333mhz, should i get XP?

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sd321

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I have a 333mhz Pentium 2, 224mb ram and a 32mb PCI Radeon SDR video card. I am running Windows 98 right now, and i am wondering if i should upgrade to windows XP. Would i see a performance increase or decrease, and in which areas? Any advice or information that you can give would be appreciated.
 
I probably wouldn't recommend it, although it is possible to install XP on that system. The CPU you have is a tad slow but should be able to handle XP quite well, you have enough RAM so tht's no problem.BUT you would most probably have to turn off most (if not all) visual features, giving it the basic Win9x look because the flashy visual themes take a load on your 3d card/cpu. The main problem is that it'd chew up lots of your hard drive space (mine is about 2GB for the C:\Windows directory), also incompatibility issues with your hardware, software etc. It's always good to find out what programs/games on your PC will work under XP. There are a few that will not work probably.

I personally think you should leave '98 on, or try installing XP on another hard drive just to test it on your machine.

Good luck
 
Your chances are 50-50 that xp should run without any problems . Your processor will make you problems . But you can try it ( if didn't saw it in large ) cause i heard from a friend that xp worked ( that's all ) on an PII 250 with 64 RAM . Your pc will start faster but windows will run under 98 performance . . .
 
I have an old 333mhz Pentium 11 with 320 ram .
I've been using xp pro about four months now with no problems
In my opinion it perfoms a lot better than 98, I've turned off a lot
of the eye candy and it zooms along and every thing is up to date.
 
i just installed xp pro on a friends pII 350MHz with 320MB RAM and 8mb ATI rage 3D plus. It installed perfectly right off the bat. I didnt need to download any drivers (you dont know the pain it was installing 98se on that same computer...half of his components didnt work). I turned off the visual features like fading menus and stupid stuff like that, but still using the luna theme and it seemsto run quite smoothly. If u decide to go for it make sure u have enough disk space
 
I don't think he'll have a problem, and I think it'll be better then 98,...just enough ram, if you can stick in a little more, do it
 
Thx for the replies. I guess i will be able to run it if i turn off those features you mentioned. But space might be a problem. I have an 8 gig hard drive and i have about 2 gigs free. I first want to install in on another drive to see how it runs, but i am not sure if that's enough space. Also, what will the increase in space be if i upgrade from 98 to XP?
 
XP uses a lot more memory (around 2 gigs). I installed it on my 350mhz AMD K6 w/ 3.2 gig hard drive and it worked fine. Just disable all the features except the new interface. :)
 
Yeah might be ok but best to get more RAM.

Before I brought me new Althlon 1800+ XP. I have a PII 400 with 786mb RAM. I have discovered that XP will with a crappy processor but the RAM can make up for it.

For instance my PII 400 never fell below 450mb of spare RAM.

I surrggest get more RAM maybe take your computer up to the max, although this would be expensive.

There nothing like a lot of RAM.

PS does anyone know where I can get CHEAP DDR-RAM PC2100 from? If you do give us an email: Gcotterill@cwcom.net
 
thx for the advice! :) I want to install XP on a separate partition first to see if it works. Should i make this partition Fat32?
 
Originally posted by sd321
thx for the advice! :) I want to install XP on a separate partition first to see if it works. Should i make this partition Fat32?
Yeah fat32 is ok. If you like it you can always do the necessary backup and start from scratch in the future (or vise-versa - reclaim the space).

Prediction - I see a complete format and clean installation of XP in your near future (I think you'll like ;) ).
 
Will a clean install of XP be smaller in size than an upgraded Win98? If so, how much?
 
It depends on if you save the files to uninstall XP. I think your first idea was good... try it on another partition (as big as you can make it - 2+ gig) and see how it works for you. That way if it turns out to be a compatability nightmare you can just reclaim the space, fix your bootloader and voila, no more nightmare. Uninstalling an upgrade will probably leave you in a postition of a new install of 98 anyway and because of real negative 'upgrade' experiences I NEVER recommend them.

If you can swing it, get yourself a brand spanking new hard drive (that 8 gigger doesn't give you much 'play' room), unplug your old one, plug in the new one and go from there.
 
Clean Install...and the "File System"

I would do a Clean Install anyway, if there is any corruption in the previous operating system (win98 in your case i think) then it will be carried over into XP.

Also, use the NTFS file system, it has smaller clusters, and in the end, will enable you to use more of your hard drive.
 
I have a Pentium III 450 Mhz and 256 Mb Ram!!
It works fine to me

FB
 
Thanks for the advice everybody, keep it coming.
What are advantages and disadvantages of using NTSC or FAT32?
 
OK....

Ok...I'll try to make this understandable.

Data is stored on the hard disk, in small pieces called 'clusters.'

Clusters are the root of where the data is stored. Say you put something on your hard drive, we'll say 5.25 MB...and the cluster size is .5 MB (this is JUST an example...there is no .5 MB cluster system in existence right now...except maybe in a museum...). Back to the subject...you put this 5.25 MB file on your hard disk, it takes up 10.5 clusters right? Actually, it takes up 11 clusters, because you can't partially fill a cluster, and once you put data on a cluster, it becomes used, so even putting a 1 byte file into the example above would take up .5 MB of disk space, and a .51 MB file would take up 1 MB of disk space.

Now onto the NTFS vs FAT32:

The default cluster size for FAT32 is 4 kb which isn't really bad, and with FAT32 you can change the cluster size, but you have to do it during the format of the drive, which, is slightly confusing to a non-techie type person, but who wants to be like me anyway. :p

The default cluster size for NTFS, is 2 kb, obviously more efficient than FAT32 unless you have the cluster size of FAT32 specified at less than or equal to 2 kb.

That's pretty much all...

Post a reply if you need anything else
 
I had a P2 333 with 128megs of 66mhz ram. A voodoo 3 3000 and a 7200 rpm HD with Win XP and it ran just fine. I didnt even turn any of the cool options off......


:cool:
 
qooute;...
The default cluster size for NTFS, is 2 kb, obviously more efficient than FAT32 unless you have the cluster size of FAT32 specified at less than or equal to 2 kb.




well, I think I get it, BUT if a 2kb , or 1kb cluster size is more efficient, then why isn't THAT the default, and why doesn't everybody have 1kb cluster size in the first place?
 
Because...

The default cluster size for FAT32 is 4 kb because of the size of the drives that were available at the time the file system was developed, FAT32 was designed to work with drives over 2 GB in mind. NTFS was desgined to work with all drives. The reason why FAT32 was desgined to work with drives over 2 GB is because FAT16 couldn't handle anything over that without having extremely large clusters. The reason why you would not want to necessarily use FAT32 to get a 1 kb cluster size is because of a performance decrease. If your hard drive works as hard as it can, to access a 2 kb cluster, then it will take twice as long to access information from a 2 1kb clusters, obviously alot lower performance writing or reading large files.
 

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