2kpro faster than XP?

[lxskllr]

I have a crappy laptop (Inspiron 1000) that's pretty sluggish. Would I get a significant performance boost from switching to 2kpro from xp? Keep in mind I like the eyecandy of XP and would only switch if it was a significant improvement. I already have copies of each so cost isn't a factor.

 

[BlueWeasel]

How fast is that laptop?

WK2 would use slightly less resources than XP with all the eye candy turned off. However, if you were to setup XP as a minimalist system (all eye candy and unneeded services disabled), the performance would be about the same.

 

[lxskllr]

I guess I should have put the info in my first post. It's a 2.2ghz celeron m( socket 478), 512mb ram -64mb for crappy shared video, and I'm guessing a 4200rpm 30gb hd, although I haven't taken it out to check.

 

[BlueWeasel]

Jeez...that will run XP just fine and I wouldn't even bother with W2K. XP Pro runs great on my Toshiba laptop and it's slower than yours (Celeron 1.5Ghz, 512mb RAM, S3 graphics).

 

[ValuedCustomer]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I guess I should have put the info in my first post. It's a 2.2ghz celeron m( socket 478), 512mb ram -64mb for crappy shared video, and I'm guessing a 4200rpm 30gb hd, although I haven't taken it out to check.

"crappy"? that's not "crappy" my freind.. sorry but if that machine isn't booting/performing the way it should for XP it's you that's doing something wrong.

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: ValuedCustomer

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I guess I should have put the info in my first post. It's a 2.2ghz celeron m( socket 478), 512mb ram -64mb for crappy shared video, and I'm guessing a 4200rpm 30gb hd, although I haven't taken it out to check.

"crappy"? that's not "crappy" my freind.. sorry but if that machine isn't booting/performing the way it should for XP it's you that's doing something wrong.

I guess I'm spoiled by my desktop machine. It seems like everything takes forever on the laptop. I might look into a faster hd to get performance up.

 

[vegetation]

Might just want to do a format and reinstall. Sounds like a lot of junk in the registry and such.

 

[Leros]

That should be fine. I have XP running snappy on a 1.6ghz athlon w/ 512mb of ram.

 

[Willoughbyva]

Yeah turn off all the visual candy. I dislike most of it anyway. Just keep windowsxp style or whatever it is.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

512MB is plenty for XP. Just do a reinstall, that'll help a lot. Or if you don't want to, take a look at a registry cleaner like WinASO and do a scan for Adware/Spyware.

 

[SGtheArtist]

I installed WindowsXP on a Panasonic Toughbook laptop (P3 600MHz, 256MB RAM) it was fine.

 

[htne]

I recently helped a friend who had purchased a similar new notebook. Celeron around 2 Ghz, with 256 megs of ram (including shared video, so only about 192 megs for the OS). The performance was rather bad, and I recommended another 256 megs of memory, thinking that would help quite a bit. Well, it did help, but not nearly as much as I was expecting. I know a Celeron 2 ghz desktop is a LOT faster than his notebook, so the difference is probably in the crappy onboard video and the 4200 rpm hard drive.

 

[madthumbs]

I wouldn't consider XP on a computer with only 256MB. I wasn't happy with 1GB and quickly noticed the difference when upgrading. I use the classic windows appearance so it looks just like win2k, turn off unneeded services, run a black wallpaper, and don't use a screensaver. I only run my laptop (512MB) on XP because it has extra features for laptops and I'm afraid of driver nightmares if I try to switch. If I used my laptop enough; I'd upgrade the ram to at least 1GB. As is, I tolerate it and try to only run one or two things at a time.

 

[basslover1]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I guess I should have put the info in my first post. It's a 2.2ghz celeron m( socket 478), 512mb ram -64mb for crappy shared video, and I'm guessing a 4200rpm 30gb hd, although I haven't taken it out to check.

Thats crappy?

I've got an Dell Latitude w/ a Pentium 1 233mhz 128 megs of ram 12 gig HD (not sure on speed) and it runs Win2k w/o a problem minus some graphics heavy webpages, the 2mb vid card doesn't like that too well.

It sounds like your computer is just junked up w/ spyware and the registry needs to be cleaned up, becaues otherwise it should run fine

 

[OdiN]

I agree...format the thing and start from scratch - then load only the programs you need on it. Leave superfluous stuff off.

 

[br0adband]

I saw this article just about 4 years ago and it remains just as valuable today as it did with that first viewing:

Waiting For Windows XP

It's an article showing real-world (IT) testing of Windows 2000 vs. Windows XP. Yes it's possible to tune Windows XP down to get it more lean and working better, but it will never be as fast as Windows 2000 is on the same machine.

Under Win2K, I can average about 140 fps using Quake 3 at 1024x768 High Quality settings. Under XP using the same settings (and the same drivers), it's around 120. Doesn't seem like much for some people but hey, framerate is life in a first person shooter. I've done this test myself on many machines over the years, and 2K is just faster, period. XP can't touch it.

Funny thing though: Windows Server 2003 is almost as fast as 2K is right out of the box. In terms of raw speed, 2K3 is pretty sweet. Of course it's a server OS but that just means it's tuned from the install to do a lot of things better.

Just my $.02.

Paul

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: br0adband
I saw this article just about 4 years ago and it remains just as valuable today as it did with that first viewing:

Waiting For Windows XP

It's an article showing real-world (IT) testing of Windows 2000 vs. Windows XP. Yes it's possible to tune Windows XP down to get it more lean and working better, but it will never be as fast as Windows 2000 is on the same machine.

Under Win2K, I can average about 140 fps using Quake 3 at 1024x768 High Quality settings. Under XP using the same settings (and the same drivers), it's around 120. Doesn't seem like much for some people but hey, framerate is life in a first person shooter. I've done this test myself on many machines over the years, and 2K is just faster, period. XP can't touch it.

