Par... Par... Parhelia! ;) (So just a card, not Life. ;) )

[BRiT]

Only reason on hanging with 98 is the old games that don't run at all on WinXP nor Win2K. Unfortunately, one of my favourites, Roller Coaster Tycoon doesn't run on WinXP. ( I have tried. Compability mode didn't helped.)

Thats strange. The DB compat-list at www.ntcompatible.com has several entries for it working. Have you applied the latest WinXP app-compat patches from windowsupdate.microsoft.com ?

--|BRiT|

 

[Nagorak]

It seems now Parhelia dont support Win9X/Me...

I dont think that will be too much of an issue at all. Anyone seriously considering purchasing such a card is most lilkely running WinXP anyways. If not, its about time they upgrade to WinXP.

I consider myself an avid gamer and hardcore hardware-ist, and I switched over to Win2K the moment it was available. I waited around a couple months after WinXP was available before switching over to it (had to await some hardware driver updates). There hasn't been a single thing that XP wont run for me.

Perhaps WinXP isn't as fast as Win9x/Me is, but my gawd, the stability of the system more than enough makes up for it. If it weren't for the typical driver updates or hardware updates, my system would never reboot. My typical uptimes with XP on my main system is around 5 weeks. Lets see anyone on Win9x/Me approach that.

Quite frankly, lets face it, Win9x/Me is dead.

--|BRiT|

Ummm...I honestly don't think you know what you're talking about. WinME is only 2 years old and still should be supported. A lot of people still use it, and for that matter Win98 (which basically the same program as ME so it doesn't matter. WinME drivers generally work in 9x).

As for WinXP, it sucks horribly. I don't know why people are so gung-ho to upgrade to that piece of crap, with all of its intrusive features and next to no improvements.

But no one will be able to afford this card at first, so it doesn't really make much difference if there is driver support on release.

 

[BRiT]

As for WinXP, it sucks horribly. I don't know why people are so gung-ho to upgrade to that piece of crap, with all of its intrusive features and next to no improvements.

Feel free to think what you like, but I do know what I'm discussing, as do most people on this forum.

As I said, lets see anyone with WinMe/9x have an uptime of 5 weeks with heavy gaming. Some people prefer stability over all out raw speed. And as others have pointed out, WinXP has been optimized to be as fast if not faster than WinMe.

Would you please produce a list what issues you have with XP? I'm sure the fine folks or myself can point you to a solution for your issue.

As for intrusive features, whatever may they be? If any exist, I assure you I have them disabled. The largest improvement XP offers is official driver support from hardware makers as well as official support from game manufacturers. A few of the manufacturers were stingy in their [driver] support and thusly did not support Win2K at all.

As for you saying no one will be able to afford the Matrox card, are you delussional? Surely the hardcore groups who had purchased the high-end Nvidia cards (which were easily at the $400 mark) will be able to afford the Matrox card.

I could easily purchase one for each of my four systems as well as enough monitors for each to run surround-gaming. Will I? No. Why? I like the sense of obtaining a bargain. Quite frankly, I'm waiting to see what ATI and Nvidia have to offer. Plus, I'm still getting great use out of my 9 month old video card.

As for WinME, remember that 2 years old is an eternity when dealing with computer technology. I've known many people who ran Win9x, upgraded or fresh installed to WinME, and they've had nothing but serious issues. Aslo, if you look at MS's roadmap, you will see WinMe has no future. Why would anyone support something that they know has no future and is just a matter of time before its end-of-lifed?

--|BRiT|

 

[Dave Baumann]

Only reason on hanging with 98 is the old games that don't run at all on WinXP nor Win2K. Unfortunately, one of my favourites, Roller Coaster Tycoon doesn't run on WinXP. ( I have tried. Compability mode didn't helped.)

Nappe1 – Never fear, this months UK ‘PC Gamer’ magazine has a big feature on Chris Sawyers ‘Roller Coaster Tycoon II’ with a pencilled in release of Autumn 2002 (so even if it slips he’s still likely to get it out before Xmas).

I don't think companies should start dropping support for Win98 yet, but Matrox isn't dropping support just delaying it.

I was under the impression MS were in the process of un-supporting it themselves anyway – I thought they only supported up to Win98SE, or did I just imagine that?

