98SE vs ME vs XP

[pbatacan]

Which of these 3 OS is good for gaming?

[guest]

win2k sp4 .

[minibubba]

don't use winME, no matter what.

the age of your hardware makes the biggest difference. If the majority is more than a few years old I'd suggest win98. However, if you're a typical gamer you should have fairly recent hardware so you should go with winXP pro.

but whatever OS you use, make sure to tweak it or it defeats the purpose ;)

[pbatacan]

ok. Maybe I'll upgrade to Xp. All my hardware are modern except for my videocard which is a Geforce2 MX 400 but you think this card can still do much for me? By the way. Its overclocked @ 250/200. Pretty low Mhz compared to newer cards. hehehe.

[Beefy]

My order of preference from best to worst Microsoft operating systems (for everything, not just gaming) - XP / 2K / 98SE / 98 / 95 / NT / 3.1 / 1.0 / DOS / Me (just to show how much I love Me)

[pbatacan]

O I C. Well ok. So Pipz Out there, Can you tell me why most Of you don't like ME?

[Yawgm0th]

More unstable and somehow uglier than 95 or 98, slower and more controlling than XP, a GUI that makes me want to go back to CLI DOS (as I said, somehow it seems particularly ugly to me), those wouldn't have anything to do with it at all.

Anyway, go with 98\98SE so long as you can get good drivers for everything. Unless you have like an A64 (even 32-bit XP will work better than 98 with it) processor or a video card that doesn't make 9x drivers 98 is a much better choice for gaming. You'll have to replace all the missing .vxd files to stabalize it or you'll crash a lot (I think Wiggo has a good link that should tell you what to do here, to save myself the time of explaining it). But 98 is considerably better for most games than XP. My tweaked XP has never, ever been has fast as my untweaked 98 (I dual boot so same hardware for both), in fact it has never been faster ever for any reason. On actual benchmarks, FPS in games, or ping in online games, it always comes out behind. My CS ping is usually between 20-40 in 98 on servers that will give me pings of about 80 in XP. Of course XP is a million time better for everything but gaming. 98 simply can't multitask. If I use Cacheman or Rambooster to free ram it takes about 15 seconds before I can use my friggen cursor. The built in system tool programs (i.e. Defrag, Scandisc) are considerably worse in 98, so much to the point where I'm thinking about getting a freeware defragmentation program. 98 also had pretty bad driver support; anytime I reformat and reinstall I have to download drivers for everything but my mouse, keyboard, and monitor, or crap won't work right. Whereas with XP I maybe get video card and sound card drivers just for better performance and I'm good. But if your really into gaming stick with 98 (or 98SE, better yet), or at least dual boot both (not hard). I haven't really given much try to 2000 but it's probably a good mix of speed and stability.

[Mista K6]

98 really is a good OS for gaming, but as said, XP is great for everything else. This is because XP requires alot more resources just to run. You pay for the convenience. For example, XP uses 120MB of RAM, maybe more, at any time just run. 98 doesnt require nearly that. I believe the best option is dual booting. MY friend dual boots XP Pro and 98SE. He uses XP Pro for web surfing, maintainence, and any Desktop work. When he want to game, he just loads 98SE and plays. It's a little more, but he feels the performance boost is worth it. : peace2: Mista K6

[Beefy]

If you've got 256MB of RAM or less, then 98 is a better gaming OS. If you've got 512MB or more then XP will treat you better.

[Wiggo]

win2k sp4 .

I'm glad that ya can't focus with suggestin' an enterprise os. :rolleyes2

Originally posted by pbatacan
[b]Can you tell me why most Of you don't like ME?

MEss was an os that M$ rushed to market (really it should've been released due to lack of pre testing) as a stop gap measure between 98SE and 2k (though 2K never really made an impact outside of an enterprise os due to it havin' poor driver/hardware support). It ain't real stable, has poor driver/hardware support (not as bad as 2k but then that is an enterprise os after all) and far to many system tools were dumped to make way for system restore. :tears:

Originally posted by pbatacan
[b]Which of these 3 OS is good for gaming?

98SE is the best with older systems that have 256MB of memory or less but XP is better with more modern hardware and 512MB or more of memory.

[Yawgm0th]

Originally posted by Wiggo
98SE is the best with older systems that have 256MB of memory or less but XP is better with more modern hardware and 512MB or more of memory.

I hate to argue with you, but having modern harware is hardly relevant (with a few exceptions) so long as you get good 98 drivers. I would still use 98 for games with 512 MBs of RAM because it still works faster. XP doesn't simply fill all that extra RAM with nothing, it has to process a little more, enough to make stuff take tenths of a second longer than it would in 98. In a first-person shooter, a few tenths of a second is an eternity. I have heard that there are some stability issues on systems with more than 512 MBs of RAM in 98, but I would still use 98 unless huge problems started happening. I can't believe I forgot to mention that a lot of older (DOS-95) games simply don't work on XP, even if you mess with compatibility and hardware acceleration(sometimes there are fixes found online made by fans, sometimes. That was actually the initial reason I decided to dual-boot 98SE and XP. I discovered 98 was considerably faster in games.

[amd_man2005]

98's known to throw fits at times with 512mb of RAM, at times.

[Yawgm0th]

So I've heard, but depending on your BIOS (and overclocking) 98 probably won't even recognize all 512 MBs so you probably need to have more than 512 MB to have any problems. At least I have 512 and it hasn't given me any crap yet.

[Beefy]

98's known to throw fits at times with 512mb of RAM, at times.

It usually plays up when you've got more than 512MB, but 512MB is fine most of the time.

Yawgmoth, you've got a totally valid point there. However, I'm gonna throw in the old 'stability' argument. Yes, I know that if you can get 98 running smoothly it does run very well, but not a lot of people have that kind of success. For the majority of 98 users, the occasional blue screen and crash will happen. XP is, to put it simply, a bit more 'idiot proof'. Also, truth be told, when I was dual-booting 98 and XP when I initially installed, I found the game speed difference was negligible. That's why I gave my comment earlier about RAM vs OS. I try not to get anyone to run XP with only 256MB RAM. Yeah, it does work, but doing anything intensive just drags the system down. 512MB or more, then I'll suggest XP everytime.

[Mista K6]

When I first got this comp (I knew NOTHING about comps then), it only had 256MB. Wow, did I have fun surfing the web. I only played Rogue Spear and non-demanding games back then so it was fine. However, exiting out of a game to the desktop would take an eternity. Now it's instantaneous. However, most computers now (except barbones and really low oem's) usually come with or can be upgraded to 512MB of RAM easily. With that being the case, why not run XP? Seems rigid to hold on to an old OS when XP is much more convenient and stable. : peace2: Mista K6