Windows 2000 Driver Thread

[DentyCracker]

I don't trust Dell at all. Not from the day a friend of mine bought a 266 P-II that came without a fan and was overheating, called Dell about it and they told him to leave the case off. I'll wait for CL's drivers next month

[mj12]

Maniac - SHUT UP ALREADY! I am so fed up with the "Well Microsoft said that it wasn't" Have you ever stopped to think for a minute why it is that MS came out and publicly said that W2K was not a gaming OS? Think about it for a moment. And why is one of the first app compat updates for a bunch of games. Read this thread http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/007822.html

[paulcs]

I actually can play games with W2K and a TNT2U, and while Quake3 is clearly faster with SMP, I don't think it looks particularly good. It could be more stable as well, and there aren't many games that support dual processors. I would hope Microsoft continues the DirectX support as well. They seemed to have abandoned NT 4 to DirectX 5 purgatory. Right now, I prefer using Windows 98.

I think demand will dictate how Microsoft treats the OS and its gaming potential. It's difficult to get a read on them now. In San Francisco yesterday, Mr. Gates said he expects close to 100% of business users to migrate to Windows 2000 in the next two years. As far as I know, very little was said about its entertainment potential.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[paulcs]

Here are some Quake 3 benchmarks:

Windows 2000
Guillemot TNT2 Ultra
Dual PIII 500's at 515 MHz (Katmai)
Asus P2B-D
384 MB RAM
Turtle Beach Vortex 1

800x600, 16-Bit/16-Bit, Normal Defaults: 67.0 (That drops about 16 or 17 FPS without SMP support)


Windows 98se
Matrox G400 Max
PIII 600 MHz (Katmai)
Asus P2B-F
384 MB RAM
Aureal Vortex 2

800x600, 16-Bit/16-Bit, Normal Defaults: 60.7


Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[This message has been edited by paulcs (edited 19 February 2000).]

[HollyBerri]

Errrr.... excuse me, but have any of you by chance perchance heard that:

<center><font size=4>Q3 IS NOT THE ONLY GAME IN THE WORLD!!!!</font></center>

Many others of us play things like (in no particular order):

• Grim Fandango
• Dark Earth
• Gabriel Knight 3
• Lose Your Marbles
• Return to Krondor

And what about the children?? Perhaps they'd like to play:

• Rugrats Mystery Adventures
• Play With the Teletubbies
• Madeline Thinking Games Deluxe
• Blue's Birthday Adventure
• Carmen Sandiego Junior Detective Edition

Will these run on Win2K???

Don't forget that if we're talking about the "average consumer" moving over to the NT kernel, their big gaming experience is Myst and Deer Hunter.

So let's not be quite so sure that "Windows 2000 is a gaming platform" is a reasonable phrase, OK?

[HollyBerri]

And so what if I have a big ass, anyway???

It's hereditary!!!!

--------------------
Holly, off to play some Duke3D usermaps in a DOS box....

[LAMFDTK]

Madeline Thinking Games Deluxe ...

Too heavy for me that Deluxe part throws me

[HollyBerri]

By the way, here's C|Net's feature on gaming in Win2k, but to save you the trouble of opening a new window , I'll quote you their conclusion:

Wrap It Up

Windows 2000 is likely to lure the same tech-savvy gear heads who have been willing to put forth the time and effort to make games run on NT. If you're not into tweaking, hacking, waiting for patches, and praying for your games to work, we recommend that you stick with Windows 98. Bear in mind the fact that all of the games we tested, and all of the games we play when we're not testing, tend to work fine on Windows 98. That's not always true of Windows 2000, however.

Of course, Windows 2000 wasn't officially released when this article was being written, so all of the tests and observations should be considered as preliminary. Updated device drivers will certainly increase the stability of gaming on Windows 2000, and as game developers include the new OS in their compatibility tests, the number of crashes and incompatibilities is likely to wane.

You're much more likely to see greater levels of compatibility and ease of use with Windows 98 than with Windows 2000. The theoretical reasons for running games on Windows 2000 are increased performance and stability, but whether that will actually become reality is still uncertain.

Guess I'll be waiting... by the time Win2K is stable enough to run the kind of games I run, it'll be time for Windows Millennium anyway....

------------------------
Holly

[cpld005]

I beleive Microsoft's compatibility update released a few days ago says alot about how Microsoft perceives gaming on Win2K if they didn't think it would work, they wouldn't release an update that basically fixes problems with nothing but games. Kinda makes you think huh? I plan on moving over tonight.