Video Card Performance in Windows 9x vs. 2000

Hi guys,

I'm curious about video card perfomances in Windows 98/Me vs Windows 2000 or even XP. I have Rage Fury Pro card, and I recently upgraded from windows 98 to 2000, and my 3DMark2001 score went from 2800 to 2000 (I ran it in 640x480 mode to make myself feel better). I have the latest drivers (5.13.1.3279), and my card is overclocked w/ powerstrip.

I what everyone else's experiences were with video cards and changing OS's to windows 2000 or XP from 9x. I saw in an online article somewhere that game performance increased with windows 2k, but that was with like a Geforce3. Do you think the performance change is just a driver issue?

Thanks for your input.

Chris

Chris-the dude said:

Hi guys,

I'm curious about video card perfomances in Windows 98/Me vs Windows 2000 or even XP. I have Rage Fury Pro card, and I recently upgraded from windows 98 to 2000, and my 3DMark2001 score went from 2800 to 2000 (I ran it in 640x480 mode to make myself feel better). I have the latest drivers (5.13.1.3279), and my card is overclocked w/ powerstrip.

I what everyone else's experiences were with video cards and changing OS's to windows 2000 or XP from 9x. I saw in an online article somewhere that game performance increased with windows 2k, but that was with like a Geforce3. Do you think the performance change is just a driver issue?

Thanks for your input.

Chris

Click to expand...

I'd say its a driver issue... that and win9x in comparison with 2000 is better performance wise for 3d stuff... IMO anyway... XP is great for a DX8 card as its part of the os... I've gotten my best 3dmark2k1 scores with XP over 98se. But for yours... I'd say its drivers. Have you tried other versions... perhaps an older version will yield better performance.

Well you see....i have a Rage Fury Pro, and it was made for Win98...the geforce3, 2 series has very good WinXP/2000 drivers and that is why perforamcne is the same or better....

with teh rage fury Pro i HIGHLY suggest you use Win98....the win2k drivers are subpar..

install directx8. youre gonna get about the same you got under w98.

Hi, Thanks for the replies. I am surprised though about the huge difference between the windows 2000 drivers and the windows 98 drivers. I wish I would have known before i upgraded to windows 2000 BTW, I have directx 8.1.

So it sounds like any type of video card related perfomance differences between windows 9x and 2000 are driver related issues. Any other thoughts on this topic?

Chris

update

Hey, just to let you know, I ended up junking 2000 and going back to windows 98. I couldn't get my DVD software to work with my video card, and somehow my CD-RW wasn't compatible (according to the mitsumi website).

I like windows 98 much better now- it starts up so quickly, and fat32 seems to be very noticably faster than ntfs. And NO compatibility issues. Although I may try re-installing windows 2k after I get a better video card

Thanks All,

-Chris

Re: update

Chris-the dude said:

Hey, just to let you know, I ended up junking 2000 and going back to windows 98. I couldn't get my DVD software to work with my video card, and somehow my CD-RW wasn't compatible (according to the mitsumi website).

I like windows 98 much better now- it starts up so quickly, and fat32 seems to be very noticably faster than ntfs. And NO compatibility issues. Although I may try re-installing windows 2k after I get a better video card

Thanks All,

-Chris

Click to expand...

you wouldnt be dissapointed....i got my Geforce2 and i was like woah....how was i playing these games at such low fps....

Another thing that I dont think that anybody hit on is that Win. 2000 and XP also use up a lot more system resources, cpu and ram. That could be a bit of where your problems are stemming from as well. I just installed XP and havent made up my mind as to how well I like it. My system just isnt fast enough for it I guess.

The Win9X based OS' are much better than the NT based OS' like XP, and 2000, for FPS games. But you do have to give up a little bit of stability for it. It's not usually a problem if you shut down your computer when you're not using it, or if you reboot it every couple of days or so.