Server 2003 & gaming

I have no experience with Server 2003. However, you can get Windows XP 64-bit or Windows Vista-64bit to get your OS to recognise your 4 gigs of RAM.

I use Vista 64-bit and games run quite well. Given your Videocard, I would go with XP 64-bit.

You have a 2600XT. For gaming, Vista performance won't be very good so XP-64 is indeed a good option. If you had a more powerful card then Vista would be OK. But with your HD2600XT under Vista it would lower your performance.

Just because it's a DX10 card it doesn't mean you should go with Vista

Pollux - you really think this card cant handle DX10 ?

I didn't say it can't hande it, but it will perform much better on DX9 than DX10 obviously.

Anyways, I don't see the need to go with 4Ghz of RAM since there won't be any noticeable performance boost

You asked why go with XP if you had a DX10 card, and your thread's question was about Windows Server 2003, so why go with Windows Server 2003 if you have a DX10 card?

I'm just saying you will get better performance under XP than Vista, and your card can cerrtainly handle DX10 but I don't think you'll be happy playing DX10 games under 10fps (10 beng too generous)

Look at these benchmarks and then 'LoL':

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqu [...] ot-desired

HiS HD2600XT:

Crysis - DX10 - 1024x768 0xAA 0xAF : 7.5FPS
Call of Juarez - DX10 - 1024x768 0xAA 0xAF : 18.8FPS
World in Conflict - DX10 - 1024x768 0xAA 0xAF: 15FPS
Company of Heroes - DX10 - 1024x768 0xAA 0xAF: 20FPS

But of course, why would you play at 1024x768 on a 22 inch screen? turn resolution a bit higher and then you get the 10FPS i was talking about, nevermind the AA and AF

And consider the system that was used on the tests has:

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 @2.93 GHz
Zalman CNPS7700-Cu Cooler
Gigabyte P35-DQ6 Motherboard
2GB Corsair Dominator PC2-9136C5D (1142 MHzstock 5-5-5-15)
250GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 16MB cache

The results are much more positive under DX9, hence my suggestion towards XP rather than Vista.

In my experience server 2003 makes a poor gaming platform. Largely due to it, for some inexplicable reason, disabling advanced graphics capabilities when it is in use as a domain controller. Maybe it is to encourage you to not use a server for software better left to a workstation where a crash won't take down the network.

Regardless it is not a very good performer even without a domain running on it.