Will Win2k Gameplay always be slower?
This is a discussion about Will Win2k Gameplay always be slower? in the Windows Games category; Are games slower in Win2k mainly because vid card drivers have not matured? Or will they never really reach Win98 levels? Celeron 300a@464 on a Abit BH6 Rev 1. 01, 192 Pc100, Matrox G400 32 SH, SBlive Value, Supra Express 56i ISA, all running on Win2k pro with other odds and ends.
Are games slower in Win2k mainly because vid card drivers have not matured? Or will they never really reach Win98 levels?
Celeron 300a@464 on a Abit BH6 Rev 1.01, 192 Pc100, Matrox G400 32 SH, SBlive Value, Supra Express 56i ISA, all running on Win2k pro with other odds and ends
Celeron 300a@464 on a Abit BH6 Rev 1.01, 192 Pc100, Matrox G400 32 SH, SBlive Value, Supra Express 56i ISA, all running on Win2k pro with other odds and ends
Participate in our website and join the conversation
This subject has been archived. New comments and votes cannot be submitted.
Jun 6
Jun 13
0
8 minutes
Responses to this topic

OP
hmm
My Win2k is faster than 98 by 5-8 fps across the board.
coppermine 733
Asus P3B-F
Geforce DDR 256 5.22 98&2k
coppermine 733
Asus P3B-F
Geforce DDR 256 5.22 98&2k
Companies just haven't gotten the hang of making gaming drivers for NT yet.
My personal experience with Win2k gaming has been very positive.
The only game I haven't been able to play has been half-life. Pretty much everything else I'm interested in plays, and plays better than it ever did in any version of win 9.x
I don't bother with benchmarking since I stopped o/c'ing. Its no big deal to lose a bit of framerate, when the games no longer crash, don't jitter or lag (well Messiah shouldn't count because it was broken in any OS), and generally run smooth as butter.
This isn't with a balls to the wall system either, just a middle of the road one. Granted I do have a lot of memory, and even when I insist memory is one of the most important pieces of hardware on message boards, people tend to scoff at the idea. Then again, those people seem to be the one's with the most problems
Case in point, I was playing Motocross Madness 2 in 1920x1440x16 the other day with about 15-17fps. Almost playable and this was with a TNT2 Ultra. How many people with win9.x can do the same thing?
Its a personal preference, but to me Win2k is the best OS for everything I do with a computer.
The only game I haven't been able to play has been half-life. Pretty much everything else I'm interested in plays, and plays better than it ever did in any version of win 9.x
I don't bother with benchmarking since I stopped o/c'ing. Its no big deal to lose a bit of framerate, when the games no longer crash, don't jitter or lag (well Messiah shouldn't count because it was broken in any OS), and generally run smooth as butter.
This isn't with a balls to the wall system either, just a middle of the road one. Granted I do have a lot of memory, and even when I insist memory is one of the most important pieces of hardware on message boards, people tend to scoff at the idea. Then again, those people seem to be the one's with the most problems

Case in point, I was playing Motocross Madness 2 in 1920x1440x16 the other day with about 15-17fps. Almost playable and this was with a TNT2 Ultra. How many people with win9.x can do the same thing?
Its a personal preference, but to me Win2k is the best OS for everything I do with a computer.
What are your Half-Life symptoms?
------------------
Written on:
PII 300
Aopen AX6B
160mb RAM
i740 8mb
20gb Seagate
6gb WDCaviar
Using 100% Australian Made recyclable electrons
------------------
Written on:
PII 300
Aopen AX6B
160mb RAM
i740 8mb
20gb Seagate
6gb WDCaviar
Using 100% Australian Made recyclable electrons
I'll second that.
What are your Half-Life symptoms?
I can install it fine, but the moment the game attempts to run after entering the keycode i simply get an "Explorer generating errors" message.
Strange thing is, both the Half-Life UpLink and Opposing Force demos run great. The full game just doesn't want to know at all.
No problems with Thief or Thief 2, so I guess i'll survive for now.
What are your Half-Life symptoms?
I can install it fine, but the moment the game attempts to run after entering the keycode i simply get an "Explorer generating errors" message.
Strange thing is, both the Half-Life UpLink and Opposing Force demos run great. The full game just doesn't want to know at all.
No problems with Thief or Thief 2, so I guess i'll survive for now.
make sure to update half-life to the latest patch.... that will fix most problems
Pikey, I have exactly the same symptoms as you. I have tried the compat patch without success.
I don't need the tweaked half-life .inf, because I run my desktop in 16 bit.
I also tried using the half-life game update and spent most of one day d/loading the latest patch(10 days ago), only to try and unpack the update and got crc errors.
I want to play the game again, and try counterstrike, so I will use up one more night and download the latest update from the fastest mirror I can find.
I don't need the tweaked half-life .inf, because I run my desktop in 16 bit.
I also tried using the half-life game update and spent most of one day d/loading the latest patch(10 days ago), only to try and unpack the update and got crc errors.
I want to play the game again, and try counterstrike, so I will use up one more night and download the latest update from the fastest mirror I can find.
The game is working finally.
I downloaded the 1.1 patch last night. The one that will upgrade any version of half-life.
I reinstalled half-life this morning. Bit of problem there. Auto-run generated errors. I had to reboot, open explorer and run setup.exe from the cd manually. It gave an error message about some "current control set + vxd + more microsoftincompatibility16bitbull****:-)". Just click on ignore and the game will install.
Don't try running the game yet. Go to the downloaded patch and install it first. Then run the game and it should be ok.
I tried playing in d3d at 1280x960, but it was very jerky. I also couldn't save properly, because when I hit "esc" to get to the save menu, all I got was a black screen. Hit "esc" to get back to the game, "alt-tab" to minimize and use task manager to shut down the game.
