OT: Notebook OS

[Makinus]

I recently bought a noteboo that came with WinXP installed, but i´m thinking about installing Win98 instead and i wish some opinions of people that know more about these operating systems. But first my notebook configuration:

Processor Via C3 1.0ghz
256mb Ram (shared with video)
30gb HD
DVD/CDRW combo drive

What i wish to know is if, in my notebook, Win98 will be faster than WinXP and wich OS would be a better gaming plataform...

While i do use my desktop computer with WinXP and it is a good enough plataform to play the majority of the new games (Doom 3, Evil Genius, Port Royale 2, etc.) i noticed that my notebbok is a lot more slow with these game and the only diferences from the desktop is the processor (1.0ghz instead of 1.2ghz) and the video card (onboard 3d shared memory card instead of a Geforce2 64mb), and i wish to know if, installing Win98 in my notebook i will be able to play games in it like Evil Genius with a better speed...

My doubt started because in the Readme of the game Evil Genius i see that they appoint 2 different minimum hardware configurations, one for WinXP and one for Win98, and the WinXP one is heavier than the Win98 one, so, this means the Win98 needs less hardware to give the same performance of WinXP, or i am missing something?

I would aprecciate any opinions and hints to help me to decide to stay with WinXP or install Win98 in my notebook...

Thanks in advance...

[Gandalf Parker]

I have both. I find WinXP better for new games. Some people say Win98se is better for old games but I play really old DOS games with WinXP. I tihnk the difference for me might be that I upgraded to my WinXP so the drive my games are on are FAT32 format. Only the C: drive with the operating system and microsoft programs is NTFS file system

[Fyron]

Win XP slows down any system, really... It uses a lot of system resources. Win 98 would likely run faster, as it leaves more resources available to programs. However, it would be less stable, due to being 98. It would be a better gaming machine for older games, but brand new games _might_ not run as well, as they are likely optimized for XP, with little thought to 98. However, this will probably not have much effect at all.

You could install an alternate shell to Explorer, such as http://www.bb4win.com . The shell is rather Linux-like in appearance, as it is basically a port of x-windows to win32. There are Versions of it that are more windows-like in appearance, should you be interested. This would use up fewer resources than the Explorer shell. Combined with windows 98, you would maximize the resources available for your games. Additionally, it would make the Win 98 OS quite a bit more stable.

Also, with notebooks, the processor speed is not exactly equivalent to that of a desktop with the same clock rating, as with most of the hardware. Notebook hardware is designed for efficiency over raw power, due to battery life and heat concerns.

[Aiken]

About win9x family: it's much worse than NT family. In fact, it doesn't matter how fast your pc, win9x will always be slower than same system on NT. Unfortunately win2k is not designed for great game experience. So the only reasonable choise for gaming machine is xp. If you want to speed up your xp system, try XPLite. It removes all the crap from os and leaves is clean and stable (some may argue, though). There are bunch of tweakers, like X-Setup or TweakXP. Alternative shells (bb4win, geoshell, litestep) are a good choise if you want to get rid of monstrous explorer.

[Arakiel]

Makinus -

The OS isn't going to matter with that machine. Your problem is going to be the video card. 256 shared on a 1ghz machine is likely to be slow as hell for modern games no matter what OS you have on it. I'm in serious doubt if you could even play Doom 3 at all. Evil Genium i'm not familiar with but I believe it is 3d, yes? The shared video memory is gong to slow you down with any 3d game.

The above suggestions by Fyron and aiken will help free up resources for the computer and make surfing and emailing faster, but for gaming the only thing that is going to help is a better video card and more memory.
Also, given the above specs, a FULLY PATCHED 98se is going to be your best bet, XP will run dog slow on 1ghz/256mb. (editing: Although if you turn of all the fancy visual bells and whistles in XP it might be "ok"....still think 98se would be faster though)

You might want to consider Linux instead to get even better speed (pretty much rules out games though, games under Wine generally stink and there arent many native Linux games) If you do go Linux I would stay away from KDE and Gnome for a desktop environment, they can be hoggish on resources. Look for something more like Fluxbox which is nice and lightweight.

[Makinus]

So, basically, i have 3 choices to improve gaming in my notebook: 1)Install Win98se and expect a little less stability adn that some newer games will not run correctly; 2)Install Win98SE and change explorer for anothe shell, that will improve stability but keep the problem with newer games; or 3) Keep XP but install XPLite or other tweakers that will make XP consume fewer resources...

I´m tempted to try the third option since it looks like will be the less drastic one, as about the graphics card, my initial doubt started with the game Evil Genius that specified in its readme that for the rame to run in XP it would need 256mb ram/32mb video, and in for 98 it would need 128mb Ram/16mb video, so, if i want it to run in my notebbok i would need to change the OS to 98...

I´ll try first XPLite, then, if i still don´t feel satisfied i will instal win98se and change the shell...

thanks people for all the answers

[Suicide Junkie]

Arakiel said:The OS isn't going to matter with that machine. Your problem is going to be the video card. 256 shared on a 1ghz machine is likely to be slow as hell for modern games no matter what OS you have on it. I'm in serious doubt if you could even play Doom 3 at all. Evil Genium i'm not familiar with but I believe it is 3d, yes? The shared video memory is gong to slow you down with any 3d game.

That sounds a lot like my system. Reasonable games run fine for me.
The Evil Genious demo at least runs nice and only slows down when a multiple blocks of C4 or landmines go off in my base.
Doom 3 is brutal even on newer machines.

SE4, meanwhile runs fine on my 166Mhz laptop with 48 megs of ram or so, and is much more entertaining that Doom3 from what I've seen.

PS: 98 all the way!

[Makinus]

Just so you know the results of my notebook problem, i installed both Win98se and Winxp in my notebbok, and i´m using Win98 for games...

While i still don´t get playable speed with games like Evil Genius (probably because the video cad) i can play a lot of games i like with very good speeds in the notebook (Dungeon Keeper, SEIV, Xcom3)...

And, best of all, a lot of games that don´t work under XP are now available for me to play under Win98 (Xcom3 just to point an example)

About WinXP i found a very helpful site that was pointed in another thread in this board abou windows optimization that helped me to speed up my XP (mainly turning off some bells-and-wistles that are not really useful in XP except for cosmetic reasons), but i´ll keep Win98 so i can play games that don´t work under XP.

In resume i´m now with a notebook that is dual-booting with Win98 and WinXP and i divided my 30GB hd in 3 partitions: a Fat32 2gb partition for Win98, a NTFS 3gb partition for WinXP and a 25GB FAT32 partition where i put all my games/videos/etc to be acessed by both OS.

Thanks for all your help people!

[Karibu]

I miss Win 98 for one thing. MOO2 is unstable with W2K. Perhpas I install 98 some day again.