Infoworld Claims WinXP Significantly Slower then 2k

[jtshaw]

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/tc...029tcwinxp.xml

Here is the article... what are your experiences?

[anfpunk]

I saw that on /. it is definitely true. If only win2k had the compatibility with all the hardware XP does then I'd be set. Gotta wait for a new mobo and stuff before I can run win2k stable. It always crashed in Half Life no matter how I installed it and which combo of patches i used.

Oh, XP has been relatively good for me though until I try to unrar things or do anything extremely CPU dependent. It doesn't handle processes that NEED CPU power very well I don't think. It's also slower at multitasking too from my experiences.

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1.2Ghz 266fsb AXIA T-Bird, Swiftech mc462, kt7a-raid, Cyclone5000, Enermax Whisper 431watt PSU, crucial 768mb pc133 cl2, Leadtek GeForce2 GTS, 2x40gb ata100 7200rpm IBM deskstar running Raid-0, Maxtor 7200rpm 40gig ata66, Sb Live! 5.1, 3com NIC, Lite-On 24x10x40x Burner, KDS 19in Flat Screen, Debian unstable/WinXP 2600

[This message has been edited by anfpunk (edited November 02, 2001).]

[Xero]

I'd say it depends on the computer, and the program. WinXP seems to be much faster then 2k was on my 800mhz athlon. I havn't tried out many programs yet but I am satisfied, considering its microsoft, thats a good thing. What I am really surprised is that they managed to get all the fancy new GUI in there and still have it run without crashing, and pretty damn fast too. As for games, yes there is probably going to be some loss in frame rate, but drivers are still being made and improved. It's new so I'd wait a bit before coming to any conclusions.

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-Xero

[This message has been edited by Xero (edited November 02, 2001).]

[Gerbil Survivor]

Originally posted by anfpunk:
I saw that on /. it is definitely true. If only win2k had the compatibility with all the hardware XP does then I'd be set. Gotta wait for a new mobo and stuff before I can run win2k stable. It always crashed in Half Life no matter how I installed it and which combo of patches i used.

Weird you had those problems. I ran CS fine from 2000 but I did it by putting a shortcut on the Desktop linking to the CS dir. on the 98 FAT32 HD. It just ran it from the FAT32 drive. It worked fine. I didn't notice any improvement though.

Also, for compatability there's a compatability patch for 2000 now that may help. If not there's a trick in 2000 to get it to accept a 16-bit legacy driver of a 'non-2000 compatable' device. Just install it under the Unknown in the wizard and keep selecting 'let me choose' then say 'no, not detected or in the list'. When 2000 fails to detect/install the device 3 times it opens up the Upgrade Hardware Wizard and you've got it made. That's the entire Hardware Compatability List and it asks you to select a compatable device to 'be associated with your new hardware'. Then you just go down the list and select your old, funky piece of hardware. That's how I installed my Logitech mouse and Panasonic dot matrix printer. And I did it via the keyboard, lol. You can do it.

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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

[ua549]

I'm running an XP beta build 3541 (Windows.Net Server) on a dual Xeon 1.7 machine with 1 GB memory. So far everything I do runs faster except Office XP. There is some sort of delay when opening files or browsing for files. Otherwise Office XP runs about as fast as Office 2k. So far both the XP OS and Office XP are more stable than Win2k - especially IIS. I have yet to have an unplanned reboot.

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Never forget 11 September 2001. May the victims forever rest in peace.

[This message has been edited by ua549 (edited November 02, 2001).]

[Superbob]

Originally posted by anfpunk:
I saw that on /. it is definitely true....

And we ALL know what an accurate and unbiased news source that Slashdot is! They would NEVER post an article that might unfairly but Microsoft in a bad light, right?

Ok, now that I got that rant out of the way, I'll get serious. XP's performance depends on the hardware being used and the applications that are running.

For example, I once saw XP running on a PII-300 with 128MB of RAM, which is MS'es minimum recommendation. Performance was terrible! The poor hard drives on that thing were constantly running to access the swap file, and the system was practically unusable when trying to run more than one application at once. Windows 2000 runs fine on it, however, and can switch between three or four running applications at once without and serious lag time.

I then tried it on a P3-667 with 256MB of RAM, and it ran much nicer. Once you turned off some of the eye candy, it performed just as well as Windows 2000. Even big, bloated applications like Lotus Notes and Netscape 6 didn't take any longer to start up than before. Task switching was also just as quick as before.

On high-end machines, the performance difference is negligable. With good graphics drivers, even games will run at 90% to 100% of the speed that they ran under Windows 98. Look at the benchmarks that all of the other magazines and web sites are publishing, and you'll get the idea.

[jtshaw]

Slashdot didn't write the article, they just posted the link...and what you have to recognize about slashdot is they aren't all anti microsoft, there most vocal members are always at the extremes. They either love something (in this case Microsoft/Windows) or dispise it, and often can't give a real good reason why

Originally posted by Superbob:
And we ALL know what an accurate and unbiased news source that Slashdot is! They would NEVER post an article that might unfairly but Microsoft in a bad light, right?

Ok, now that I got that rant out of the way, I'll get serious. XP's performance depends on the hardware being used and the applications that are running.

For example, I once saw XP running on a PII-300 with 128MB of RAM, which is MS'es minimum recommendation. Performance was terrible! The poor hard drives on that thing were constantly running to access the swap file, and the system was practically unusable when trying to run more than one application at once. Windows 2000 runs fine on it, however, and can switch between three or four running applications at once without and serious lag time.

I then tried it on a P3-667 with 256MB of RAM, and it ran much nicer. Once you turned off some of the eye candy, it performed just as well as Windows 2000. Even big, bloated applications like Lotus Notes and Netscape 6 didn't take any longer to start up than before. Task switching was also just as quick as before.

On high-end machines, the performance difference is negligable. With good graphics drivers, even games will run at 90% to 100% of the speed that they ran under Windows 98. Look at the benchmarks that all of the other magazines and web sites are publishing, and you'll get the idea.

[Superbob]

True, but don't forget that Slashdot is owned by VA Software, formerly known as VA Linux.

They don't just bash Microsoft because many of their users hate the company, they do it because it's good for the VA's consulting and software businesses.

Originally posted by jtshaw:
Slashdot didn't write the article, they just posted the link...and what you have to recognize about slashdot is they aren't all anti microsoft, there most vocal members are always at the extremes. They either love something (in this case Microsoft/Windows) or dispise it, and often can't give a real good reason why

[This message has been edited by Superbob (edited November 03, 2001).]