For those Who Doubt Win2k is a Good Gaming Platform

[Mikewarrior2]

Hey Everybody,

I'm gonna be running a thread comparing game scores between win me and win2k(since i haven't had the time to remove win me from my system). So far, i've only got a couple of win2k vs. winme UT scores to share, but feel free to add more. i'll be throwing in some q3 scores later on.


5.30 Drivers for Both win Me and Win2k
CL Geforce 2, default clock.

1024x768 UT, Max everything, Detail Textures off 32bit
8 Experienced bots, time limit 10 minutes

DM_Tempest WinMe: 71 FPS
DM_Tempest Win2k: 76 FPS

I'll run some lower res scores later on, but win2k is a damn good gaming os in my opinion.

I also know that these aren't entirely accurate(since its just an average score, not a timedemo) but i'll record a demo later on so I can use it to bench with.


Mike
Cause I forgot to put them up earlier, my system specs
P3-650E @975
Asus P3V4x
256mb Ram
Win2k/WinME dual boot(duh )
Sb Live Value(Running the newest drivers).
SMC 10/100 NIC

And Yes, i'm getting the scores with those "crummy" via drivers [/b]

 

[Haribo]

I don't doubt it!

Is there anyone who does?

 

[0div0]

holy cow! heh I was just going to post a topic to help me decide between win2k or winme or win98se. I'm currently using win95 and now I need support for agp. I'll be looking forward to your results.

One thing I'd like to know is how well does win2k play the not so popular games? I rarely buy games because of the outrageous price. I mostly download the playable demos, the ones with only one level This way I get bored with the same game really fast and move on to another(sounds crazy I know, but I just can't afford everything I want )Anyway, are there games that will work on winme, or win98se, that won't work on win2k?

 

[ltk007]

There aren't any games that don't work for win2k yet, but who knows if microsoft will continue to release Direct X updates for 2k. I sure hope they do, cause Win2k is not only incredibly stable, but it is also excellent for gaming.

 

[Mikewarrior2]

Still working on the scores for UT... doing some 640x480 scores...

I'm runnign the Dx8 beta for win2k right now... Dx8 beta for win Me as well .

I believe MS will continue to support win2k as a gaming platform.

Almost all new games work(i have yet to download a new demo and not see it work). I also play freespace2(no benchmarks, but it runs great) and nhl2k(also no benchmarks, but runs great). Diablo 2 runs fine on either, but it isn't exactly a system breaker. Let me know if there are any other games you guys want me to try out, or if you guys want to try ti yourselves free free to post it to this thread.


Mike

 

[Sephy]

When I had Win2K on here(stupid CD errored ), every game I had worked fine except Fifa 2000. Won't run at all. UT ran weird, very quickly and impossible to control...fixed now I'd imagine.
Can't wait to get it on here again..maybe I'll ask for a legit copy for my birthday

 

[Vinny N]

hehe no games that don't run under Windows 2000?

I wonder if I can get Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo for the PC to run...it uses DOS4GW as runtime

It's one of my all time favorite games. So please don't say there aren't any games that don't run under Windows 2000, that irks me to no end. Let's see DOS game support under Windows 2000

 

[randypj]

Mikewarrior2--Thanks for the effort. Like 0div0, I've gotta make some choices. I'll be watching.

Not that it's of interest, but I finally forced my Dad to try Solitaire's Quest (QQP) on Win2K Pro, and it didn't work, but, he didn't try to tweak it. Anyone else remember the quality games QQP used to come out with? I think I could still go back and play Lost Admiral and enjoy it.
--Randy

 

[SuperFreaky]

Sephy - you had a dual processor system didn't you?

Well at least on my BP6 I had the same problem, all I had to do was set the processor affinity to just one CPU for UT

 

[Mikewarrior2]

NO, dos games run like crap in win2k.. stick to win98 for you... But this is really more for the lots of people who say win2k d3d sucks.