Funny thing though: Windows Server 2003 is almost as fast as 2K is right out of the box. In terms of raw speed, 2K3 is pretty sweet. Of course it's a server OS but that just means it's tuned from the install to do a lot of things better.

Just my $.02.

Paul

Very nice link, thanks a lot. I may format and reinstall soon using 2kpro and see if it makes a difference to me. I don't have spyware, and registry cleaners are bs. There's no benefit to using registry cleaners, and you increase the possibility of screwups by removing valid entries.

This laptop is the first slow machine I've had since my 486 dx50 15 years ago :^). My machines have had horsepower to spare so the os choice didn't make much of a difference. I really like the xp eye candy, and it isn't a problem on my P4 3.5ghz, but I feel the overhead is a little too great on the laptop.

 

[imported_BikeDude]

Originally posted by: br0adband
I saw this article just about 4 years ago and it remains just as valuable today as it did with that first viewing:

Waiting For Windows XP

I can't help but feel disappointed by that article. In one test they show a score of 194.16s vs 79.88s. Performance Monitor is an integral part of both 2000 and XP, yet the article authors didn't bother whipping it out and discover why there was a two minute discrepancy? NT 5.1 isn't all that different from 5.0...!

The words "memory", "GB", "MB" or "RAM" are not mentioned, so I assume they didn't bother presenting the hardware specs. XP eats more memory, so if they've kept e.g. the eye-candy enabled, how can we be sure this is a fair test?

Yes it's possible to tune Windows XP down to get it more lean and working better, but it will never be as fast as Windows 2000 is on the same machine.

Well, the thing about Win2k is that it doesn't support e.g. Hyperthreading. Sure, it'll show up as a CPU, but the OS does not realise it is a virtual CPU only designed for off-loading certain tasks. Win2k will treat it as a proper CPU and its scheduler will assume anything goes. So, Win2k is certainly no miracle cure!

Under Win2K, I can average about 140 fps using Quake 3 at 1024x768 High Quality settings. Under XP using the same settings (and the same drivers), it's around 120. Doesn't seem like much for some people but hey, framerate is life in a first person shooter.

That's certainly significant, but I'd love to see some deeper analysis all the same. What was paging like at the time? (and are you absolutely sure you were running the same load? Chipset drivers? AV software? Soundcard drivers? Sound settings?)

The reason I ask, is that the OS shouldn't affect those scores much... Except that IIRC XP put more of Direct-X into the kernel, but that should make games go faster, not the other way around... (unless it somehow causes more user-to-kernel mode transitions)

Funny thing though: Windows Server 2003 is almost as fast as 2K is right out of the box

Interesting observation as Win2003 isn't all that different. 2003 disables e.g. preloading. Could something like that be what screws up benchmarks? (2003 happens to be my weapon of choice -- But I've never bothered benchmarking it)

 

[sparkyclarky]

Originally posted by: br0adband
I saw this article just about 4 years ago and it remains just as valuable today as it did with that first viewing:

Waiting For Windows XP

It's an article showing real-world (IT) testing of Windows 2000 vs. Windows XP. Yes it's possible to tune Windows XP down to get it more lean and working better, but it will never be as fast as Windows 2000 is on the same machine.

Under Win2K, I can average about 140 fps using Quake 3 at 1024x768 High Quality settings. Under XP using the same settings (and the same drivers), it's around 120. Doesn't seem like much for some people but hey, framerate is life in a first person shooter. I've done this test myself on many machines over the years, and 2K is just faster, period. XP can't touch it.

Funny thing though: Windows Server 2003 is almost as fast as 2K is right out of the box. In terms of raw speed, 2K3 is pretty sweet. Of course it's a server OS but that just means it's tuned from the install to do a lot of things better.

Just my $.02.

Paul

XP is faster than 2k (especially if you disable the eye candy). It's a tweaked kernel. A 4 year old article is worthless as XP has undergone 2 service packs and numerous other patches since then, along with more manufacturers coming out with faster/better drivers.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'd try win2k and see how it goes. But you'll never get the speed you will on a desktop running an athlon. Celerons suck. They're fine for laptops and there's nothing wrong with yours, but it simply won't beat an Athlon. From my experience win2k is much faster then XP, but I'm almost positive there are tweaks to make XP just as fast. Disabling the fisherprice interface alone will give you about 30% more speed, so if you go and disable services and do other tweaks you can probably get decent performance out of XP as well. Personally I prefer win2k, but XP has it's advantages as well such as system restore and spider solitaire.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
I guess I should have put the info in my first post. It's a 2.2ghz celeron m( socket 478), (edit: that is NOT a Celeron M. It is a Mobile Celeron. Huge difference!) 512mb ram -64mb for crappy shared video, and I'm guessing a 4200rpm 30gb hd, although I haven't taken it out to check.

2.2GHz Northwood-based Celeron--there's the culprit.

4200RPM? If that's true, then it will also slow things down. However, even a 5400 RPM won't give you the kind of snappiness a typical desktop will have.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Dell_Inspiron_1...4505-3121_7-30904533-2.html?tag=glance

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:-h...3+inspiron+1000&hl=en&client=firefox-a
"Well, first of all let's get things straight, if you're buying the Inspiron 1000 you're not going to be the type of buyer looking for the best performance in a notebook possible. You just hope that it runs all of your Office applications well and you can surf the web. With the Intel Mobile Celeron 2.2GHz chip you'll accomplish this, but not much else."

As far as Windows 2000 vs. Windows XP, with 512MB RAM, the difference isn't enough to worry about (unless you have a P4 / HT, which this is not).

 

[StrangerGuy]

I have a P3 666MHz with 320MB RAM and runs XP great even with eye candy on.