Riikcakirds wrote on 2024-05-26, 13:32:

Win2k shows memory usage around 67MB in task manager when booted clean to desktop and 61MB free. In general usage for housekeeping it is fast and smooth, as fast as Win98 and much more stable. This surprised me, but it's probably down to using an SSD with DMA enabled, which was not available in the 90's.

I actually would credit your huuuuuuge amount of RAM even more than the SSD...

A typical Pentium 100 would have had 8-16MB of RAM. The official minimum for Win2000, which is like 5 years newer than the P100, is 32MB. So... if the minimum on the box is 32MB but you're seeing mid-60s actual RAM usage at the desktop, that means it would have already been swapping like mad before you even open any applications.

(The same is true of other NT OSes, too - NT4 had minimum requirements of 16MB, recommended 32MB, and I think RAM usage at the desktop is in the low-30s, though I'm not sure if that's with the Windows Desktop Update or without.)

One random aside - the last Win2000 machine I set up back in the day was trying to repurpose my very-lousy-Aptiva-nee-Acer K6 266 with 64 megs of RAM and a 4GB HDD for my aunt in like, 2002. I was surprised at how well it ran (for her limited needs obviously, no heavy multitasking, etc) - I suspect it was one of those things where I thought "oh let's try Win2000, it's the summer, I have nothing to do, if it doesn't run acceptably I'll just reformat and install Me". Although actually... now that I'm thinking about it... I think it is perfectly possible that I said screw it to the 64 meg cache limit and put more RAM than 64MB in there before giving it to my aunt. So maybe it had 160MB or 256MB...

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-26, 13:45:

Riikcakirds wrote on 2024-05-26, 13:32:

Win2k shows memory usage around 67MB in task manager when booted clean to desktop and 61MB free. In general usage for housekeeping it is fast and smooth, as fast as Win98 and much more stable. This surprised me, but it's probably down to using an SSD with DMA enabled, which was not available in the 90's.

I actually would credit your huuuuuuge amount of RAM even more than the SSD...

A typical Pentium 100 would have had 8-16MB of RAM. The official minimum for Win2000, which is like 5 years newer than the P100, is 32MB. So... if the minimum on the box is 32MB but you're seeing mid-60s actual RAM usage at the desktop, that means it would have already been swapping like mad before you even open any applications.

Yeah but i'm using 128MB in the modern context of how nearly everyone now runs Win98 with 128MB-512MB range. I really expected Win98 with 128MB to be miles faster than Win2k with 128MB but it's exactly the same, both are really smooth and fast. The SSD definitely makes a huge difference though, I compared it to an 80GB HD with DMA and the difference is night and day in response on the desktop and general application use.

I've used Win2k on the same board, with 64MB RAM+120MHz P1 and it ran noticeably slower than Win98(FE), mainly because of lack of RAM. I think the chipset can only cache 64MB, you might get a speed boost in 98 if you remove 64MB, but that would make Win2k less usable. I personally value the great DOS game compatibility of the board in Win98 over Win2k.

I ran Windows 2K on a Pentium Pro 166 and it felt slow as a dog compared to Win98SE.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2024-05-26, 13:32:

Formatted SSD as single 120GB partition, Fat32 and then installed Win2k from DOS using winnt.exe. All hardware was recognized an […]
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Formatted SSD as single 120GB partition, Fat32 and then installed Win2k from DOS using winnt.exe.
All hardware was recognized and drivers installed. A couple of notes about drivers, the Win2k integrated Stealth 64 driver is faster and more stable than the latest available from Diamond, and a big improvement to the driver included in Win98se. SB64AWE integrated driver is more stable than latest available for Win98se (you can add AWE control panel and soundfont support if you want).

...

So the question is why would I run Win98 over Win2k on a P100 with 128 MB ram, I now can't think of any reason why I would. Every Win9x App and game I used worked and, without the instability.

I wonder if WinME, which is newer than Win2k, has drivers that are at least as good, perhaps some newer, than Win2k. Can you test your machine on WinME? Can it actually be better than Win98?

VivienM wrote on 2024-05-26, 13:45:

I actually would credit your huuuuuuge amount of RAM even more than the SSD...

Absolutely. We ran NT4, and I think even going back, NT3.51 on Pentium machines. And NT wasn't fast in those versions either. It was just better stability, more features for the purpose of the machines, I suppose. Win2k was great, but even then, unless you had the best hardware of the day, it did feel a little slow, at least until everything got loaded and cached. SSDs and more RAM just would have been a godsend, and probably extended the life of things like aging Pentiums, except those things were still quite expensive for some time. So just like SSD and RAM extends life to useful machines, it does the same for really old PCs.

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-26, 17:16:

I ran Windows 2K on a Pentium Pro 166 and it felt slow as a dog compared to Win98SE.

How much memory. It seems using an SSD with DMA makes a massive difference with Win2k on P1 era hardware. I underclocked this P100 to P75 to test this and it was still as responsive with DMA enabled. Without DMA it was slow even using a SSD and just clicking folders etc would spike CPU usage in task manager to 90% instead of 1-3% with DMA.

