I was quite disappointed when my new 3870 card only supported XP/Vista but even the drivers for onboard video on my 780G mobo only do the last 2 OS. What's going on?
Why no W2K support with newer vid cards?
- Thread starter perdomot
- Start date
The vast majority of people have moved on to XP (or Vista) by now, so one would assume that it's not worth their time or resources to work on 2K drivers.
Er.. it's 8 years old for starters? Is this a troll thread because otherwise you might as well ask why 98, 95 or 3.1 isn't supported too.
W2K runs DX9C and is actually more capable of running modern games than XP as it is more efficient. I was actually thinking about installing it until I realized that NV does not post drivers for the OS. I was so taken aback by the Vista bloat that I was willing to go all the way back to W2K!
I even tried Ubuntu until I had the itch to game. The NV drivers were a little buggy for it (terrible multimonitor support).
BTW this thread was not a "troll post" IMO. :thumbsdown:
OP: I'm pretty sure there is a way to install XP drivers onto W2K. You could always try extracting the files to a folder and manually installing the driver. There also may be a way to modify the .inf. Good luck. :beer:
Windows 2000 Pro was the [ corporate ] business OS at the time and at introduction did not support games well at all. Home and small-business users mostly had 98 and ME not 2000.
I used it on my work PC but kept Win98SE on my gaming PC, as did a lot of other people until XP was out for awhile (SP 1 seemed to be when it gained traction).
Without claiming anything about the OP, I'd guess most home users still using 2000 have unpaid copies that they move to new systems because of the lack of a license check. Corporate users have moved on to XP now that it's been out for over 6 years.
I used it on my work PC but kept Win98SE on my gaming PC, as did a lot of other people until XP was out for awhile (SP 1 seemed to be when it gained traction).
Without claiming anything about the OP, I'd guess most home users still using 2000 have unpaid copies that they move to new systems because of the lack of a license check. Corporate users have moved on to XP now that it's been out for over 6 years.
Blazer7
Golden Member
- Jun 26, 2007
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Originally posted by: SickBeast
W2K runs DX9C and is actually more capable of running modern games than XP as it is more efficient. I was actually thinking about installing it until I realized that NV does not post drivers for the OS. I was so taken aback by the Vista bloat that I was willing to go all the way back to W2K!
I even tried Ubuntu until I had the itch to game. The NV drivers were a little buggy for it (terrible multimonitor support).
BTW this thread was not a "troll post" IMO. :thumbsdown:
You are right about w2k and DX9c. I'm running a w2k VM with DX9c installed but that really doesn't mean a thing. Win98 & Me can also run DX9c.
The bottom line is that w2k was never intended to be a gamer-oriented OS. It is no coincidence that XP were released within 21 months after w2k and were adapted by gamers much much faster. More to it, and despite the fact that both OSs support DX9 the number of titles that support XP is much greater.
Wikipedia : Windows 2000
No mention of gamers there.
If w2k was so more efficient an OS that could run modern titles better than XP then gamers would still favour w2k and ATI/nV would still produce drivers for their latest and greatest.
Clearly this is not the case.
I'll agree that W2K is more efficient than XP, for the same reasons XP is more efficient than Vista: fewer services and OS-spawned processes running, less eye candy, less hand-holding. 512 MB worked as well for 2K as 1 GB for XP and 2 GB for Vista.
That doesn't change the fact that the world has moved on from Win95, NT4, and W2K, and that the paying customers almost all have XP or Vista now.
I might want to install a partition with Win98SE on a modern PC, but "retro gamers willing to multiboot" is such a tiny niche there is no money in writing hardware drivers to appeal to it. Life's like that and there is always VMWare.
That doesn't change the fact that the world has moved on from Win95, NT4, and W2K, and that the paying customers almost all have XP or Vista now.
I might want to install a partition with Win98SE on a modern PC, but "retro gamers willing to multiboot" is such a tiny niche there is no money in writing hardware drivers to appeal to it. Life's like that and there is always VMWare.
Blazer7
Golden Member
- Jun 26, 2007
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When talking about "efficiency" I'm referring purely to the gaming aspect of things. Besides, this ?gaming aspect? is the thing that's making the difference regarding driver support for modern high-end video cards and w2k.
I will agree that w2k are great for business use. In fact I'm still using them on some machines at the company I work for although not for long.
MichaelD
Lifer
- Jan 16, 2001
- 31,528
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That's the entire "Games" section from the Wikipedia page you linked to.
Aaaaaand what?
The only thing that section states is that W2K can run DX 9.0C, which is still being updated today. In NO WAY is W2K "more capable" of running modern games than XP. And based on GPU card manuf's driver releases (i.e. not supporting W2K) I'd say it's LESS capable.
Some games even specify "Windows XP" in the requirements section, though I've never tested that out myself.
taltamir
Lifer
- Mar 21, 2004
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Originally posted by: spittledip
Yeah like they said 2000 isn't as bloated so it runs more efficiently. I prefer XP though
back in the day i did not want to TOUCH XP because it was a bloated and buggy piece of crap... stayed with 2k until SP2 came about and made XP tolerable (and ram prices went down enough for it to be a non issue).
Vista SP1 is fine. Just use 4GB of ram, 4GB of DDR2 cost an insignificant amount right now.
People are parroting what us techies said a long time ago, here is a hint.. IT WAS A LONG TIME AGO. things have changed.
