To all you Windows2000 gurus

[jediphoenix]

So what is the scoop with Win2k. Is it worth it if you are a gamer to upgrade from win98 to win2k? Some people say yes and some people say no. Does the g400 32 meg SH work with it well with the beta drivers? Any problems with specific games? Thx in advance

------------------
***TRUST IN YOUR TECHNOLUST***

[Gurm]

In general it works like a charm. Current drivers are a bit slower than Win98, even under optimal conditions. If all your hardware is supported well, then you might have no problems.

The matrox drivers have some glitches still. Darkstone, for example, is unplayable due to missing bits of graphics. However, lots and lots of games DO work just fine. In fact, its emulation DOS box is better at running old DOS games than Win98 was!

The other day I fired up the following DOS games, with nary a glitch (besides from running too fast, which is why they wrote MoSlo):

Kings of the Beach
Below the Root
King's Quest 1 (not the remake)
Castles
Keef the Theif
Bard's Tale 1

So I'd say DOS compatibility is pretty good. Windows compatibility is a crapshoot with the current DirectX and OpenGL drivers from Matrox. Should you upgrade? I say yes, but not if games are your 100% highest priority. If stability and system performance is higher than games, then you'd be well served by the upgrade.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Biff Rockhard]

The term "upgrade" should be loosely interpreted. From the few articles I've read, "upgrading" from Win 95-98 is a mixed bag. Some upgrades worked fine, others didn't work at all, or did work but ran very sluggish. A completely fresh install of Win2K and a re-install of every driver/app/game you currently have seems to be the way to go. And if you want that funky NTFS file system with extra security features, you'll be re-formatting your hard drive. Will I do it? You bet your ass! I'm a sado-masochistic freak so I'm into pain and agony and will pick a weekend after it's released, lock the computer room door, and live the ecstasy that will be Win2K.

[LAMFDTK]

W2K is the next business platform, NT5. It is not W98's successor it is NT's. Should you stop using Windows and move to NT? That is the question. The stability issue has always been the same between Windows and NT, no argument there. Yes W2k is a "better" platform for a wide range of apps. But so was NT. With DX7 and USB and a host of other "Windowslike" features it does have the feeling of Windows. Wait for Millinium or get another Hard drive and a hard drive caddy, or dual boot.... I like W2k I'm on it now, at work. Its called W2k Professinal not W2k Gamers delight for a reason...

[Jazza]

Has anyone used Win2000 with dual processors, on UT or Quake 3? as I've heard that under win2k they can take advantage of 2 processors.

Is this true, or was what I read wrong?

Cheers

Adrian "Jazza"

[Broken]

What I would like to know is, how does Quake 3 run with the latest RC of Win2K and the Matrox G400? Is it playable. If so, I'll start migrating over to Win2K...

Oh also, does anyone know if The Nomad Soul will run... I've got stuck into this game recently, and will probably still be playing it for a while, since I don't have that much time to sit with games nowadays...

[Gurm]

I've run into very few games that "won't run". However, I've run into a large number of games with "slower performance". And a few with "graphical glitches".

The only time I've seen a game just refuse to run is when it was specifically coded to check for NT and fail if it found it.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[KaosDG]

Jazza: I've tried UT under Win2K with Dual Processors...

I wish I could say it was sweet, but it was horribly horribly bad...
I got to the menu, and it was VERY corrupt...
(With the new sset of beta drivers)
So I couldn't do much from there. And then after the hard reboot that followed my partitions were skr00d.

As for taking advantage of dual processors...
So far AFAIK only Q3 is SMP enabled. I haven't tried it yet, but i'm tempted.

UT will run faster, but only because other processes aren't interrupting as much.

Relevant System Info:
Dual PIII 600MHz
G400 DH Max 32 Mb
(2 19" Trinitrons... w00t!)
512MB RAM
SB Live

[jediphoenix]

Anyone know if Winoncd 3.6 works with windows 2000?

------------------
***TRUST IN YOUR TECHNOLUST***

[Gurm]

KaosDG:

I'll reiterate what I've told other people 100 times - it's your machine. It's not Win2k, and it's not Matrox's beta drivers.

I've run Win2k now on dozens of machines, and they all run flawlessly. The ones with G400's SCREAM. The 3d isn't as fast as Win9x, but what do you expect? It's NT!

As for corruption of partitions and menus - you have hardware issues. Not Win2k issues.

- Gurm

------------------
Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[APV]

If you want to download a huge file and at the same time burning a cd and at the same time browsing the net without crashing, yes you should upgrade to W2K, If you are a big fan of opengl games then u should

[Jørn Are Hatlelid]

I have tried Matrox G400 16mb with win2k pro dual processor. -after 1sec, it stops responding and a reboot is required. -If I remove one of my processors, it works just fine.

Config:
abit bp6 dual celereon 400
sb live 1024
196MB RAM

[Braindead]

same problem with my g200, smp, nt 4.34 driver and r_smp 1
i posted a problem earlier and was told it was the demo build....now i got final version of quake 3...still technicolor garbage everywhere (agp aperture set at 256)
=(

dual 366@566celery, 384mb spec 100 sdram, dual wd 9.1gb expert. g200 8mb sgram

[cutterslade]

Broken,

Quake3 runs fine on my celeron 400@450 128mb g400 dh 32mb win2k 2195 machine.

As for nomad soul, I dont know. I'll add my list of 3d games that work/don't work

Quake3 - OK
UT - OK
Outcast - OK
Tombraider 4 - NO
Jane's AF-18 - NO
Delta Force 2 - OK
KingPin - OK

Fill the list and let us know if you got the not working games to work.

Cheers

[cswan]

Hmm...I've been having problems getting any games to work. Is there any trick to getting something like Quake3 to work? I removed the TurboGL file from the Q3 directory, but the machine locks whenever I try to run Quake3. Drakan, Rollcage, Revolt--they all lock up as soon as they try to enter 3D mode. The only game I could get to work in 3D mode was Heretic2, but it was in super-funked-up graphics mode...it was actually kinda trippy

Anyone have any idears what my issues are? I _think_ I read once that someone said that Win2K is not as forgiving about sharing IRQs, and that is what I've got--my G400 is sharing an IRQ with my sound card (A3D) on my BE6. I'd move it, but I'm a wee bit short on slots to put it in. I may try enabling ACPI and seeing if it helps or harms anything.