Here are some 640x480 scores from UT

DM_Morpheus

WinME: 71 FPS Avg
Win2k: 70 FPS Avg

DM_Tempest

WinME: 81 FPS Avg
WIn2k: 82 FPS Avg

So the scores are very comparable at 640x480. Again, 8 experienced bots, 640x480x32, Detail Textures off(default is off).

I'd personally say Win2k is a damn good gaming platform, and one that probably has a lot more headroomm to grow into.

And yes, there are certain pieces of hardware that run worse in 2k than ME/9x. That's almost certainly because of crummy drivers.


Mike
More Benches coming tonight.

 

[Pariah]

Benchmarks from one game makes win2k a good gaming platform? sure dude....

 

[Kill_Phil]

win2k runs halflife great, aswell as diablo 2, and deus ex (only games ive played on it so far) and it IS a good game platform imho
and the mpeg playback is outstanding compared to windows 98

 

[Mikewarrior2]

Pariah... As I said before, more benchmarks are forthcoming. I haven't finished my q3 set of benches, but it looks like Q3 is faster in win2k than it is in win98(as confirmed by a few anandtech benchmarks). And I asked if there were any other games you guys wanted to see benchmarked. I'll try to benchmark Elite Force later on, and I can do half-life, but that's all I can think of(as far as my games that can be benchmarked).

If anybody has any other games/benchmarks to add, feel free to.


Mike

 

[ahfung]

How about 3DMark2000? It ran crap on my Win2000 + GeForce :|

 

[Mikewarrior2]

there's a new 3dmark that supposedly fixes a lot of stuff in win2k, but i haven't downloaded it yet.. I will tonight, though.


Mike

 

[pcmark]

It all depends on the Video card drivers. If you can get good drivers for your vid card under Win2k,you're blessed. The beta Win2k drivers for Ati Rage Fury were screwy. The stock drivers that Win2k loads don't have any 3D acceleration.

 

[Mikewarrior2]

Another Update!!

Q3 Scores. 32bit textures, 32bit rendering, texture quality all the way to the right. Demo001 run 3 times(took the best score)

1024x768

WinME: 79.8FPS
Win2k: 88.6FPS

640x480

WinME: 121.8FPS
WIn2k: 119.8FPS

In OpenGl for me, 640x480 is a tad faster for win ME, but win2k is significantly faster at 1024x768. I'll try to verify that this is an opengl thing when i run the half-life benchmarks..

P.S. If anybody has a timedemo for half life, please e-mail it to me, or leave a link! Thanks

PCMark,

I completely agree. Drivers are make or break for performance in 2k. But there are quite a few naysayers on this bbs who believe that win98 completely thrashes win2k in game performance.



Mike

 

[SuperFreaky]

Wow! That is great! I had NO IDEA that Win2K could keep up w/ WinME so well. I just may upgrade now...

 

[|mpeg|]

Who cares if win2k plays 2 games perfectly (Q3 and UT). Almost every new game you will run into a problem in win2k but the problem wont occur in win98. see Diablo2 (det driver problem, will crash if you open the close and open it again). There is many more with plenty of problems.

 

[Mikewarrior2]

Umm... i dont' get a detanator problem with Diablo2... I am runnign the 5.30 drivers, And can run ti both full screen and windowed d3d. I can close and reopen it without a problem.

I even multitask it without a problem. I can alt-tab out(which I can't do in ME) and answer icq's, etc.

And what other new game has problems with win2k. Let me list the brand new games I have that run fine on win2k: Ground Control, Force Commander(sucked, borrowed it from roommate), Rogue Spear: Urban Ops, Mechwarrior3: Pirate's Moon, Shogun, Elite Force Demo, Dark Reign 2 Open Test. There are countless games that work perfectly in win2k.

Don't be ignorant and start claiming that all new games will run into a problem in win2k.


Mike

 

[pg22]

Hey Mike, great topic, it touches on a lot of interesting things with OS's. Now I'm gonna give my two cents on this thing.

Let me start off by saying I've been using Windows 2000 since March, Windows 98 since it first came out (can't remember exactly what day), and WinMe for the past 3 months (this includes Beta's and Release Candidates and now Final from MSDN).

