2000 Pro or XP Pro?

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NukleoN wrote on 4/13/2003, 1:10 AM
For me, 512 MB isn't nearly enough memory. My 3D work alone (which is how I generate some video clips) eats up nearly a gig. Also, you can make longer previews in Vegas with more memory, and of course, it's generally good to havea lot of memory, isn't it? I consider a gig to be a minimum for serious 3D work, and it cannot hurt for video editing either. Also, if you run a dual processor system, you just can't use Win98, period. My machine has been dual processor for years..though my next system will be a single, possibly a hyperthreaded system but I wouldn't use Win98 for anything if I had WinXP or Win2K to choose from.
riredale wrote on 4/13/2003, 4:15 AM
NukleoN:
You might be right. I'm sure there are programs out there that soak up every last bit of RAM available. All I'm saying is that, in my experience, the little "RAMpage" monitor sitting in my system tray shows that most programs actually use very little memory. My XPpro laptop typically shows 100MB out of 256MB available most of the time, and most renders don't drive it down to 0. And that's for a PC with just 256MB of memory!

The only time I max out the 512MB installed on my desktop are when I run multiple instances of Vegas.

Memory is cheap, but perhaps users might first install a monitor utility like RAMpage to see if they really need more.
Jimco wrote on 4/13/2003, 9:26 AM
This kind of thing really cracks me up! All these people who say that they're going to move to Linux, and yet they're power users of software that runs on . . . Windows! I see the same thing in game forums. Guys who are running games that rely on DirectX 9.0 and they say "my next OS is going to be Linux!"

The one thing people forget is that their Windows programs don't run on Linux! What's the use of an OS if you can't run the software you need on it.

Perhaps a better question is this: If Windows XP is so stable and provides all the features you need and more, plus support for all of your hardware without a hitch, why would you switch to another OS?

Weird. :)

Jim
Jimco wrote on 4/13/2003, 9:30 AM
Just remember that the OS won't use 100% of physical RAM before it starts swapping out major portions of memory space. You are generally going to get much better performance if you use more memory. Reading and writing to RAM is exponentially faster than swapping.

I have 512MB of RAM on both of my machines and find performance to be sufficient most of the time, but if I run a Perfmon counter on swapped memory, it's easy to see that I'm losing a bit of performance when using Vegas.

Jim
craftech wrote on 4/13/2003, 5:05 PM
The only real advantage I see to running XP or 2000 over W98SE is that you can create one huge file if you like. After that the systems differ mainly in networking capability.
On the other hand, although Windows XP utilizes memory better than W98, it requires more to begin with.
In my opinion, one of the best things you can do is to build or have a computer strictly for video editing. In other words.....a dedicated computer. I don't even have printer drivers on mine. It is designed stricktly to run Vegas and DVDA if I ever decide that it will beat DVD Video Factory for effectiveness. No Palm pilots, Premiere, Photoshop, not even Office.
When I run Vegas I have only two other things running..Systray and Explorer. That's it! No crashes either.
System resources stay steadily at 85-90%. Go figure.

John
PS: Where the heck is Lamont_Dennis anyway?