[RESOLVED] Gaming Performance in Winodws ME

[Lee_Nover]

Has anybody noticed a considerable performance bog with most FPS games with Windows ME over Windows 98 SE. I didn't do any benchmarking with 98 SE, but I can notice some slower performance with most games, especially games with OpenGL when using ME.

[GirlGeek]

I'm running ME (fresh install) on a system with the following specs:

GA-7ZX
AMD TB 1 GHz
256 pc133
VooDoo 5500 (AGP)

I have no issues with my games, Diablo, UT and Vampire all move fairly flawlessly. The only change I'm making is I'm upping the PS to a 430 from a 250.
I'm curious as to how you loaded ME (on top of 98 or fresh) and if possibly there are hardware conflicts causing the game issues.

Just a thought...

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Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit, and
the recipient who doesn't get it.

[Lee_Nover]

I always do clean installs, never upgrades over older OS. I also play quite CPU intensive games like No One Lives Forever, Silent Sam, UT, etc. It must be my CPU (Cel 300 A overclocked to 450).

[QSECOFR]

I would be suspicious of the overclocked CPU. Upgrade are relatively cheap. For a couple of hundred dollars, you could get a 700Mhz Duron. Or if you had a little more money, you could invest about $350-400 and get a Pentium III. Then that might help with the CPU intensive applications.

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I wish they had Doom for OS/400...that would be some treat!

[Lee_Nover]

Will that fit into the same motherboard that can handle a Celeron 300 A?

[Sandman72]

I would guess not. As for games on ME...I run plenty of games like Soldier of Fortune, Janes USAF with no problems at all. I have run a few with open GL again no problems.

[Lee_Nover]

It's just that in Windows 98 SE I never had a performance hit, then I upgraded to Windows ME, disabled all the funky crap that sucked the hell out of my resources, have nothing running in the back ground, no virus junk, only two things load up during start up, completely have it running very lean, added 64 mb's of extra ram (192) in total, and my games are now choppy and hesitant. I have a voodoo 3 with the latest drivers, defrag every day, blah, blah, blah.

[Kenteth420]

Windows ME does take up more recourses than 98 did, so you may notice a decline, I think it runs my games a little better to tell you the truth.

[stupot71]

I run HL Op4 etc with a PIII 550 with win ME without a hitch, In fact all the people at our LAN games now use ME the only problem i find if the defragging issue unless we defrag before a game we get slightly slower performance

[Ruahrc]

I've seen benchmark reports where they reported ME as slower than 98SE in every application/game except Netscape 6. But the change was small, however. My friend runs a Tbird 900 with ME, 128MB RAM, the works, and gets great game performance in UT, NFSHS, and Tony Hawk 2.

Ruahrc

[Rune]

I have benchmarked both the Win98se and ME.
And I know on my machine PIII 450, 256ram, TnT2 U. ME is slower on games that use opengl.

[LagMonster]

I have had a considerable performance hit with ME on my 750Mhz AMD with 256Mb RAM. I recently read a post about getting the most out of your system without buying new parts. It said how to modify the win.ini
[vcache]
minfilesize= x
maxfilesize = x

Where x is 25% of your current ram. I did that and it helped a lot. ME doesn't gobble up nearly as much as it did before and I don't have sluggish play when I am playing HL any more.

[Darkpoint]

Heh. Tribes at 70fps http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum/smilies/cwm16.gif

UT runs fine too.

Athlon 1.1
512MB pc 100 (found a 256 stick for $120)
30GB WD caviar
Voodoo3 3000 PCI
SB live xgamer (comes with like $250 bundled, includes UT)
4x4x32x
32x10x (dvd)

Of course, i kno tribes runs best off glide, made for the voodoo, but i have NO probs with UT running 8 bots at 200% gamespeed, etc. It's all just a question of just how powerful ur platform is. Both the software and hardware environments must be optimized.

Make sure u're running directx 8.0, it really improves performance. Plus it's a free 10MB dl.

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Ahhh nostalgia. I remember our 286-12 1MB ram, 40MB HD

[compaqman]

I game on two systems, a P3 733 with dualboot to 98se/2k pro, and a t-bird 900 running ME. Both machines have 256MB PC133 RAM and a 32MB DDR Radeon AGP video card. The 733 will often run UT and Elite Force better then the 900. I'm going to be reformatting the 900 and doing the same software install as the other system. Win Me is a resource hog!

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