Running Games Under Windows 2000

[I HATE BT]

lo all

I have had windows2000 on my machine before.. and it dident run games too good :( this was around 6 months back, and i have heard that DirectX8 and the new Win2k service pack does a lot for games and speeds them up faster than running games in windows 9x

the main problem i got with Windows 2000 is that the harddrive kept griding in Unreal Tourny ;(
specs are
Athlon 500
128MB RAM
Geforce256 DDR
MSI Mobo
SB LIVE 1024


thanks for any help

[Calzor Suzay]

I've been using Win2k for what seems like donkeys years now and never had any real problems with it :)

DX8 won't do much for games until there written to make use of it and SP1 did improve things a bit but like I say not much probs here, wasn't the UT disk thrashing a known problem with GeForce, textures and the patch at the time? Mine doesn't disk thrash.

Current Spec
PIII 450 (Soon to be tripled :) )
196mb
GeForce2 MX
Asus P2b-s
SB Live
fairly similar specs :)

[I HATE BT]

well.. you are right about the disk thrashing.. but it does it more in Windows 2000 for some odd reason. Maybe your RAM helps a lot though, i might get another 128MB RAM and then dual boot :)

[Calzor Suzay]

Maybe I should of said my drives are also Ultra Wide SCSI2 drives that spin at 10k :E

[JGJones]

Running Win2000 on Athlon 600 Slot a

256Mb RAM (Win2000 like its memory...)
6 HDD all IDE running as well as 1 CDROM and 1 DVD

UT doesn't have a single problem with disk trashing...

I thinks it's to do with memory really...Windows 2000 REALLY like its memory after all...you can play with 128Mb but I highly recommend 256Mb :)

Perhaps it's your GeForce though...I run with a V3 3000 and UT like Glide best...I'll slap in my old TNT2 Ultra and see how it fares (v33000's faster in UT plus my TNT2U only run at 50MHz stable now (from a high of 190MHz...the fan died but it still works just too slow :) ) but I doubt I'll get disk trashing

Try optimizing your system for Foreground applications (right click on My Computer, Properties...on one of the tab there's a entry for it)

[Calzor Suzay]

Also...
Don't use it myself but this (http://gameroffice.forez.com/) site have a utility in the download section which launches games with the high priority setting which kind of detracts from the full 32bit multi tasking ability of Win2k but dedicates resources and processor power to the one app :)

[JGJones]

Originally posted by Calzor Suzay
Also...
Don't use it myself but this (http://gameroffice.forez.com/) site have a utility in the download section which launches games with the high priority setting which kind of detracts from the full 32bit multi tasking ability of Win2k but dedicates resources and processor power to the one app :)

Used it...seem to work :) Not tested in FPS games yet...current games on my system are just DK2 (which seem pretty unstable under Win2000 (also need the latest patch 1.7 or so for it to work on Win2000...it works well if I turn sound off but that's not what I'm looking for :)) and Homeworld.

DK2 does run better with that application (when you get loads of creatures etc, it tend to hog the system a wee bit) but for Homeworld, no difference at all.

[embattle]

Don't get any HD problems....then again I do have 256 RAM which might help, I also use a program called RAM idle and have applied some tweaks to my system.

DX8 is worth it since the whole package is improved over the lackluster DX7, although as Calzor Suzay points out....none of the new stuff has had games written for it yet.