Anyone have experience with gaming much on Server 2003. I want to try it to get use out of my new system with 4G of ram.

Any replies would be appreciated.

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.

Why would you say to go with XP when I have a DX10 video card ?

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

Windows Server 2003 is still DX9 - it's identical code base to XP

You will have to enable DX as it comes disabled out of the box - then it will behave just like XP but enable 4GB RAM with 32bit - see the following for guidance http://www.visualwin.com/DirectX/

Pollux - you really think this card cant handle DX10 ?

The 2600xt will struggle with the latest DX10 games... have a look at the fllowing to see how the same hardware will perform much better in DX9 mode.. http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inqu [...] ot-desired

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)

don't think you'll be happy playing DX10 games under 10fps (10 beng too generous)

LoL

Ok just curious. I agree 100% with the better performance in DX9.x though. Im gonna load XP64 and give it a try tonight.

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.

Update!

This new Radeon is kicking ass in XP 64bit, Im also loading Vista Ultimate 64 on another hard drive right now to test it also.

I will try to do some benches for ya.

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.