AdmiralJ

I know that Windows XP has some serious gameing issues, i am a extreme gamer and i wish to upgrade from ME to XP but i want to know if XP will handle games good on this system:

Dell Dimension 8100

XP2 Bios

Intel Mobo

GeForce 3

Sound Blaster Live

3Com Nic

3 Com Modem
NEC DVD and BURNER

Iomega Zip

IBM HD

1.7 ghz p4

768 megs pc800 ram

All i do is game, i play basicly, warcraft iii, wolfenstein, etc etc.

I also hear that windows xp handles acpi very very bad and u get terrible game performance ie lockups, lag, bad graphics etc etc.

Will XP Handle games as good as me on my system?

AdmiralJ

you dont think ill have 1 problem at all?

AdmiralJ

I generally play at 800x600x32, i have a 19 inch nec multisync 95, the max res i use for any game is 1024 for wc3. Should i be ok with that? Will i experience any of these so called acpi related problems everyone has with xp that i talk to?

chastity

well I've never had any problems running games with xp other then a couple wouldn't run natively under XP but the little compatiblty thing made them work just fine

AdmiralJ

hmm, so if i install XP Like this , should i have any problems:

Upgrade all bios / firmware

boot off a winme cd, fdisk, format C: /c

then boot off a WinXP CD, press f6, insert promise ata card, i have 5 ata devices and need a card for my second hd. Select driver for my ata card

continue

redelete partition and create

format to ntfs, full format

install XP

install latest intel chipsets

install latest intel application accelerator

install latest sound blaster live drivers

install latest 3com nic / modem drivers

install latest detonator drivers and run nvrefreshutility and fix after installing latest monitor drivers

install and tweek the os with cacheman

get all windows updates

put on Norton Anti Virus 2002 and Zone ALarm Pro

Configure it all and make sure every possible possible setting is perfect, and set up a "fresh system restore" point so in the future, instead of formatting, i can reset to how it was when i first finished :P

chastity

yeah u could do all that or u could just boot of the XP cd and do the deleting and creating of partions and ur format from there then after u get XP installed update the drivers u need to and I would think if u have ur promise ata card installed before u boot then push f6 when asked if u need it should work

AdmiralJ

ok, and one other thing.... well maybe a bit more, thanks for replyin to what i have asked so far.

Whats the difference between the XP PRO upgrade and XP PRO full version, i have a copy of winme cd but i hear that the upgrade uses some windows me files where it would normally use winxp files, i heard using the xp pro upgrade cd is basicly like upgrading from what ever os you previously had and its not a clean install?

Also, does XP have system resources like if u go to properties of my computer, performance, is there a system resources blah or does xp have unlimited?

chastity

Well an upgrade is pretty much like it sounds it takes ur old OS and updates with all of the new features and such of the newer OS but it's sort like installing a os then installing another os on top of the first things could get strange doing an upgrade. I would get a full version of XP Pro and install from that disc which would be more of a clean install. Yes XP as resources but it does a better job of manging them but also the more harddrive space and ram u give XP the better it will be but thats is true with most os's

AdmiralJ

ok well thank you very much, im ordering XP Professional and Microsoft XP Plus from staples.com with a 40$ off coupon so its like 289 or something for both :P Ill back up all my stuff on my second HD, Wipe, and hope i dont regret spending my money.

chastity

the only I think I regret bout XP is the fact that I was cheap and got XP Home oem as opposed to XP Professional oem but I plan on getting a copy of Pro soon I hope

dijital

you system looks fine to me.

Geffy

should be good, just keep the hard drive defragged
Also I think 1024x768 would be fine with all games on that system.

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