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What should I do with this computer?

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First post, by dosquest

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I have a black desktop with an amd spepron 3200 with 512mb and an 80gb sata drive and an nvidia 128mb video card, should I load windows xp or windows 200 on it? I have windows vista currently installed.

Reply 2 of 26, by sprcorreia

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dosquest wrote:

I have a black desktop with an amd spepron 3200 with 512mb and an 80gb sata drive and an nvidia 128mb video card, should I load windows xp or windows 200 on it? I have windows vista currently installed.

That cpu sucks... 😁

I agree with leileilol. XP is the right path.

Last edited by sprcorreia on 2012-08-11, 11:47. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 6 of 26, by dosquest

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batracio wrote:

Why a 12 year old OS is too old for today's computers, but an 11 year old one is recommended?

Idk, I mean wouldn't win2k have better support for older 90's and 2000's games? I'm thinking of running games from 1995 to 2005ish on this.

Reply 7 of 26, by leileilol

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batracio wrote:

Why a 12 year old OS is too old for today's computers, but an 11 year old one is recommended?

Probably the out-of-the-box experience being better compatible (like 48-bit LBA enabled from the start). Also, Sempron isn't a "today's computer" anymore, more like a 6 years ago computer!

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Reply 8 of 26, by dosquest

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Thank you leileilol, but instead of bashing my idea, could you please help me answer some of my questions? 😜

Doom isn't just a game, it's an apocalypse survival simulator.

Reply 11 of 26, by noshutdown

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batracio wrote:

Why a 12 year old OS is too old for today's computers, but an 11 year old one is recommended?

because winxp is still in microsoft's support cycle today, while many software have dropped support for win2k (adobe flash for example).

however winxp is also getting old for today's computers aswell, i would suggest any rig with 4gb or more ram to use win7 instead of winxp.

Reply 12 of 26, by leileilol

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dosquest wrote:

Ok, and xp is nt 6.0, so.......does it have an advantage over windows 2k?

XP is NT 5.1. Vista is NT 6.0.

NT isn't really known for the best retro Windows gaming compatibility.... you'll probably have better luck with 98SE/ME + KernelEx.

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Reply 14 of 26, by nforce4max

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Just go xp and don't look back as it is still pretty useful for most of the basics today. You could even keep vista but upgrade the ram and make sure that the drive is in good shape. I once ran vista on a 500mhz p3, 512mb ram on a bx era board, 10gb maxtor, and a 16mb riva tnt. It ran ok but the drive was just to slow.

XP all the way 😀

On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.

Reply 15 of 26, by kool kitty89

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sprcorreia wrote:
dosquest wrote:

I have a black desktop with an amd spepron 3200 with 512mb and an 80gb sata drive and an nvidia 128mb video card, should I load windows xp or windows 200 on it? I have windows vista currently installed.

That cpu sucks... 😁

I agree with leileilol. XP is the right path.

At first, I's thought he was talking about a socket A Sempron (especially with the 512MB RAM mentioned) and was going to question whether it was of the 512k or 256k cache variety. Then I realized there was no 3200+ socket A sempron . . . there was a 3300+ (re-branded 2.2 GHz Barton Athlon XP 3200+), but the only 3200 is the Socket 939 part . . . a cut-down Athlon 64.

Reply 18 of 26, by batracio

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noshutdown wrote:
batracio wrote:

Why a 12 year old OS is too old for today's computers, but an 11 year old one is recommended?

because winxp is still in microsoft's support cycle today, while many software have dropped support for win2k (adobe flash for example).

Wrong. Mainstream support has already ended for XP (all versions). Extended support for Windows XP SP3 will end in 2014, but that's all. It will only receive critical updates for two years more.

And most software products don't intentionally drop support for Win2K. Developers just upgrade their Windows SDK to a newer version that happens to have dropped Win2K support. Many times there's no actual reason for that software not working on Win2K, it's just a matter of changing a single line of code (see the freeaddrinfo issue, for example), but those developers usually don't give a damn for 0.5% of their users.

And, by the way, I personally consider Adobe Flash as the worst piece of software ever made. It has turned web-browsing on a single core CPU into a no-go area, no matter the CPU speed, the OS or the browser.

noshutdown wrote:

however winxp is also getting old for today's computers aswell, i would suggest any rig with 4gb or more ram to use win7 instead of winxp.

I'd only suggest Win7-x64 for rigs with 4 GB or more. Can't think of any real advantage of Win7-x86 over XP-x86.

Reply 19 of 26, by dosquest

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Wrong. Mainstream support has already ended for XP (all versions). Extended support for Windows XP SP3 will end in 2014, but that's all. It will only receive critical updates for two years more.

Well, didn't they do the same for windows Vista SP1 and soon (probably around 2015) they will do the same for vista sp2, which by that time they would of dropped all support for SP0 and SP1.

Doom isn't just a game, it's an apocalypse survival simulator.