to start everything in the startmenu startup or registry run key on login

- The application crash window being quite crappy by design, you cannot copy text from it for example.

The XP explorer also seems to use alot more memory and cpu time than the w2k one, like mine is using over 40MB of memory right now even with no explorer windows open...

There's propably more things that have annoyed me, but those are the ones that come to my mind right now.

Um...... I hate to tell you this, but XP was the update.

Or did you not get the memo?

Regarding all your 'Explorer' bugs:

I could not reproduce any of them. The only one I cannot be sure about is the MP3 Files. I have a shared folder, but it does have 853 files in it (no sub folders) and thought that would be sufficient. I also didn't know what 'Date' you ordered it by, but Date Modified and Date Created work fine for me. Some of them are also opinions, and ALL of them are about the Explorer shell... that's a very small chunk of the OS as immensely used as it is. I also can't find any record of anyone submitting those particular bugs.

I am not saying I don't believe you.... I fully believe you have experienced these problems, however, I also believe you are being overly critical.

oh and this is especially interesting:

Quote[/b] ]There's also some odd feature that sometimes puts me in a some sort of virtual directory under my home dir when browsing a CD/DVD drive

Just wait till Vista comes out. You'll really be unhappy about what they've done. I've actually seen it in action. Something that should have been implemented long ago.. (along with MSH - nice OO type command interface - none of this command-line-by-line BS - but we won't get that right away )

Just because XP has a bigger footprint != wasted resources. There is sufficient reason it does, even though it seems everyone seems to ignore it or wants to ignore it... but to those that complain I can only say that you must also have complained back when 4mb was alot for OS memory. You might as well buy a palm-pilot and ditch your PC. That has extreme memory efficiency compared to XP

As far as tweaking XP to be clean, it should rather be stated that you must 'dumb-down' XP to be Win2000.

Alot of this discussion has been basically half-baked and underinformed excuses to hang onto a legacy OS. I've seen this when people tried to hang onto Win98 (and believe it or not some people still do!!!!!! ). All of this is fine and I applaud your ability to find something which suits your needs and stick with it, but trying to suggest Win2000 is better because it has a specific appearance or revolving around 'memory' and system requirements is beyond retarded. There is, has been, and always will be more benefits to WinXP than Win2000. WinXP is as fast or faster than Win2000. period.

Quote[/b] ]Faster Startup, Better Run-Time and Memory Performance

Windows XP is clearly superior to earlier versions in all key performance categories. Among the lab's findings:

• Faster startup performance:  Windows XP is on average 34% faster than Windows 2000 and 27% faster than Windows 98 SE.

• Better run-time performance: This measurement refers to the speed at which Windows XP performs tasks while your computer is running. Improvements in Windows XP runtime performance are evident in application startup and time and resource management. For example, average application startup on Windows XP is 25% faster than Windows 98 SE and equivalent to Windows 2000 Professional.

• Memory and Performance:  In systems which include the recommended memory requirement of 128 megabytes of RAM, Windows XP is consistently superior to previous versions of Windows.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windows....ce.mspx

In addition, some of the new features in Vista soon to be released for legacy OSs stops at WinXP... meaning Win2000 could be left out for something you'd want.

[-MP-OFP-CRICON 0]

Windows Vista If you like

[shinRaiden 0]

I get all that same list that Kegetys does too, it's the devil in the details about people not thinking up at the Evil Empire.

Basicly it boils down to two issues :

1) lack of consistency /stability in code or functionality.

2) Ignorance of the world outside 5 blocks in Redmond.

[Mr_Tea 0]

I got Win2k Pro for 80 € @ Amazon.de.