However, this is just effective resource management for you; there’s no point delaying hardware sales because you can’t reach everybody – you may at least get the sales from the largest demographic and let your driver team work on supporting the rest afterwards.

As for WinXP, it sucks horribly. I don't know why people are so gung-ho to upgrade to that piece of crap, with all of its intrusive features and next to no improvements.

That’s your point of view – personally I’ve found it to be the most reliable OS I;ve had for my PC so far. And if you are willing to look at some tweaks / FAQ’s its pretty easy to find out how to turn off most of the ‘intrusive’ features I find.

 

[Crusher]

As I said, lets see anyone with WinMe/9x have an uptime of 5 weeks with heavy gaming. Some people prefer stability over all out raw speed. And as others have pointed out, WinXP has been optimized to be as fast if not faster than WinMe.

And some people just don't care if they have to reboot their computers once a day if it saves a few hundred bucks from having to buy the latest MS OS. The biggest issue I had with 2k was that half of the games I tried didn't work on it, even if the ntcompatible database claimed they did. Icewind Dale? Sure, I guess you could say it worked, you could run it and sometimes make it into the game, but it would always kick out to desktop randomly, and it never did that under ME. I couldn't get Dungeon Keeper II to work at all, even after installing SP1 and the DK2 patch. EverQuest had a much higher tendancy of kicking out to the desktop at random as well, and I still to this day hear people complain that they hit their Windows key by accident under 2K and it crashed the program.

Win2k/WinXP have their uses, just as Linux does, but being installed on my gaming machine isn't one of them. I'm certainly not going to feel compelled to spend $400 on a new OS to go with a new $400 video card simply because a company doesn't want to produce drivers for older OS's (not that anyone is doing that, but you seem to be suggesting that it would be an OK move on their part). At the very least, I expect driver support for 98/ME to be continued as long as Microsoft is making DirectX available for those OS's.

 

[Nagorak]

As I said, lets see anyone with WinMe/9x have an uptime of 5 weeks with heavy gaming. Some people prefer stability over all out raw speed. And as others have pointed out, WinXP has been optimized to be as fast if not faster than WinMe.

And some people just don't care if they have to reboot their computers once a day if it saves a few hundred bucks from having to buy the latest MS OS. The biggest issue I had with 2k was that half of the games I tried didn't work on it, even if the ntcompatible database claimed they did. Icewind Dale? Sure, I guess you could say it worked, you could run it and sometimes make it into the game, but it would always kick out to desktop randomly, and it never did that under ME. I couldn't get Dungeon Keeper II to work at all, even after installing SP1 and the DK2 patch. EverQuest had a much higher tendancy of kicking out to the desktop at random as well, and I still to this day hear people complain that they hit their Windows key by accident under 2K and it crashed the program.

Win2k/WinXP have their uses, just as Linux does, but being installed on my gaming machine isn't one of them. I'm certainly not going to feel compelled to spend $400 on a new OS to go with a new $400 video card simply because a company doesn't want to produce drivers for older OS's (not that anyone is doing that, but you seem to be suggesting that it would be an OK move on their part). At the very least, I expect driver support for 98/ME to be continued as long as Microsoft is making DirectX available for those OS's.

I second this post. Give me a break. You've had an "uptime of 5 weeks." First of all, most people don't run their computers 24/7. It's kind of a waste of power, don't you think? And if you live in California where power costs are insane, you don't just leave your comp running for no good reason.

The reason I and many others don't like WinXP is because of the ridiculous authentication nonsense and the fact that many games run like crap on it. Frankly, it would make more sense to support 98/ME instead of XP, since the installed base of those two OSes is probably larger. Believe it or not, most people don't just upgrade their OS every time MS comes out with a new one. First of all, they're too expensive, and secondly they don't really offer any tangible improvements to offset the headache of having to install and learn a whole new OS.

Also compared to Win 2k, WinXP is just slow and bloated OS that does less on better equipment.

 

[PC-Engine]

Leaving my PC on in Standby mode is much better than turning it off because it starts up faster and doesn't need booting

 

[Pete]

I'm certainly not going to feel compelled to spend $400 on a new OS

MS' new OSes typically cost ~$125 if you buy OEM instead of retail. You can get a full OEM version of XP Home for $99, XP Pro for $140. The typical requirement is a hard drive or motherboard purchase, but MS OSes don't come out every day. You'll likely need a new HD anyway.