And after tons of formats, tons of tweaks, tons of everything you can imagine, I finally decided a weeks ago what I would run.

A Windows 2000/Windows 98 Dual Boot.


Here's why:

Windows 2000 is superior to any other Microsoft OS ever made (well, unless you really liked a pure DOS environment ). The speed, stability, and customizability is superb. If you have the right setup (min. 128MB RAM and a P2-400) it is faster than any other OS for general application using. It handles memory better than 98/ME and as stated previously, is much, much more stable. I use it for everything BUT games.

I use Windows 98 because quite frankly, it is superior to Windows 2000 in gaming...and almost nothing else. While gaming in Windows 2000 can be trouble free for some, it is more than likely hit or miss for a large majority. Many games do work....but have strange side-affects. Recent things that come to my mind in user experience include slower (yes slower, and FiringSquad also makes note of this) Quake 3 performance, graphical glitches in Homeworld, and odd sound problems in Deus Ex. One thing to keep in mind, is that while this may be my problem, it may not be yours, in Windows 2000. It really reminds me of the old Windows 95 days when you put in a game CD and you never knew what was going to happen.

That's why I have Windows 98 on my machine. For the sole reason of playing games, and nothing else. At playing games fastest, most stable, and problem free, I find that Windows 98 is un-matched.

I browse, burn, email, and do everything else but play games...on Windows 2000.

-pg19

 

[pg22]

Oops...my favorite part

P3-800@1GHZ
GeForce 2 GTS 5.30
256MB PC-100 RAM
ABit BE6-II
and lots of other shtuff

 

[mindiris]

Here's a great link to see if your favorite app/game/hardware works in Win2K.

http://www.ntcompatible.com/

Lots of games work, with some that are marginal, or needing a few hacks to get working.

My experience so far with new games as far as demos go have been fairly encouraging under Win2K. My only gripe is that some games (D3D only?) can and do crash Win2K, or won't release the screen to windows when they screw up requiring a hard reset. You can still hit crtl-alt-del and try to restart windows.

Old DOS games, well, anything that uses the soundcard won't work with the sound on at the very least (even if you set the sound card settings correctly). I dual boot to plain ol' dos for those games.

Question: doesn't windows ME (9x kernel) remove the hacked 16-bit/32-bit support for DOS? And to what extent?

 

[Mikewarrior2]

In me, the 9x kernel is still there.

PG19.. Great post... Unlike MPEGs

I know one thing about my win2k performance being waaay better than it was even a month ago is solely due to the 4.03 AGP Gart driver from VIA. That plays a huge part in pushing MY performance over win98/me. I haven't had a bx board in my system for about 2 months, so i can't tell whether it would be faster in win2k or win98(albeit, by looking at anand's benchmarks from a little while back, the bx on 98 is still a tad faster than a bx in 2k).

I had homeworld on my computer a while ago, but didn't remember any graphic glitches. Of course, this was with my TNT2 ultra. As far as any other glitches, i honestly don't have any. I don't get sound errors in games, i can alt-tab out of any game, everything for me works in win2k.

I totally agree that some people may have problems with win2k and gaming. I used to, with teh older detonators and such. But with what I have installed right now, these are the performance benchmarks i'm getting.

Now, I do have a question for you. Since your games are faster in win98, are they significantly faster? Are they faster to the point to where you would say Win2k Sucks for gaming?

The main reason for this thread was because i'm really irked at all the threads where people will ask "should I install win2k or win9x" and people started responding saying win2k was lousy for games. I truly believe otherwise. For me, its a bit faster than 9x. For others, it may be slower, but I don't think by any means that win2k is a horrible gaming platform, as is the message that is sent by others.

Again, thanks for the great post. I didn't intend to say that win2k would crush win9x in gaming, but rather to show that win2k is a good and viable gaming OS.


Mike

 

[randypj]

Mike--That hit on it for me. I can give up a bit of gaming performance for the massive stability gain in W2K.
--Randy