Originally posted by: MichaelD
That's the entire "Games" section from the Wikipedia page you linked to.
Aaaaaand what?
The only thing that section states is that W2K can run DX 9.0C, which is still being updated today. In NO WAY is W2K "more capable" of running modern games than XP. And based on GPU card manuf's driver releases (i.e. not supporting W2K) I'd say it's LESS capable.
Some games even specify "Windows XP" in the requirements section, though I've never tested that out myself.
heh on further inspection -- you're right I forgot about the 'is more capable' part
hell -- who knows. Maybe it is.
taltamir
Lifer
- Mar 21, 2004
- 13,576
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Yap... you can even use http://www.nliteos.com/ to create a custom install disk with those physically removed.
You maintain the various security updates, new capabilities, and newer drivers (both bundled with the OS and provided by companies) while getting the same "lightness" as win 2k. But it is utterly unnecessary. The extra overhead of the graphics in XP is negligible even on older CPUs, and vista's is negligible on brand new top end ones. And the ram effect is more then negligble considering how cheap ram is today.
I do it just because I don't like the look of XP's interface.
Also, any sort of interface animations make everything feel sluggish and unresponsive (because of what they are, not because they're intensive), so those are one of the first things I disable.
PingSpike
Lifer
- Feb 25, 2004
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Why do people keep spreading all of this FUD about Win2k not being designed for games? 2K and XP are the same fucking thing, with a few minor tweaks and some extra crap of dubious value added on. I ran it as my primary OS up until a couple years ago, when I couldn't find the install disk. It ran every game I threw at it fine, from old to the latest. The only games that wouldn't run were the ones that had an installer that blocked its installation on Win2K. If you found a way to circumvent the installer, it then ran fine.
As for it being old...well, sorry, its actually not much older then XP. You can argue its not worth companies testing on 2K because of its small install base, but why actively block the install of software to it?
The only arguements against 2K versus XP 32bit for games IMO, are that microsoft actively blocks new software from working on it. The arguement about it not being "marketed for gamers" is a load of crap. How something was marketed has to be about the most irrelevant factor in functionality there is, the proof is in the pudding...not the pudding's name or what it says on side of the pudding box.
That said, if you're doing a fresh install...you may as well just use XP to avoid bullshit headaches from stuff like this. But I reject the notion that XP really offers anything that inately improves gaming over 2K. It does have some included features users may find useful for other facets of computing, but not gaming.
As for it being old...well, sorry, its actually not much older then XP. You can argue its not worth companies testing on 2K because of its small install base, but why actively block the install of software to it?
The only arguements against 2K versus XP 32bit for games IMO, are that microsoft actively blocks new software from working on it. The arguement about it not being "marketed for gamers" is a load of crap. How something was marketed has to be about the most irrelevant factor in functionality there is, the proof is in the pudding...not the pudding's name or what it says on side of the pudding box.
That said, if you're doing a fresh install...you may as well just use XP to avoid bullshit headaches from stuff like this. But I reject the notion that XP really offers anything that inately improves gaming over 2K. It does have some included features users may find useful for other facets of computing, but not gaming.
Windows 2000 PRO supposedly doesn't support quad cores and can't use windows media player 10. While gaming on 2k isn't all that different than gaming on xp there is a lack of features inherent to it being ancient, in computing years, that will lower the quality of life of the OS experience.
taltamir
Lifer
- Mar 21, 2004
- 13,576
- 6
- 76
2k was the "unfinished XP"... the only end user visible extra crap is the cartoonish theme. THAT IS THE ONLY THING!
everything else is engine stuff.
2k had a pathetic driver library, XP had a fleshed out driver library (which is now pathetic compared to vista's... you should not need to to fish for driver CDs to get your ethernet working), and so on.
You say that it is essentially the same, it is, which is all the more reason to use the fleshed out XP version. Turn off visual themes and the only way you could tell it is not 2k is that more things actually work.
everything else is engine stuff.
2k had a pathetic driver library, XP had a fleshed out driver library (which is now pathetic compared to vista's... you should not need to to fish for driver CDs to get your ethernet working), and so on.
You say that it is essentially the same, it is, which is all the more reason to use the fleshed out XP version. Turn off visual themes and the only way you could tell it is not 2k is that more things actually work.
A lot of interesting responses but some clarification is in order. First of all, I did not get the 3870 for gaming. I was building an AMD rig after all the hype about the Spider platform and got the cpu, mobo and vid card together from Newegg. I wanted to use W2K because as has been pointed out, it is fast and stable. By comparison, XP always seemed to have more issues and problems including errors and slower performance. I've been running W2K on another rig I have and it has been flawless so far. I don't consider 2K the "unfinished XP" so much as the "un-screwed up XP". The latest service pack for XP shows how many problems still exist with the OS and I have not forgotten all the problems it had the first few years. It is only in the light of the Vista fiasco that XP looks better by comparison. What really bothers me is that W2K and XP are so similar you often see drivers for the two OSes grouped together so the sudden absence of any W2K looks fishy to me. Now that XP is no longer for sale, it looks to me like MS is trying to force Vista adoption via hardware vendors by discouraging prior OS support. While I can understand trying to move past Win98 due to a more stable kernel, there is no logical reason not to support W2K unless you are trying to force the acceptance of Vista.
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