3D Game Performance: Win98 vs. WinXP Pro

Post by **Xouqoa** » February 17, 2003, 6:40 am

I've heard Win98 runs better.. and I'm considering formatting later today since I'm off from work for the holiday. Can anyone confirm this? I've been getting some pretty shoddy performance from my GeForce4 ti4600 in EQ and DAoC ... was wondering if WinXP Pro is the reason.

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » February 17, 2003, 8:01 am

On systems below 512k memory and 1.6Ghz Althlon, Win 98 is going to outperform XP because of contention for resources. Once you eclipse those specs, your better off with XP imo. How much memory and what CPU are you using?

Vaemas · Post by **Vaemas** » February 17, 2003, 9:52 am

I'm running XP Pro with a gig of ram and a 1.8 P4, GeForce 4600ti and have no problems. UT2K3 would often pause on me though, before I updated to the most recent drivers. Runs smooth as silk with everything turned max now.

Can't say for EQ or DAoC since I haven't played in a long while.

Fash · Post by **Fash** » February 17, 2003, 9:56 am

nah... winXp Pro rules. Get directx9 too.

3.06ghz 512ddr 200g geforceti4200

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » February 17, 2003, 10:38 am

WinXP Pro here, Ti4400 and ATI9700. Both computers have 512MB, 2.4GHz+ and no problems handling 3D Games.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » February 17, 2003, 11:09 am

windows xp is the only good operating system EVER made by MS.

Fash · Post by **Fash** » February 17, 2003, 11:47 am

osx jaguar is the shit too, especiarry with a 2 button mouse. I'd be embarassed to own a mac if I didn't have 3 pc's. But seriously, if you could have any mac, wouldn't it be a titanium powerbook? I thought so.

Fallanthas · Post by **Fallanthas** » February 17, 2003, 12:54 pm

Like Jice said, Win98 doesn't handle memory past 512 megs well at all.

I prefer Win2k myself, WinXP has too many system resources dedicated to flash and overlay.

Pahreyia · Post by **Pahreyia** » February 17, 2003, 1:23 pm

Win2k is stable as hell. I use it for my 2nd box. For some reason tho, it seems to not handle the rendering quite as well. If I ever get lag with it, it's video related. Both systems are running Ti4200s. I like WinXP just because of the relative ease of use. I spent the last 10 years learning about computers, to hell if I want my EQ machine giving me as much shit as my linux server when I set it up.

Post by **Xouqoa** » February 17, 2003, 2:26 pm

I have a 1.3ghz Athlon and 384 megs of ram. I've had no problems with XP other than shoddy frame rates in these games. I'll tweak around with some stuff and see what happens. I'm due for a format anyway, so maybe I'll just put 98 on, and see how it runs. If it's the same, I'll just wipe it again and reinstall xp from a clean drive and see if that helps.

Metanis · Post by **Metanis** » February 17, 2003, 2:53 pm

My Win98, 512MB 100Mhz SDRAM, 1.2GHz Tualatin Celeron, GEForce3-TI500 outruns a nearly identical W2k machine when running EQ!

I've tweaked a lot and I'm convinced W2k and WXP are much better operating systems if you truly need to multitask.

But... If you have cleaned up all the unnecessary programs from running in the background, then Win98 will run the foreground task MUCH faster than W2k or WXP. Win98 isn't dickin around doing all that systems management crap in the background.

The other possibility is that Nvidia's W9x drivers are that much better than the W2k series?

Senwen Aelabon · Post by **Senwen Aelabon** » February 17, 2003, 3:00 pm

I prefer WinXP, very stable - great performance. If you've got the power, WinXP is your best choice.

My main box; MSI KT266, ATI9700, 512MB, AMD XP2400+.

EQ occasionally quits to the desktop when zoning or idle. I tried to reinstall, but it didnt help.

Otherwise , no problems with other 3D games.

