Legit Reviews

Assume that security is not a factor and that running from XP32 service pack 2 as a start. You shut down every service that you can while still being able to play games, just how much of a performance difference between that and having everything patched up and running all the security programs like Norton, Zone Alarm and so on.

I was thinking for the new system that I would setup a xp32 partition stripped to just functional for games lvl with nothing else, then Vista 64 and xp64 partitions for other stuff and the odd game that runs in 64bit mode.

OH and I should add that that a friend of mine has been telling me the greatness of Linux and how it can run widows games so much faster and better than MS. That he even has wow running in it. Is that true or is he blowing smoke?

You could google "Tiny XP" ;)

Cool never read about it anywhere before. Thanks =)

If a machine has lots of RAM and processing cores, then stripping down XP won't make anywhere near as much difference (maybe even no difference) as it would if the machine is slow and has limited RAM.

Dan

OH and I should add that that a friend of mine has been telling me the greatness of Linux and how it can run widows games so much faster and better than MS. That he even has wow running in it. Is that true or is he blowing smoke?

Partly true, it can't run all windows games, but most. Wine and Cedega can do this. Wow is so popular that people have really really tested it and got it running. I've ran linux off and on for 5 years, have been running it exclusively for 6months now, and honestly I have no need to go back to Windows

DX wrote:OH and I should add that that a friend of mine has been telling me the greatness of Linux and how it can run widows games so much faster and better than MS. That he even has wow running in it. Is that true or is he blowing smoke?

If you use Linux to play windows games you are emulating the windows environment (via Wine / Winex or Cedega as Dicecca mentioned) so there is a performance hit.

I would think though there would be much less Windows overhead. I might give it a shot if I have time just to see how it works. He said to use Cedega and Ubuntu.

like ken said you will see a performance hit. yes linux does have better overhead, but since you use up that overhead to emulate the microsoft environment, you are taking a sizeable performance hit.

DMB2000uk wrote:If a machine has lots of RAM and processing cores, then stripping down XP won't make anywhere near as much difference (maybe even no difference) as it would if the machine is slow and has limited RAM.

Bingo. If you check total CPU time for Windows services, it's quite low, even not taking into account services are low priority, or wait for idle time. I wouldn't expect more than 1-2 fps difference, and only in CPU limited games.

kenc51 wrote:If you use Linux to play windows games you are emulating the windows environment (via Wine / Winex or Cedega as Dicecca mentioned) so there is a performance hit.

martini161 wrote:like ken said you will see a performance hit. yes linux does have better overhead, but since you use up that overhead to emulate the microsoft environment, you are taking a sizeable performance hit.

This is a common misconception regarding Wine, Wine is not an emulator in the same sense that system emulators (SNES, Neo-Geo, etc.) are.

From the official Wine FAQ:

Is Wine an emulator? There seems to be an argument.

"When users think of an emulator, they tend to think of things like Super Nintendo emulators or virtualization software. This is the wrong way to think about Wine - Wine runs Windows applications in essentially the same way Windows does. There is no inherent loss of speed due to "emulation" when using Wine, nor is there a need to open Wine before running your application."

Is Wine slower than just using Windows?

"Actually, Wine is sometimes faster. The speed of an application depends on a lot of factors: the available hardware and their drivers, the quality of the code in the APIs the application uses, and the quality of the code in the underlying operating system.

Driver code matters a lot. If you're running a graphics-heavy application using a video card with very poor drivers such as an ATI card under Linux, performance will degrade substantially. On the other hand, Linux has superior memory management, and comes out ahead of Windows in many CPU-related tasks; see benchmarks for more information.

Sometimes, bugs in Wine can make applications excessively slow; see Performance-related bugs."

The bit about drivers is a really good point, particularly AMD drivers are much less optimized for Linux than they are in Windows.

Zelig wrote:

DMB2000uk wrote:If a machine has lots of RAM and processing cores, then stripping down XP won't make anywhere near as much difference (maybe even no difference) as it would if the machine is slow and has limited RAM.

Bingo. If you check total CPU time for Windows services, it's quite low, even not taking into account services are low priority, or wait for idle time. I wouldn't expect more than 1-2 fps difference, and only in CPU limited games.

kenc51 wrote:If you use Linux to play windows games you are emulating the windows environment (via Wine / Winex or Cedega as Dicecca mentioned) so there is a performance hit.

martini161 wrote:like ken said you will see a performance hit. yes linux does have better overhead, but since you use up that overhead to emulate the microsoft environment, you are taking a sizeable performance hit.

This is a common misconception regarding Wine, Wine is not an emulator in the same sense that system emulators (SNES, Neo-Geo, etc.) are.

From the official Wine FAQ:

Is Wine an emulator? There seems to be an argument.

"When users think of an emulator, they tend to think of things like Super Nintendo emulators or virtualization software. This is the wrong way to think about Wine - Wine runs Windows applications in essentially the same way Windows does. There is no inherent loss of speed due to "emulation" when using Wine, nor is there a need to open Wine before running your application."

Is Wine slower than just using Windows?

"Actually, Wine is sometimes faster. The speed of an application depends on a lot of factors: the available hardware and their drivers, the quality of the code in the APIs the application uses, and the quality of the code in the underlying operating system.

Driver code matters a lot. If you're running a graphics-heavy application using a video card with very poor drivers such as an ATI card under Linux, performance will degrade substantially. On the other hand, Linux has superior memory management, and comes out ahead of Windows in many CPU-related tasks; see benchmarks for more information.

Sometimes, bugs in Wine can make applications excessively slow; see Performance-related bugs."

The bit about drivers is a really good point, particularly AMD drivers are much less optimized for Linux than they are in Windows.

Well, I've played games in WineX and it WAS slower than using DirectX in XP.
So as far as I'm concerned it IS slower.
Sure if you use Wine for some software and not games, it could be faster but we are talking games here.

Using a stripped down version of XP is also faster that a stock install IMO