How much of a difference would there be?

W

WookieRookie

Gawd
Joined
Jan 7, 2002
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If I upgraded from Win89SE to WinXP? Im currently running an Athlon64 3000+ system with 512 megs of RAM. I heard that Win98SE does not utilize all of the AMD64s power. Is this true and would it be worth upgrading?
 
Yes. Particullarly if you're into gaming. If you'd like to give it a go for free, perhaps you could check out the Pre-Release version of XP 64 bit here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/upgrade.mspx

I haven't tried it out, so I can't attest to compatability/stability, but shoot, it's free and will give you a fairly good idea of what you can expect from XP. I think it's deffinitley time to move past any of the 9x OS's out there. Good Luck!
 
I would strongly suggest making a leap to XP, as it is more stable and is pretty damn fast, and your system could handle it just fine.

The preview release of XP-64 will give you an inkling of what it's like to run 64-bit windows, but it has crappy driver support since it's a preview release.
 
I should mention that Win Server 2003 is very nice as well, but it doesn't run all games that XP does, unfortunately.
I have been runing the server version for 6 months already: I can play almost all games and software that XP does, but 2003 is even faster sometimes. I got a real improvement of 1000 3Dmarks (3dmark 2001SE) in a comparison with XP in the same hardware (2600+/a7v8x/radeon 9200/ 1 GB pc 2700 samsung@2-2-2-7)
 
I will give that XP-64 a try and see. Would I be better off reformating before I install it or will it get rid of win98SE by itself?
As for driver support, Im assuming that all current WinXP drivers for my components will work with winXP64 right?
 
WookieRookie said:
I will give that XP-64 a try and see. Would I be better off reformating before I install it or will it get rid of win98SE by itself?
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Format it and install XP in a clean partition. History tells that upgrades to WinXP from Win98 are a disaster for performance/stability.

As for driver support, Im assuming that all current WinXP drivers for my components will work with winXP64 right?
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Nope... drivers for WinXP 64 bits are not the same (and don't behave the same) as they do in the 32 bits OS version. You should seek for specific XP-64 drivers (which are still few, since the SO official version hasn't even been released)
 
If you've got the drive space, I would make another partition, and install XP on that. Windows will then give you an option of which operating system to boot at startup. This will let you try before you knock off your 98 install.

Also, others are right to warn you of driver issues, and I should have done so as well. You can expect to see the features of XP well illustrated, but performance/stability may take a hit. Final versions of the 64BIT are rummored to be several months away, so if you want to make the switch, I'd just grab the current version. Just remeber, don't judge XP by the trial versions stability if there are issues, after all it's free.
 
Just tried it and I liked it. I had to uninstall it though because driver support was horrible as you said. Most of the drivers that I found that were 64bit compatible did not work and the ones that did, created the system to become unstable.
I believe I will eventually be upgrading to WinXP in the next month or so before the year is over. Now I just need to decide whether to buy the retail or OEM version and which version- Home or Pro.

And on a side note- why are they releasing a new version of winxp? Isn't longhorn supposed to come out soon?
 
You cannot upgrade from 32 bit to 64 bit btw. Doesn't work, you have to do a clean install.
 
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