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Question about Windows 2000/2003 performance on P3 hardware

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commodorejohn

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Title's a mouthful, but it sums things up pretty well. I'm kind of toying with the idea of getting a Pentium III laptop to experiment with (I'm basically wondering how far back I can push my general computer usage, hardware-wise, without a serious impact on the experience, but that's another story.) I'd like to dual-boot Windows 98 and a more modern version of Windows, but since I'd be looking at CPU speeds in the 650MHz-1.2GHz range and RAM up to probably 1GB, I'm ruling out XP; that's enough to run it, but not (in my experience) particularly well. (Though my experience might owe something to the fact that the laptop in question was a Pentium 4 Mobile - ye gods did NetBurst suck.) I'm interested to hear what people with Windows 2000/Server 2003 experience have to say about running it on lower-end hardware. I'd assume 2000 handles itself well enough on sub-gigahertz machines and 512MB-1GB of PC133 SDRAM, but the big downside for me there is that as far as I can tell, there's no WPA2 support for 2000 (and little WPA support, at that.) Server 2003 I'm sure is much more up-to-date, but I don't know how it is, performance-wise - how does it compare to XP, on similar hardware?
 
I had that prob setting up somebody elses w/2k, just went on to XP.
just saw this http://www.wirelessforums.org/alt-internet-wireless/wpa-psk-win2k-3640.html


I used 2k up until just recently, mostly on pIIIs. It's a fairly rock solid system, but the support has ended for it. Only recently moved to using XP, and that only because the vacuum cleaner and computer cables didn't get along well, and crashed my 2k PC, and the only standby I had near ready was this XP I'm using now, but it's on older hardware, still works about the same. I haven't used 2003. I've got a 2k Server I'd might try out sometimes. It's already installed on an old SGI Quad system but I haven't used it online, can't really see running 4 CPUs just to surf.
 
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2K certainly will support WPA; I've also hear that some Linksys (e.g. WMP54GS) PCI cards have sufficient smarts in the driver to support WPA2, but I haven't tried it. There are apparently some third-party additions to 2K to provide a lot of XP functionality, but I haven't tried them.

You might consider stripping down XP using nLite or other packages. It's entirely possible to do that and get XP to run well on a sub-GHz system. If you don't need lots of fancy functionality, consider WinFLP, which will run on 128MB and a 233MHz P3.
 
Windows XP can run extremely well on a PIII as long as you feed it enough RAM. 256 MB or less is a joke; 512 MB is OK for strictly single-task use; 1 GB or more is needed to really be productive. I have two 1 GHz PIII Compaqs which are limited by their chipset to a max of 512 MB of RAM, and they both run XP better than many P4s I've seen, but the applications I use are not especially demanding.
 
Hmm, I might give XP a try after all, then (I always do nLite it! Saves a ton of setup hassle in addition to tweaking for performance.) Given my overall experience with P4 systems, I'm entirely willing to blame my bad experience with XP on 1.2GHz on the CPU (and the fact that 512MB is only more or less satisfactory for stock XP with SP2.) I'm definitely going to find one that supports 1GB, I've already got a couple 512MB SODIMMS sitting around waiting to be put to use...
 
Windows 2000 is a great OS - the best MS ever made IMO. I'm still using it on my main PC.

It'll pretty much run everything XP will, only much better. XP tends to bog down a lot on slower machines, but 2000 was designed for sub-500mhz and 64MB RAM. 256MB would be the minimum I'd recommend once all the updates and service packs are installed, but it's a very capable OS.
 
FishFinger said:
Windows 2000 is a great OS - the best MS ever made IMO. I'm still using it on my main PC.

It'll pretty much run everything XP will, only much better. XP tends to bog down a lot on slower machines, but 2000 was designed for sub-500mhz and 64MB RAM. 256MB would be the minimum I'd recommend once all the updates and service packs are installed, but it's a very capable OS.
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+1 for this. I actually have a netbook sized laptop that runs to this day. I use it for light web browsing when I'm in a situation where I cant alt-tab on my main pc. It runs very well, and only has issues with cpu speed when I load a page thats lousy with flash. It has 700mhz p3 and 256mb of ram. That being said, 512 would REALLY help out. The hard disk is used a LOT and having 512 would really help but, i'm limited to 256.
 
