A short while ago, Microsoft released RC1 (or beta 2505) of its latest and greatest OS, Windows XP. From what I've seen, it's a worthwhile upgrade, or at least it will be. XP will come in a variety of versions, XP Home Edition to replace 98 & Me, Professional to replace Windows 2000 Professional, and then the Server editions for the Corporates. Proffesional supports up to 2 processors and 4GB of RAM, so should be plenty for the average overclocker. This is not going to be an ad for all the 'wonderful' and 'useful' new features, but more of my view of XP, from the perspective of a newbie overclocker.
Installation
Not having a CD-Writer (or in fact a CD-ROM or Floppy), a full-format with fdisk could've been quite difficult, so I instead chose to upgrade. I've had some BAD experiences in the past, upgrading Windows ME installations to 2000, but no such problems were to be had with XP. The installation procedure was your typical Windows affair. Click here, watch the pretty pictures, read the informative messages from Microsoft, etc etc etc. Before install begins however, XP checks your hardware and informs you of any possible problems with your system, very thoughtful. If you want to check if your hardware is compatible with XP, there is a plain text file here which shows all the hardware compatible with Beta2. This list will grow as XP comes closer to release, as more hardware support is added.
Install also asks if you would like to contact Microsoft to ensure that you are installing the latest version of XP. Riiight. I bet it's just sending them my address, name, phone number and my pet dog's name.
Personally I used the time the install took to apply a coat of primer to my freshly sanded case, and then I still had to wait. XP setup can take a while, and if you're installing from a 4x CD-Rom to a 5400rpm HDD you can expect a long install, and by long I mean well over an hour. The install from my fairly zippy (but not that spectacular) Quantum Fireball took around 50mins, which is longer than 2k took. Anyway after a reboot I was greeted with the sleek black new boot-up screen, but not for long. WinXP boots up really fast, faster than any other MS OSes I've used, and I've used a few. Then there's the sexy new login screen.
But I disgress. After you have finished installing, a weird question-mark/ball/round thingy asks you to spend some time with it setting up your computer. Awww, how cute. Basically it's Windows 2k setup with pretty pictures.
As far as drivers go, pretty much any Windows 2000 Driver will work in XP. I have satellite internet, so am forced to use a Telemann Skymedia Satellite card. These cards are notorious for causing software problems, but the 2k driver worked fine and is very stable, as is everything else! In the 3 weeks since I've had it I've had no crashes, so it's probably safe to say XP is about as stable as 2k is.
If you're a gamer, WinXP is a good deal easier to set up than 2k. It ships with native support for all the latest goodies, Nvidia Detonator 12.40 is there, as is native support for the VIA chipsets! Hurrah! Goodbye 4-in-1s! For you non-Nvidia people out there (yes, both of you..j/k) there's also support for the Radeon, most Matrox cards, And the Voodoo 3/4/5. Users of the Voodoo2 are left in the cold however, as there is no native support. WinXP ships with DirectX 8.1, so basically, if you install XP fresh, you wouldn't have to install a thing to play say, Half-Life on your GeForce. This is all part of Microsoft's OOBE (Out-Of-Box-Experience) scheme, obviously aimed at noobies.
The performance of the bundled 12.40 detonators is somewhat less than the released nVidia WHQL 12.41s so I replaced them with the beta 12.90 2k Detonators. An interesting point, windows can handle 1024x768x16bit using a generic video driver. This is a godsend when you're struggling to get a vid card driver to install, as you no longer have to squint at a measly 640x480.
Performance
Ah, what everyone wants to know about. As I said before, XP boots faster and is altogether more snappy that I found 2000. But now to the benchmarks:
System:
AMD T-Bird 700 @ 800
256Meg PC133 CAS2 Generic RAM
Asus A7V
Powercolor GF2MX @ 230/201 using Detonator 12.90
SB Live! Value
Windows XP RC1 Build 2505 & Windows 2000 SP2 with VIA 4-in-1's 4.32
3d Mark 2001:
Win2000 - 2350
WinXP RC1 - 2710
Bang, close on 300 3d Marks increase. By anyone's standards that's a HUGE increase. It moved me up a few places on the T-bird 800's with GF2MX's on madonion.com's rankings.
No real difference here, not that you would expect any. The drive itself is ATA66, a Quantum Fireball LM 15 to be exact. I've seen around the web a few articles, stating that XP is unable to do ATA/100 on some VIA chipsets (here is one example). Unfortunately, I didn't have a drive (or 686B Southbridge) to test it.
Now I'd give you Q3 benchmarks, but there's no point, the maximum difference I got was about .5fps.
If you're on a slightly slower system (say less than 400Mhz, and less than 128Meg Ram) then XP might not be your best option. The performance increase I had here was not equaled on a friends Celeron 500 when he installed it (his own licensed copy of course!). He noticed very little difference from 2k. I strongly suggested having at least 256Megs of RAM, anything less and you may not have the greatest eXPerience.
Compatability Testing:
Pretty much every game I tested in XP worked perfectly. Here's a few:
No Problems : Quake 3, CS, Black & White, Diablo II, Dune-Emporer, Operation Flashpoint
Codename Eagle ran perfect in multiplayer, but single player gave me a 'floating point error', but that could just be the version I have.
With respect to Apps, the only programs I had trouble with were routing programs, especially Winroute. Wingate also refused to install its Extended Network Services, no matter what I tried. There is also a bug in IE6, whereby embedded quicktime clips refuse to play. Otherwise all your common apps, ICQ, Office, Mirc, Photoshop work fine. Even Apple's Quicktime player works well. Office XP also works, as I guess you'd expect it to.
WinXP has a 'compatability wizard' which will basically emulate any other Windows system, from 95-NT4 & 2k. I would tell you how it fixed my problems running some programs in XP, but I didn't find any games or other apps that didn't work. oh well!
There's a ton more compatabilty stuff at NTCompatible.com, which is a great site if you're considering upgrading to XP.
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