XP vs. 98SE

[DJBeanPole17]

I built my computer about a year and a half ago, which, by now has become completely outdated by all of the new stuff thats come out. I built this computer based on the Windows 98 SE operating system, which for me, and a few of my friends, has become the solid gaming operating system for any user wanting to have a secure foothold in the gaming world. In other words, 98SE has been the best, most stable, and most compatible gaming OS for me since I built my computer. Now that XP has come out, I have a question: is XP better than 98SE and is it even worth the switch? I took the spiffy little tour at the Windows website, and many articles have stated that XP is the newest and more secure gaming platform. Is this true? I have Max Payne, and people with XP said that Max Payne loads without a loading screen, and looks clearer, more sharper, and runs better in XP than their previous Windows OS's. Is it worth the switch over? Would I be getting any benefits? I know its all about the DirectX 8, etc.... should I stick with good ol' 98SE, or move to the new and advanced XP? Games I'm looking at running: Max Payne, Operation Flashpoint, Half-Life (CS, TFC, etc.), Return to Wolfenstein, Dungeon Keeper 2, Quake 3 Team Arena, Diablo 2, Unreal Tournament, Soldier of Fortune, Unreal 2, etc.... (basicaly FPS). Anyone?

The BeanPole*

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Mah System, Built By Me (REAL CHEAP):

ASUS K7V v 1007
192MB SDRAM
Slot A AMD Athlon 850 MHZ
Hercules 3D Prophet 2 64 MB AGP (GeForce2)
Pioneer 115 DVD (10x/40x)
Creative Sound Blaster Live! Platinum
Sony CPD-E100
Windows 98 SE @ 1024x768
30.1 GB IBM 75GXP HD
Tornado 1000 Case (4 fans!)

*Bean-pole (n.) : A small pole used to support bean vines.

[chrisXtreme]

You must have a damn good hardware config or be a lucky guy if win98 is stable for you, unless u restart every hour lol.

Anyway, WinXP would probly run a lot faster and be truely stable (u can leave it ony for weeks or months without freezing or slowdown), but the only way to truely get this sort of performance is to do a fresh install of xp, not an upgrade, and yes some ppl, such as myself have our games run better in xp and look better, some dont, you just have to try for yourself. Hope this helps.

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AMD Athlon 1.4Ghz
- Coolermaster EP5-6I11
Abit KT7A-Raid
- 512MB PC133
Antec KS282
- PP303x
SB Live! X-Gamer
- Cambridge FPS2000
Palit Geforce2 MX 32MB
WD 60GB ATA100 5400rpm
Creative 8432 CDRW
Realtek RTL8029(cable)
3com Etherlink III(lan)
Ericsson Cable Modem
Relisys RE786 17"
Razor Boomslang 2000(usb)
Windows XP Professional

[qwerty99]

i just loaded xp and i'm thinking of going back to 98se until they get some better drivers for xp.diablo doesn't play good for me on line. i think the problem is the video driver. but not sure. i asked some people if they had xp. and they said there's worked fine. so i don't know what is up.
i got it to be playable by using 2d drivers for the game.
and by the way 98 was very stable for me. the only reason i upgraded is. i got a free 4 port linksys router and 2 nic for free when i bought xp.
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win98se
AMD 1.2 266
asus a7m266
cak38 with delt
256 ddr2100 micron
7200 ata100 maxtor 47gig
7200 ata100 maxtor 30gig
leadtek gf2 pro 32ddr
soundblaster live value
linksys len100tx
enermax 350watt
creative 52x
junk-mod case
altec lansing
10 fans if you count all of them

[This message has been edited by qwerty99 (edited November 04, 2001).]

[Gerbil Survivor]

Imo the NT5 kernal is superior to the NT4 kernal only in so far as (Micro$oft) hasn't put out kernal virii for it -yet.

This is how they 'turn off' their previous OSs before releasing a new one. Everything I went thru with bios, boot sector and comm driver virii/exploits over the last 3 months in my '98 I saw happen to my Dos5 machine when 6.0 came out.

To secure '98 I had to to write 0s to the HD; power down; disconnect the drive; reboot to bios w/o HDs; disable bios shadowing (beyond video); reflash existing bios; disable bios updating; power off; reconnect the HD; boot to floppy; fdisk/format the HD FAT32; then reinstall and reload backup. Phew.