Neroon · Post by **Neroon** » February 17, 2003, 4:34 pm

Do you have any ram slots open Xou? I would throw in another 256MB if you are running XP. XP itself uses something like 110MB of ram. Also, if you have OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of PCI cards, format and reload *without* ACPI.

You probably won't see perfect performance with DAoC regardless. I'm running:

Asus A7N8X-DX mainboard
AMD Athlon 2700XP (333mhz FSB)
768MB Corsair PC3200 Ram (dual channel, 512MB on channel 1, 256MB on channel 2)
ATI 9700pro
Duel WD 40GB 7200 rpm HDs

And Camelot still runs like shit IMO. But, I'm really picky.

Karae · Post by **Karae** » February 17, 2003, 6:36 pm

Can we get something a bit more qualified than 'have no problems?' Post 3DMark scores or something...

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » February 17, 2003, 6:53 pm

Xou:
Your memory is a little light for EQ atm. You might want to consider pumping it up to 512mb. The performance differance is dramatic once you get to 512, no matter what OS you use. Your proccessor, while a bit dated, is plenty powerful for running EQ lag free, imo. If it were me, I would add another 512 stick to the machine and stick with XP. I bet the problems would go away then.

I don't have hard numbers to base this on, but I know from experience that my second box dogged bad when one of my ram sticks went bad and I was temporarily running at 256 (even with old models and everything scaled back) and now that I added another 512mb, I can run all options wide open on the same machine at 1280x1024 and get zero video lag (unless I am in an AE group and have particals on hehe).

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » February 17, 2003, 8:08 pm

Karae wrote:Can we get something a bit more qualified than 'have no problems?' Post 3DMark scores or something...

Win98 and ATI9700 : neato
Win98 and ti4400: super
WinXP and ATI9700 : really groovy
WinXP and ti4400: a hair under really groovy

Hope that helped.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » February 17, 2003, 9:05 pm

last time i CTRL+ALT+DEL out of EQ, i checked out how many resources it was hogging.

336MB of RAM

Echols · Post by **Echols** » February 17, 2003, 9:56 pm

Tomshardware.com or Anandtech.com (I think...) did some really extensive benchmarking a few months ago which compared winXP and win98se performance in games. They ran a couple of different processors and videocards and tested a bunch of games, as well as 3dmark and a few other benchmark programs.

I tried searching for the page a bit but I couldn't find it. I can tell you the conclusion was that winXP and win98 are pretty much exactly the same in terms of performance on any system with 256 megs of ram and a half decent processor. The benchmarks for the games were around 2 to 3fps difference at most.

Echols/Morrow

Post by **Xouqoa** » February 17, 2003, 10:06 pm

Okay, well I went ahead and bought a new HD ... we'll see what happens with 98 installed. If I don't get a noticable increase in performance, I'll just go back to XP and get a new board/ram/processor this summer when I have 'mo money.

Saerilyah · Post by **Saerilyah** » February 18, 2003, 4:40 am

AMD Athlon 1.4, 1024 SDram, GF4 ti4600
Win 98 (main drive 40Gig) = no problems at all unless I feel like doing OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of surfing and photo scanning while playing
Win XP pro (second drive 6Gig) = makes doing the 'OMGIAMRETARDEDCAUSEALOTISTWOWORDS of surfing and scanning' much easier as its more suited to multi-tasking, but eq seems a little slower

IMO unless you like doing several things at once while playing EQ Win 98 runs very well ( friend says 2k goes better- I need to find that cd soon). And its not hard to make it accept and use the extra 512 ram.

My latest little project of screwing up my spare HD's is going to be playing with win2k. I'm after which ever of the 3 OS will let me play eq,surf and scan my photo's all together. Without, losing the resources that have been allocated to eq, to the scanner. At the moment with '98, eq getting a little laggy when I scan with very high resolution.

VeeshanVault

3D Game Performance: Win98 vs. WinXP Pro

3D Game Performance: Win98 vs. WinXP Pro

Win98 Faster!