Is Winows 2000 good for gaming?

[BITM@D]

As a technician I get asked this question a lot.
It's time I had a good answer.
What are the factors that make win2k suitable or unsuitable for gaming?
I run an overclocked Celeron (433/541)and a Geforce. I see that NVidia have w2k drivers for their range of cards but have always considered NT as unsuitable for games. I'm not sure how I arrived at that opinion (something about hardware access I think)
Time to stop being vague with my clients.
BTW...My favourite games are Midtown Madness, Viper and Grim Fandango.

[GroundZero3]

from personal experience i think that win2k is not a suitable game os. i have it running right now and i play q3 q2 starcraft and halflife and opposing forces. and i will tell you that all those games ran alot smoother on win95. on win2k its all choppy but maybe becasue i have only 64 mb of RAM and Win2k requires alot more than 95. this is just my two cents.

JaYsin

[BITM@D]

This is interesting.
I wonder if this is just a matter of the extra overhead that w2k requires or is it
inherent in w2k that games won't run well.
For the sake of this discussion I will presume that there is enough "horsepower" for the task. My query is with the overall attitude of this OS to games in general.
I need technical responses for my clients with sound reasoning based on technical fact.
Having said that, I will take all anecdotal evidence (thanks GroundZero3) on board.

[Mntsnow]

I have found for the most part that Win2K is a very capable OS for gaming when setup for it. I run Win2K on a p3 600 with 128 megs with a ATI on-board vid card at work and play UT, Q2 and Q3 with no problems. (vid card holds back the frame rates though) but at home I have a BP6 with dual 366's @ 550 with 256 megs of ram TNT2 Ultra that just screams in my games....All but my NFS ones...EA doesnt port their games to NT at this time

[BITM@D]

Thanks Mntsnow.
Could you please explain "porting to NT"
I can't remember seeing a game with a seperate .exe for NT. (but then again I was never looking for it)
Do I have to look for special NT installing instructions.
Is there a general answer to this question.
I want to be able to say something like...
"Yes, you can play 3D games on W2K but....."
Who can complete this sentence for me?

[Mntsnow]

The way NT and I should say NT5 access hardware is different than that of Win9x Thus the game must be compatable with NT. When I said "porting to NT" I mean that EA (Electronic Arts) has not coded (written) their games to be used with Win2K as they think NT is for BUSINESS only! lol I think they might change there minds! (I hope I hope)

You might also look at this thread. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/Forum9/HTML/000499.html

[Navin]

Anandtech.com does some of their processor and video card reviews under the W98 platform and the W2K platform. In most cases, you'll notice a 7-10fps increase in Quake 3 for example using W2K over W9x. I'm not sure exactly why - Windows 2000 is obviously more robust than W9x. It's just a faster operating system, if you feed it the memory and processor requirements it wants http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif.

I've been using Windows 2000 for all my games and have never been disappointed.

[Joel Kleppinger]

Win2k is a very capable gaming OS. It will only improve as the X-box comes out and developers are coding for the Win2k kernel.

General support isn't as good, though. I've found several games that don't work, but most are ones that I don't care much about anyway. I do wish Madden 98 worked, but at least NBA Live 98 and 2000 both work fine (if I could only have one, that's the tradeoff I take http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif).

If you have a game that doesn't specifically mention Win2k support, then it's a toss-up. Many games will still work, but some just won't.

[Toadman]

Same probs I have playing HL after loading W2k. 10-15 seconds into the game,-boom-, hard lock up! Even with latest SBlive! and Detonator 3 TNT2/GEO drivers, Athlon 750, 128mb RAM, it just refuses to play anymore. Guess I'll live with it until WinME rolls out.

[BITM@D]

So, we can safely assume that Windows (not Winows) 2000 is quite happy and capable of running many/most games. Adding, that there must be adequate resources available (especially RAM) and there should be a mention of W2K support just to be safe.
DirectX I'm a bit hazy on. What I remember about DirectX (I need correcting here) is that it is a way for gamers to interface with an OS and therefore the hardware. How does NT get around this and is W2K any different to NT4 in this regards?
Theoretically W2K is rock solid and should work with most games. No?

[AuraEdge]

I went back to Win98SE only for games. Win2k is an awesome OS, but NOT for the gamer.
For some video cards, the W2k drivers arent as mature as the W9x ones, and that may slow games down.
Also the RAM overhead issue...I didnt really have that, cuz I was using 192MB.
Also, some games either refuse to boot because it thinks that Win2k, being NT5, doesnt have directX (one such game is Systemshock 2). Some games will act abnormally. For some reason, If I played starcraft, and then i quit later, the program will still be stuck in my taskbar, and I cant end the program, and I cant load up starcraft again until reboot.
Also, Diablo 2 was crashing every time after about 10 seconds into it in Win2k (using Win2k Detonator 2 drivers for a Geforce2 GTS). May have been a driver issue, I really dont know.

Its just little things like those that pushed me away from Win2k.

Its all in support. If everyone and thier kids were using Win2k like Win9x, it would be awesome, since software developers would make stuff with Win2k in mind. Win2k is an exceptional OS, no doubt about it, but for me, it wasnt worth the frustration when I wanted to play a game and couldnt.
Win2k does help in other frustrations tho, such as not having to reformat when the OS decides to 86 itself. WIn2k is stable as a rock, and when it does screw up, ends up fixing itself.

I dont have Win2k on my system right now at all, cuz Im running low on HDD space, but after I get a new HDD, its back to dualbooting.

[Toadman]

Win2k comes with directx7 so I don't think it is an issue.

[Dputiger]

I'm going to throw this one out, just for thought:

Although Win2K does seem to be pretty good for gaming, keep in mind, that's not what it was designed for. Most games don't specify Win2k support and I haven't read a single site or review that recommended using it.

So it *may* work well, but you've always got the chance of something weird happening under it that wouldn't happen under Win98.

[BITM@D]

That's a good point.
W2K has some great features. If games where not a hassle then it would probably make a good all round choice.
Another problem (and quite a seperate issue) is that I see too many Win98 machines in Business environments running no backup and that's a worry.
Thanks all who replied. www.bitmad.com (http://www.bitmad.com)