If I'm not mistaking, Windows 98 and 2k have different memory management.

Cache works from down to top: the first X MB until the limit are covered. Ram above is not covered and you're losing performance there.

Win 2k works that way too. It fills ram that's covered by cache and is indeed fast. As you'll use more ram you'll pass the limit and get the speed penalty for uncovered ram.

Win 98 works too to down, so it'll start with the ram that is not covered. So you'll start slow and only with more intense tasks, you'll reach the speed up cache covered ram.

Your chipset is also plagued by the coachable limit of 64MB, it'll cost you 10% performance. In the end it is noticeable bit no deal-breaker. Looking at the software you'll use on this system, the cache limit Vs amount of ram would push me to the latter too. With 98 I'd reduce to 64MB.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2024-05-26, 18:33:

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-26, 17:16:

I ran Windows 2K on a Pentium Pro 166 and it felt slow as a dog compared to Win98SE.

How much memory. It seems using an SSD with DMA makes a massive difference with Win2k on P1 era hardware. I underclocked this P100 to P75 to test this and it was still as responsive with DMA enabled. Without DMA it was slow even using a SSD and just clicking folders etc would spike CPU usage in task manager to 90% instead of 1-3% with DMA.

We didn't have commodity SSDs in 2000...I'm talking about back when this stuff was new.

It was 64MB if I remember correctly.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2024-05-26, 18:28:

Absolutely. We ran NT4, and I think even going back, NT3.51 on Pentium machines. And NT wasn't fast in those versions either. It was just better stability, more features for the purpose of the machines, I suppose. Win2k was great, but even then, unless you had the best hardware of the day, it did feel a little slow, at least until everything got loaded and cached. SSDs and more RAM just would have been a godsend, and probably extended the life of things like aging Pentiums, except those things were still quite expensive for some time. So just like SSD and RAM extends life to useful machines, it does the same for really old PCs.

Yup, and that was my experience back in 2000 too. Had a new PIII machine with 98SE on 128 megs of RAM, it was... great... except that after a few hours or at most a day or two, out of system resources, must reboot. Switched to Win2000, which solved that problem, but with the same amount of multitasking, it would just... freeze... for a while. Upgraded to 256 megs of RAM, then later to 640, and then Win2000 just flew. There was no Patch Tuesday back then, and assuming you had a UPS, and enough RAM, you could keep Win2000 running for months without a reboot. I still think Win2000 was the greatest version of Windows ever, I might add...

Crazy thing is - I seem to remember that either 128 or 256 megs of PC100 was like $50CAD in early 2001. Funny how the world changed from, oh, $250CAD for 4 megs only 5-6 years earlier. RAM prices just plunged around 2000-2002...

... and then, of course, now you have come full circle. RAM usage on startup on Win11 is obscene so 8GB modern machines are swapping just as badly as 64-128MB machines running Win2000 were.

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-26, 17:16:

I ran Windows 2K on a Pentium Pro 166 and it felt slow as a dog compared to Win98SE.

I'm just wondering because the Pentium Pro did not work well with 16 bit code still being used in Win98SE.
But the Pentium Pro should run well with any full 32 bit system like Windows 2000.

But perhaps the RAM is insufficient for Windows 2000 then.
Or you're talking about a Pentium MMX 166.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2024-05-26, 18:28:

Riikcakirds wrote on 2024-05-26, 13:32:

Formatted SSD as single 120GB partition, Fat32 and then installed Win2k from DOS using winnt.exe. All hardware was recognized an […]
Show full quote

Formatted SSD as single 120GB partition, Fat32 and then installed Win2k from DOS using winnt.exe.
All hardware was recognized and drivers installed. A couple of notes about drivers, the Win2k integrated Stealth 64 driver is faster and more stable than the latest available from Diamond, and a big improvement to the driver included in Win98se. SB64AWE integrated driver is more stable than latest available for Win98se (you can add AWE control panel and soundfont support if you want).

...

So the question is why would I run Win98 over Win2k on a P100 with 128 MB ram, I now can't think of any reason why I would. Every Win9x App and game I used worked and, without the instability.

I wonder if WinME, which is newer than Win2k, has drivers that are at least as good, perhaps some newer, than Win2k. Can you test your machine on WinME? Can it actually be better than Win98?

Unlike 98se and Win2k, strangely Winme doesn't have inbuilt drivers for the Diamond Stealth 64 S3 968, so it loads standard VGA. Other than that, the AWE64 drivers and others are newer than 98se, not sure compared to Win2k (but I don't think Win2k WDM drivers can be transplanted to work in 98/Winme anyway).
In my comparison it runs a smidge faster than 98se and is slightly more stable. I just think of it as 'Win98 - Third Edition' with more bug fixes. If i wanted to use any Win9x I would definitely use Winme over 98se on a P100 with 128MB. Of course now I know how fast Win2k runs I would just use that with dual boot to DOS when needed.