Both Code Red and Sircam pass kernal instructions to the NT4 kernal to execute payloads. I simply don't buy the line that a bunch of university students in Guangxiou, China cracked the NT4 source code and have used that knowledge to further the corporate interests of MS.

I've seen this S before and it always happens before a new (unwarranted) MS OS is deployed.

I'm not even gonna talk about IE6 or any of the other 'legitimate' methods MS uses to degrade legacy systems.



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P3/866@1Ghz
Asus Cusl2-C Mobo running bios ver. 1007.
384MB PC133 @ 122Mhz
2x20Gb WD Caviar HDs
Lite On 16x10x40 CDRW
ATI Radeon 64 DDR
Mandrake Linux 8.1 (JFS:Reiser) on IDE1, W98 and XPpro (ripped) on IDE2.
Cable Modem

[Ramadu]

Windows XP...clean install...stable and fast...easier to use than Win 2K...I wouldn't go back

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Windows XP rules!

[qwerty99]

i'm having a hard time finding drivers and one's that work right. i have had to do 3 clean installs because i tried to load drivers for thing's i have. i still have no cdrw drivers or programs. no antivirus and i have to use a gts driver that xp installed for my video card because the new pro drivers give's me problems. this really sucks. i'm thinking of going back to 98. atleast i can install drivers then and use the programs i have. this os is a pain. were are you finding drivers that work.

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win xp
AMD 1.2 266
asus a7m266
cak38 with delt
256 ddr2100 micron
7200 ata100 maxtor 47gig
7200 ata100 maxtor 30gig
leadtek gf2 pro 32ddr
soundblaster live value
linksys len100tx
enermax 350watt
creative 52x
junk-mod case
altec lansing
10 fans if you count all of them

[john drake]

stick with 98se unless you need some special feature xp has. I got xp pro on my system right now and it sucks, video, Nic performance suck (marginal for games), my hp 932c driver crashing all the time (w/hp offical xp driver), very long shutdown time unless you have 512megs of ram , and the media player a disater with older video files ( older divx, avi and mpegs)usually dont work. I'm underwhelmed by xtra pee at best, maybe later in the winter when i upgrade my mobo and cpu there will be a better more mature drive base out there for it because right now xp sucks, as soon as i have the time Im reinstalling 98se.

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Q: Why do you care?

A: You'll never know.

system Amd T bird 1.0
asus a7v 1007 bios
ibm 46.1 gig hd
256megs ram
sound blaster live
geforce 2 32meg ddr
Dsl

[Hadoken]

My home built Athlon system runs rock solid under 98SE. I have tried to run ME/XP/2k and none of them have matched the stability I get from 98SE when running games. At least not on this system.

Btw, I am a heavy Everquest and DAOC player. If you want two games that will test the stability of your machine, these two will do it.

So no XP on this box.

[TimisoaraKill]

I hawe no ideea how people can say that Win98SE is instable ???
I hawe Win98SE with all latest M.Soft updates inside a BE6-II/P III 1000/256 Mosel PC143 Ram and so far i hawe a crash once in a month and only if i push very hard on something.All Games work perfect in this 0S.
Two weeks before i try 3 fresh install on WinXP and all i can say is that right now the 0S suck's full time !!.
Games crash , incompatibility with network card , CDRW does not work at all ,full incompatibility with drivers etc , even can't uninstall programs wich i dont' need , so far may be in 6-8 monts it will be be better but not now .

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-My P III 700E cCO @ 1 GHZ /Default Volt. SyStEm-
-SiSi/Sandra 2001 Pro Bench.-

[007Spazm]

98SE stable har har har...
I have win2k pro right now and it owns win98, haven't crashed it once yet
gonna upgrade to XP eventually *2k boots sssooo slow*

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A7M266
1gig athlon
256 megs PC2100
Gainward GeForce2 Pro
SB Live Value
Plextor 16/10/40A
40gig Maxtor
Win2k Pro

[meltdown]

XP is much faster on both my systems. I updated all the drivers, but not any bios.
Detonators for Nvidia
Sound Blaster XP driver
Via Audio drivers (a must!)

