Questions about upgrading

[kurac]

I just had some questions about upgrade from Win98SE to WinXP

- Is there significant performance increase (gaming mostly) to using WinXP?

- If I upgrade my system at a later date, new processor and new MB, can I still install my copy of XP?

From what I've read it looks like theres no big advantage to buy Pro, so I think I'll get and OEM version of XP Home.

Thanks!

 

[BunnyStroker]

Is there significant performance increase (gaming mostly) to using WinXP?

No. The biggest improvement over 98 is in terms of stability.

If I upgrade my system at a later date, new processor and new MB, can I still install my copy of XP?

Yes.


<b>1.4 Ghz AMD T-Bird underclocked to 1 Ghz...just to be safe!</b>

 

[marshahu]

Your answer to the question "Is there a significatn performance increase (gaming mostly) to using WinXP?" you answered "No, the biggest improvement over 98 is in terms of stability" Whilst I do agree with the latter half of the question, I would have to disagree to the former part. Yes XP is certainly more stable mainly due to the fact it is running on an NT5 Platform. However performance is also slightly higher but it excels if the PC has more than 512mb of ram, as long as the pc has no more than 2GB.

Windows 9x (95/98/ME) had a 512mb memory limit bottleneck, which basically caused your system to slow down after prolonged use if you had more than 512mb of memory. I am running Windows Me with 768mb of ram (im upgrading to XP soon) and while it does run fairly fast, after a lot of use, there is a very noticeable slowdown, to the point where the pointer is very slow and jittery, window fonts become out of proportion and graphics/videos are littered with lines or they just dont appear! Run 1GB of Ram with Windows 9x and ur system will grind to a hault!

XP can handle upto 2GB of ram so performance should increase considerably, if the user has more than 512mb!

PC Spec: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ running at 1.25ghz, ECS K7S5A Motherboard, 768MB SDRAM PC133, Sparkle nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 32MB AGP Graphics Card, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 6.1, Windows Me

 

[BunnyStroker]

Fair enough, but most gamers don't have more than 512 mb RAM yet, and nearly all certrainly didn't have more than 512 under 98.

<b>1.4 Ghz AMD T-Bird underclocked to 1 Ghz...just to be safe!</b>

 

[marshahu]

LOL I am one of those gamers with more than 512MB RAM. Have you seen 2days "gaming" machines. They are now all shipping out with 1GB of RAM!

PC Spec: AMD Athlon XP 2000+ running at 1.25ghz, ECS K7S5A Motherboard, 768MB SDRAM PC133, Sparkle nVidia Riva TNT2 M64 32MB AGP Graphics Card, Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 6.1, Windows Me

 

[BunnyStroker]

Huh. Are there games that actually need to address that much memory, or do you just like to do DVD encoding while you play?



<b>1.4 Ghz AMD T-Bird underclocked to 1 Ghz...just to be safe!</b>

 

[kurac]

Thanks for the responses! I do have 1GB of RAM and Win98SE. I got my machine to run OK by limiting the vCashe to 512MB of RAM. I went to 1 GB cause it was supposed to help in star wars galaxies. that game is a RAM hungry beast!

Well, I broke down and ordered WinXP so that 1 GB of RAM RAM and 4GB file limits woundn't be an issue! I'll be installing it tonight! (Along with a new MB!)

What prompted the performance question was that I was using 3DMark2003 and seeing a lot of systems with Win98/ME performing a lot less than those with XP. Figured it was due to the opperating system since specs were about the same.

 

[kabir_hussein]

Hi

i thought with XP you have a maximum limit of 4GB of memory space depending on MB etc

kabir



kabir hussein

 

[Toejam31]

He's talking about the 4GB <i>single file size</i> limitation because of the FAT32 file system, which is not the case with NTFS ... instead of the OS virtual address space limitation, which is indeed 4GB per process.

<A HREF="http://www.michna.com/kb/WxMoreThan2GB.htm" target="_new">More Than 2GB Address Space</A>

Toey

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