windows 98 vs. 2000 vs. xp vs. vista????

[macdawg]

since older versions of windows consume less resources, why dont more gamers use windows 2000, for example?

it would seem that the less resources windows is using, the more resources could be dedicated to the game, or at least make things smoother.

the good thing about xp is that you can do many things to strip down its resource usage, but still older operating systems use even less resources.

most people know that xp recognizes up to 4 gigs of memory, and i think windows 98 only recognizes 256 or 512 at most, making it useless as a gaming os, i assume that windows 2000 could recognize a gig?

I have heard one reason why people dont use older OSs is because of poor memory management for recent games?

anyone have any facts or opinions to share?

 

[maroon1]

Most of the new games now don't run on older operating system.
For example oblivion just runs on XP, and doom3 just run on 2000/XP.

 

[Trifid]

Just clearing it up, 98 is 512mibs, 2000 is 4Gibs along with XP, but these do not allocate it very well, so a true max should be 3 gibs. Vista 32bit will be 3 too, but 64bit XP and Vista is 128Gibs but the again the theoretical limit will be lower.

It is best to game on the OS that has the optimum drivers, as RAM isn't really a problem for XP, as everyone who is really interested in gaming will get a good amount for their most demanding game.