best o.s. for gaming?

Woden

system activation is simple and painless, i fail to see how the eula affects me. XP was the best thing microsoft ever did for the home user. system restore can be a useful function. xp is more user friendly, integrated cd-writing ability if needed, and from a personal point of view, i upgraded from ME to 2000 and it slowed my computer down, upgraded from 2000 to XP pro, multiple log-on's, intergrated 802.11b wireless networking support, remote assistance, the XP kernel also has a number of improvements over 2000 for overall performance and i like the benchmarks shown above. (don't know why sp1 is slower though)

spooky donkey

I dont see a huge diff between win xp and win 2k and that seems to be reflected in the poll both are the clear winners! I got for XP though it scores slightly less than 2k its newer and so it should be better for the newer games! Most games out now toolk over 2 years to develop and so were created before XP was realeased so we were optimised for the 98 Kernal! That will change with time lads!

Ryo Hazuki

I had Win2k SP3 then got XP Pro, one thing ive noticed is UT2K3 seems to run a lot better, less reading from the hard disk etc.

But Battlefeild 1942 seems to run worst, more skipping! Strange.

XP is VERY stable. Buy(!) it now.

Gerry

Just to answer chaos engines question, I can run half life and cs here on win2k as well, no crashes. Only really annoying thing is that I cannot reliably alt-tab out of the game and back in, but I have heard that this happens on win 9x as well.

If anyone can actually say which games do not work for them on 2k or xp, this thread might be a little more informative.

Interesting enough that other people have had problems with colin macrae 2. I never even bothered searching the net, cos I don't play the game much. I did manage to get it working by deleting some config file and giving it a few goes, it still sometimes refuses to load though.

Ronan|Raven

xp imho has given me nothing but hasle with older games even running in comp mode. Win2k has run everything fine for me......

XP is grand if ya have the latest hardware etc but ive seen nothing but hassle with it so far from my point of view... im sure its grand for nearly all of the people out there but Ive found myself extremely irritated with Winxp As of Late.

Pimp Ninja

I'm a Win2K man really. I play everythihng on 2K SP2 and have not really had any problems.

My machine crashes about once a week, But I've a feeling it's because I move it around a lot, LAN's n such. After I reseat video card & RAM it doesn't crash until I move it again. even at that it's not definately going to crash.

What I'm saying is 2k all the way, brilliant OS. I'm not blaming my crashes on it.

Chaos-Engine

CHALLENGE:
"A Linux Kernel optimised for gaming"

Gerry

Well, I suppose you could start by removing any junk that you don't want from your kernel.

Then you ensure that you have the latest kernel, optimized for your processor.
You compile it for your cpu, as in tell gcc to use sse/sse2/3dnow or whatever. Try doing further optimizations like -O2 or -O3.

Then compile up your graphics card drivers with optimizations also.

Problem here is that compiling the kernel and/or drivers with optimizations often leads to crashes, as the new cpu optimized code often produces instability in the drivers.

Before running the game, ensure that your cpu usage in top is as close to 0% as possible.

whosurpaddy

well this topic certainly got people talking anyway. im still slightly confused y the newer o.s's run games faster as they consume more resources.


also for the people who r saying u cant run old games on xp copy all the files on the cd to the hard disk, select them all (including folders, subfolders etc) right click & select properties, then select the compatibility tab & select an older o.s. to run the game , NOW INSTALL & RUN THE GAME, HAPPY NOW?

Woden

how do you get pictures like that .gif?

STaN

Originally posted by Dataisgod
how do you get pictures like that .gif?

ALT + Print Screen
Go to Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop and do Paste as new Image.
Then export as gif.

Easy

Woden

thanking you

Kali

I'll just mention the obvious here, if it hasn't already been said.. if you happen to have a copy of 2000 Server or Advanced Server, don't go installing it on a standalone machine, both have a much bigger footprint than the standard 2000 Pro and both in disk usage and memory usage... games will definitely run slower on either of these.

sutty

Well I've only used 95/98/Win2k and Linux for games.

In win2k the list of games I cant get working are as follows:

The Nomad Soul
That is all!

The resion it wont work? well the develpers thought that 2k would be a work OS and never be used for games (twats) Anyway its nothing to do with 2k, just that the people that made the game... made it not to work with 2K!!!!

as for Linux and games.
Tuxracer looks sooooooo cool and has game play + its free
once you put openGL drivers on. the system takes on a hole new life. I found Q3, and Wolf to be a good bit faster than in 2k. As for ALL them other games that wont work in linux...

USE WINE!!! get the one made for gaming only(you have to pay for it). I had a copy of it back in its early days. Had a nice old game of Max Payne on it From the list I seen they had a hell of a lot of games working on it. That was last year

*note to self: Download wine again

SantaHoe

Originally posted by whosurpaddy
copy all the files on the cd to the hard disk, select them all (including folders, subfolders etc) right click & select properties, then select the compatibility tab & select an older o.s. to run the game , NOW INSTALL & RUN THE GAME, HAPPY NOW?

Hmm, I would have been happy if it had worked, but it didn't.
I reckon M$ just put that property page there for the laugh because it's never worked for me
Interesting idea though, I'll try it with a few of my other oldies.

Praetorian

I dual boot with XP Pro and WINME. XP Runs almost everything perfectly. I use WINME for the DOS sound compatibility for the old games.

oslin

If you want the fastest linux machine use gentoo linux as the whole system is build from source so it is totally optimised for your hardware be it intel or AMD.

www.gentoo.org
Also debian is a good base system to start off with.
www.debian.org
nils
PS
Also as for any type of micoshaft windoze, it's not worth the CD's it printed on.

Gerry

debian is hardly suited for gaming, unless you forcibly upgrade the compiler, xfree86,glibc.. as you said gentoo would be the best linux for the job.

Of the window's os's, win2k is the best for gaming, in my experience. I got a boost in fps when I switched to 2k, along with all the other benefits like stability and reliability.

I've run quakeworld and quake3 on FreeBSD, and it goes about 10% faster than windows, next task is to get WINE working on freebsd so I can play half life/cs and grand prix legends.

SouperComputer

i cant see why "classics" wouldnt work (depends what you define as a classic though, some games are just old ). Have you tried the compatibility feature of XP?

the "compatability mode" isnt worth a **** with some games because the NTVDM in XP (and 2k) wont allow direct access to hardware.

2k for me so far, XP isnt really worth upgrading to, longhorn doesnt look much better

GUI

2k for me..