I have a family member that has Windows XP on a Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop. Its only a Pentium III 733Mhz with 384MB of RAM. It bearable with all the extras turned off (themes, etc.) and without a virus scanner running. A SSD would likely give it a bit of a boost, along with some more RAM. I also have an Acer Travelmate 341T with a PIII-500 and 256MB of RAM that I only really use with the cable that interfaces with my car running XP. Its pokey, but it works.
 
I use Win2k on my P3 laptops except for a few that run XP (those tend to be 1ghz+ P3 with 1GB of RAM). Plenty of wireless cards are supported under Win2k.
 
Another vote for Windows 2000 here. I've ran Windows 2000, Windows XP in all of its Service Pack flavors and Server 2003 on a Pentium III and Windows 2000 was the fastest out of all of them. Even using an nLited install of XP, Windows 2000 was still far faster.

Shame it's a pain to get WPA working though.
 
I have win7 on my c400 dell subnotebook (p3 mobile). Runs a treat if you have 1gb ram, actually faster then xp after you trim down the services... downside is its 2x the size of xp.
 
That and it's Windows 7 :/ Part of the reason for this whole experiment to begin with is they've spent so much time needlessly screwing around with the user interface in recent versions that I just plain don't intend to upgrade at all.
 
2K server on a 1.4ghz PIII and 2gb ram is screaming fast.
I run the above configuration on a system that handles a 22tb tape library and caching system as my file server and it works great.
 
Well, I've got a 1.06GHz Compaq Evo 600c on the way, and 1GB to drop in it (they're shipping it with 128MB and XP SP3 - haha, right, pull the other one, guys!) Gonna get an nLite-ed copy of 2000 set up today, and we'll see how she works out ;)
 
And it looks from the drivers page on Compaq's site like there's a WPA supplicant included with the wireless drivers; I'm just hopeful it supports WPA2...
 
commodorejohn said:
That and it's Windows 7 :/ Part of the reason for this whole experiment to begin with is they've spent so much time needlessly screwing around with the user interface in recent versions that I just plain don't intend to upgrade at all.
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I'm not sure about needlessly. I often have around 10-15 applications running at once and multiple windows. The new start bar makes things sooo much easier to navigate and the memory managment is much much better. I also like being able to search for programs by pressing start and typing, rather than navigating through painfully large menus. Dragging windows to the side to tile or maximise is handy too. Can't think of any UI changes that were negative or pointless. The changes to Control Panel every version does get irritating though :/

Vista was total balls. You know it's bad when Microsoft gives it a cute name.

As for P3 performance - I have had 3 P3 laptops, all have Windows 2000 or Windows XP keys underneath.
 
Improvements in memory management and other under-the-hood changes I have no problem with (assuming they don't cause issues with my software, which they usually don't.) But they keep screwing around with the UI every version, and much more drastically in Vista and 7 than the various minor tweaks between 98 and XP. I wouldn't mind that, if they'd only include a full-on "legacy interface" option that brings back the XP UI verbatim, but they don't, and frankly life is just too short to waste any significant part of it reorienting my brain to fit changes to the interface that I've had about fifteen years of developing and constantly-reinforced habits engrained into. If the new features and minor changes work for other people that's lovely, but for me they're unnecessary and a damn nuisance.
 
Yeah a legacy interface would've been a good idea. They did that with the original windows 95, you could use Program Manager from 3.1.
I'm like you when it comes to the new version of Office - I don't use it enough to relearn and I can't find anything, so I refuse to upgrade past 2003.
 
For a long time my primary PC was a 700MHz PIII with 768MB RAM running Win2K, and it worked great. XP is also quite usable on a PIII system with at least 512MB if you disable the Themes, Indexing, Automatic Updates, Task Scheduler, and System Restore services and turn off all the fancy UI "enhancements" (shadows, sliding menus, etc). A realtime virus scanner and flash-heavy web sites will definitely bog down a PIII system, and HD YouTube videos are not really playable, but otherwise a midrange PIII is quite usable.

There are lots of online guides to optimizing XP that explain exactly which services and features can be safely disabled.
 
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