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#1
Shuttle AK31
1200 T Bird 266
256 DDR
Winfast Geforce 2 GTS 32mg
SB Live Gamer
SB Live Gamer
WD 40 Gig HD

#2
MS K7T Turbo
384 mg Sdram
800 Duron
TnT 2 32 mg Video
On Board Sound
40 G Seagate

[qwerty99]

what chip set are the via sound drivers for? i have amd/via. if i remeber right the amd is only for agp everything else is via

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win xp
AMD 1.2 266
asus a7m266
cak38 with delt
256 ddr2100 micron
7200 ata100 maxtor 47gig
7200 ata100 maxtor 30gig
leadtek gf2 pro 32ddr
soundblaster live value
linksys len100tx
enermax 350watt
creative 52x
philips cdrw
junk-mod case
altec lansing
10 fans if you count all of them

[Phraede]

Originally posted by qwerty99:
what chip set are the via sound drivers for? i have amd/via. if i remeber right the amd is only for agp everything else is via

That's my exact question... I have the same mobo you have, and I'm wondering if I need to install the VIA drivers or not... Have you learned anything else about this? I am having some minor (but annoying) issues with sound on my PC. For example, when I choose my login icon after startup, the screen glitches, blinks a couple times, and sometimes the audio crackles (really loudly), which is really annoying. This happens even if I do a clean install. I've experimented with using all default XP drivers, but the problem remains. I'm not having too much difficulty other than that, however. So far I've installed the XP drivers for my SB Live 5.1 Plat card, the 21.83 nVidia drivers, as well as running Windows Update to update a couple things.

Has anyone else had strange crackle sounds at startup?

Thanks,
Phraede

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Thunderbird 1.33 Ghz/266 FSB @ 1333 (for now...)
Non-conductive Shim (I won't break another CPU... knock on wood)
Swiftech MC462-A Rev1 w/Sanyo-Denki fan
Windows XP
IBM 75 GB GXP HD
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 60 GB
Asus A7M266
256 MB Corsair PC2100
256 MB Crucial PC2100
SB Live! Platinum 5.1
Klipsch ProMedia v.2-400
Toshiba 16X DVD
Hollywood Plus MPEG Decoder
Plextor 16/10/40 CD-RW
CoolerMaster ATCS-201 Case w/300 watt PS
Logitech Cordless Freedom Pro Keyboard
Microsoft IntelliMouse Optical Mouse
Logitech Wingman RumblePad
KDS AV-195TF 19" Monitor
3Com EtherLink 10/100 3C905C-TX-M
Visiontek GeForce3 Video Card
Understanding Wife

[This message has been edited by Phraede (edited November 06, 2001).]

[john drake]

Originally posted by TimisoaraKill:
I hawe no ideea how people can say that Win98SE is instable ???
I hawe Win98SE with all latest M.Soft updates inside a BE6-II/P III 1000/256 Mosel PC143 Ram and so far i hawe a crash once in a month and only if i push very hard on something.All Games work perfect in this 0S.
Two weeks before i try 3 fresh install on WinXP and all i can say is that right now the 0S suck's full time !!.
Games crash , incompatibility with network card , CDRW does not work at all ,full incompatibility with drivers etc , even can't uninstall programs wich i dont' need , so far may be in 6-8 monts it will be be better but not now .

Amen brother preach on, I am also very underwhelemed by XP too, with my rig xp doesnt crash but it reduced my system performance over all by 40%. probelly this week I reinstalling 98se fresh install after a reformate of my harddrive . maybe when there's a better driver base in a few months I do a dual boot but right now xp pro is caca in my humble oppion lol He long time no post tismora nice to see you again.

------------------
Q: Why do you care?

A: You'll never know.

system Amd T bird 1.0
asus a7v 1007 bios
ibm 46.1 gig hd
256megs ram
sound blaster live
geforce 2 32meg ddr
Dsl

[This message has been edited by john drake (edited November 06, 2001).]

[Dimitris]

With XP, it certainly is more stable, no blue screen But there are things like video cams etc of scarce brands that you find no drivers for, but they will probably update this soon. I play max Payne, diablo II, etc, and they all work fine.