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-26, 19:10:

Riikcakirds wrote on 2024-05-26, 18:33:

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-26, 17:16:

I ran Windows 2K on a Pentium Pro 166 and it felt slow as a dog compared to Win98SE.

How much memory. It seems using an SSD with DMA makes a massive difference with Win2k on P1 era hardware. I underclocked this P100 to P75 to test this and it was still as responsive with DMA enabled. Without DMA it was slow even using a SSD and just clicking folders etc would spike CPU usage in task manager to 90% instead of 1-3% with DMA.

We didn't have commodity SSDs in 2000...I'm talking about back when this stuff was new.

It was 64MB if I remember correctly.

That is what I meant, I had the same experience running the beta back in 1997 on a HD, it was slow. Now the same setup with a P75 (underclocked P100) and it is responsive, only difference SSD with DMA. The SSD is more significant imho than memory when above 64MB as it limits the penalty of swapfile churning the drive for minutes compard to a HD.

I believe running FAT32 and not NTFS on Windows 2000 is also helping you. There is a lot more overhead with NTFS. So for slower machines where you don't need the features of NTFS, running FAT32 makes a lot of sense.

mwdmeyer wrote on 2024-05-26, 21:46:

I believe running FAT32 and not NTFS on Windows 2000 is also helping you. There is a lot more overhead with NTFS. So for slower machines where you don't need the features of NTFS, running FAT32 makes a lot of sense.

Good point, I didn't think about the NTFS overhead as my main aim for using Fat32 was to make dual booting with Dos 7.1 viable.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2024-05-26, 21:11:

kingcake wrote on 2024-05-26, 19:10:

Riikcakirds wrote on 2024-05-26, 18:33:

How much memory. It seems using an SSD with DMA makes a massive difference with Win2k on P1 era hardware. I underclocked this P100 to P75 to test this and it was still as responsive with DMA enabled. Without DMA it was slow even using a SSD and just clicking folders etc would spike CPU usage in task manager to 90% instead of 1-3% with DMA.

We didn't have commodity SSDs in 2000...I'm talking about back when this stuff was new.

It was 64MB if I remember correctly.

That is what I meant, I had the same experience running the beta back in 1997 on a HD, it was slow. Now the same setup with a P75 (underclocked P100) and it is responsive, only difference SSD with DMA. The SSD is more significant imho than memory when above 64MB as it limits the penalty of swapfile churning the drive for minutes compard to a HD.

Oh, right. Yes that's my experience with SSDs in almost every OS. Going to an SSD in Vista/Win7/Linux has similar effect once you have a min amount of CPU and RAM in place.

I do just about all my 9x gaming in Win2k these days. as you noticed it's a much more pleasant OS to use overall.
Typically, I'll dual boot with Win98 but only boot into that for the very few games I can't get working in 2k or to then boot into pure dos mode.

This subject highly encourages me to co-install W2K on the P233MMX, I'm currently working on ... 🤔

But agreed, the higher performance in 2K vs 98 could to some extent be due to 64 MiB cacheable range and the fact that 98 uses memory from the top down.

Will see - my P233MMX only has 64 MiB at the moment ..

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-05-27, 07:09:

This subject highly encourages me to co-install W2K on the P233MMX, I'm currently working on ... 🤔

But agreed, the higher performance in 2K vs 98 could to some extent be due to 64 MiB cacheable range and the fact that 98 uses memory from the top down.

Will see - my P233MMX only has 64 MiB at the moment ..

Depends on the amount of L2 cache.
On a Pentium (and MMX) it may be:
256 kB --> 64 MB
512 kB --> 128 MB
1024 kB --> 256 MB
2048 kB --> 512 MB

It can be more if your chipset is equipped to have support for that. (HX chipset)
The legendary HX chipset
(On a 486 it is half!)

Disruptor wrote on 2024-05-27, 11:45:

Depends on the amount of L2 cache. On a Pentium (and MMX) it may be: 256 kB --> 64 MB 512 kB --> 128 MB 1024 kB --> 256 MB 2048 […]
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H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-05-27, 07:09:

This subject highly encourages me to co-install W2K on the P233MMX, I'm currently working on ... 🤔

But agreed, the higher performance in 2K vs 98 could to some extent be due to 64 MiB cacheable range and the fact that 98 uses memory from the top down.

Will see - my P233MMX only has 64 MiB at the moment ..

Depends on the amount of L2 cache.
On a Pentium (and MMX) it may be:
256 kB --> 64 MB
512 kB --> 128 MB
1024 kB --> 256 MB
2048 kB --> 512 MB

(On a 486 it is half!)

It does not. The factor of how much memory can be cached is the amount of TAG ram.

Intel 430FX, VX and TX can only cache up to 64MiB, where as the 430HX can cache up to 512 (if it has an 11-bit TAG ram - if not, only 64 MiB) 430LX and NX can cache 192 amd 512 MiB, respectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_c … entium_chipsets

Wonder why Intel crippled the newer Socket 7 chipsets in that way - maybe it was because PentiumII was on its way and they wanted to differentiate the platforms ...?