I restarted the game, changed video to 1024x768 in "default" Open GL and it worked great. You can now use the "esc" key to access the save/load/quit/etc. menu.
Have to say after 2 years, the game still makes the hairs on the back of my neck still stand up.
Hope this helps you people out.
PIII550
Viper 770 TNT2 Ultra with 5.22 drivers
Aureal 8830 reference drivers
Lots of ram, hd giggage, big frigging monitor
Counterstrike here I come.
Good luck all.
I downloaded the 1.1 patch last night. The one that will upgrade any version of half-life.
I reinstalled half-life this morning. Bit of problem there. Auto-run generated errors. I had to reboot, open explorer and run setup.exe from the cd manually. It gave an error message about some "current control set + vxd + more microsoftincompatibility16bitbull****:-)". Just click on ignore and the game will install.
Don't try running the game yet. Go to the downloaded patch and install it first. Then run the game and it should be ok.
I tried playing in d3d at 1280x960, but it was very jerky. I also couldn't save properly, because when I hit "esc" to get to the save menu, all I got was a black screen. Hit "esc" to get back to the game, "alt-tab" to minimize and use task manager to shut down the game.
I restarted the game, changed video to 1024x768 in "default" Open GL and it worked great. You can now use the "esc" key to access the save/load/quit/etc. menu.
Have to say after 2 years, the game still makes the hairs on the back of my neck still stand up.
Hope this helps you people out.
PIII550
Viper 770 TNT2 Ultra with 5.22 drivers
Aureal 8830 reference drivers
Lots of ram, hd giggage, big frigging monitor
Counterstrike here I come.
Good luck all.
yeah i have no probs running HL on my Voodoo 2 in openGL, Ive tried D3D but its always to friggen dark and CS is dark enough as is, when i run it in D3D i almost always have to buy NVGs and turn up my monitor brightness. But I have had no probs running anything in win2k i must be lucky
I've always found that playing games on NT was much better than win98!
My experience is this: drop of framerate in Q3 of ~10 fps (down from 60 to 50 in 1024 or from 35 to 25 in 1280 (no o'c-ing)).
I was thinking about investigating here, but I dont think its worth it. 50 fps is great, too.
I didnot have any probs with half-life, yet (three weeks..). I started out with 1.0.1.6 and I never encounetered errors (other than that the server I was formerly playing on host randomly kicked users...).
------------------
My system specs:
PIII 600E @ 800, SBLive, 15 GB IBM, Gigabyte BX2000, WinTV, Pioneer DVD, Iiyama VM Pro 451 (1280x1024@100Hz .
I was thinking about investigating here, but I dont think its worth it. 50 fps is great, too.
I didnot have any probs with half-life, yet (three weeks..). I started out with 1.0.1.6 and I never encounetered errors (other than that the server I was formerly playing on host randomly kicked users...).
------------------
My system specs:
PIII 600E @ 800, SBLive, 15 GB IBM, Gigabyte BX2000, WinTV, Pioneer DVD, Iiyama VM Pro 451 (1280x1024@100Hz .
I've been having some strange Half-Life problems lately and I wonder if I'm the only one with these symptoms. I installed Win2K pro fresh just this weekend including the usual gamut of drivers and such. I then installed Half-life, the new patch, and Cstrike and they all ran fine..... for about a day! Now whenever I play half-life one of three things could happen: 1) it could play just fine, 2) the sound could cut out after awhile and then I would be unable to kill the hl.exe process, or 3) the video could just stop at some random time and the sound would repeat over and over (completely locked).
This is not consistant so I haven't a clue what it could be. I have an Asus Geforce DDR and these problems did not occur when I had the 3.xx drivers (any of them, even Asus) but now it happens with 3.xx and 5.xx drivers! I tried a new BIOS for my system, and it locked up before and after the new hl patch. I really don't want to go back to win98 to play games this summer, but I might just have to (Every other game works just peachy).
I also cannot get AGP 2x to work in 2000 without locking, but I could easily in Win98!
Athlon 550 on GA-7IX
128MB PC-100 RAM
Asus Geforce256 DDR with ref 5.22 drivers
Diamond MX300 with ref 2500.49 beta drivers
Windows 2000 Pro
------------------
- Andrew
This is not consistant so I haven't a clue what it could be. I have an Asus Geforce DDR and these problems did not occur when I had the 3.xx drivers (any of them, even Asus) but now it happens with 3.xx and 5.xx drivers! I tried a new BIOS for my system, and it locked up before and after the new hl patch. I really don't want to go back to win98 to play games this summer, but I might just have to (Every other game works just peachy).
I also cannot get AGP 2x to work in 2000 without locking, but I could easily in Win98!
Athlon 550 on GA-7IX
128MB PC-100 RAM
Asus Geforce256 DDR with ref 5.22 drivers
Diamond MX300 with ref 2500.49 beta drivers
Windows 2000 Pro
------------------
- Andrew
I've had no problems with HL under win2000, although I have to be in Administrator or a user with Administrator rights to play it.
These are the specs I'm running.
C533
192MB RAM
10.2GB HDD
Viper 550
SB Live value
These are the specs I'm running.
C533
192MB RAM
10.2GB HDD
Viper 550
SB Live value
If I can get a game to run in Win2k, 99% of the time it runs better. Less hits to the HD and decent FPS from some admittedly bad beta drivers from ATI.
[This message has been edited by Wolf (edited 13 June 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Wolf (edited 13 June 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Wolf (edited 13 June 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Wolf (edited 13 June 2000).]
I especally remember drakan loading save games much faster in win2k than in win98. 15-30 secs in win98 while only 1-3 secs in win2k.