ultimate workstation spec for Win2k Pro???

[PocklingtonDan]

I'm completely dissatsifed with the current upgrade path to vista and the general windows path of adding flashy3D nonsense and bloated code that eats away at progress in PC performance. I've been experimenting with Win XP, Win 2k, Win Vista, Ubuntu Linux, Fedora Linux, Suse Linux and Mandriva linux and I've decided to standardise my PCs at home on Windows 2000 Professional because it seems to be the best current balance for performance computing - licences can be bought very cheaply indeed, it has almost all the features of WinXP (certainly all I need) and seems to run several times faster on equivalent hardware.

I've already got win2k running on my fileserver at home, have just formatted my work laptop with a win2k build and installed win2k on my home workstation (main PC used). The workstation I use at home is an old Compaq W6000 with twin Xeon 2.0ghz and 2gb of funny old RDRAM.

Given the workstation is due for replacement, what is the best PC to replace it with to give maximum performance but without features/cores etc that will simply lie unused on win2k??? AFAIK, win2k pro "sort of" supports hyperthreading and can only use a max of two processors (physical or logical I'm not sure). Is this correct?

Given the limitations of win 2k pro (esp regards today's multi-core processors), what am I best going for in a new workstation??? Twin single-core chips at the highest clock speed available? A single dual-core chip at the highest clock speed available? Given the option of perhaps switching to a windows 2000 server OS install rather than win2k pro, what are the specs machine to look for then? Really can't seem to find a clear answer as to whether a top-spec quad-core desktop/workstation of the moment would be utilised by win 2k pro or win 2k server...

Anyone help me out here?

Cheers

Dan

 

[clocka]

i would use xp sp2 if i was you mate. get yourself a core2duo, very fast indeed! are you going to be overclocking it?

 

[Andric]

win2003 server for windows server. far far better server than 2k and xp isnt server software. If not dependent upon windows then consider linux fro file server and samba for domain controller etc.

use xp sp2 or wait a couple months for vista sp1 and get vista business edition for the client software - vista is far beter optimised for multiple cores and security is far better.

 

[PocklingtonDan]

I think you're both missing the point of my question a little - on my hardware currently windows XP runs significantly slower and so I have dropped back to where I was in 1999 - ie windows 2000 - and gained extra performance with no loss of features (that I use). Its not a case of should I stick with win2k pro, its a case of i am sticking with win2k pro and what hardware can make the best use of this? I've lost interest in continuing with the upgrade path until given good reason to do so. win2k pro sp4 is incredible stable and secure and I can see no reason to put win 2003 server on my fileserver or win vista/xp on my workstation. Win2k is the best current compromise between features I can't do without (win NT 4 doesn't cut it any longer) and performance pain i can do without (XP and vista seem bloated and to offer little extra benefit).

My question is simply, given this, and given that my workstation is due an upgrade, what hardware, esp. CPU combination, would make the best use of win 2k pro? As I say, it has dual xeon 2.0ghz but these are the old chips from the P4 era, and the RDRAM is dated. I'm looking to replace or refresh it with something, but still retain win2k pro on it - with this limitation in mind I just want ideas for what is the best hardware it is worth giving it - ie since win 2k pro cannot i believe support 4 cores, i need essentially a high-ghz two-wingle-core or dual-single-core X86-compatible CPU setup. What's my best bet for performance with win 2k pro on this basis? Would win2k make more use or two physical processors than a single dualcore processor or not? What's the highest performance parts I can get on a two-processor (physical or logical) limitation?

Hope this clarifies what info I'm after.

Cheers

Dan

 

[clocka]

first of all 2000 sp4 isnt secure, there will be no further service packs for it, xp sp2 is much more secure and vista more secure than that. 2000 may use less resources but with a new computer it wont matter, an e6750 @ 4ghz will be blazingly fast when you run xp, vista, 2000 or 95 on it.

just by a core2 cpu, they are much faster than any others for a nice price even if you wont be using both cores.

if you are not going to overclock get the e6850, its 3.0ghz core 2 duo 1333fsb, run that on a gigabyte ds3r p35 board with 2gb ddr2 ram and it will be extremely quick.

 

[mattyrigby00]

windows 2k pro has a limit of 2 cores because it cant tell the difference between a processor and a multi core processor because not even hyperthreading, nevermind multi core processors where even planned at the time, windows xp detects hyperthreading/multi cores so its 1 socket on home, 2 sockets on pro... its a waste to get windows 2000 now, it cant even use the quad core processors. on a new computer the extra resources xp and vista use wont even be noticable and it might even be faster. just go for xp or vista, 2000 is out of date. the best performance for windows 2000 would be a dual core overclocked.

 

[clocka]

exactly, get xp sp2 and with dual core you can have several programs running simultaneously without affecting each other much, its unlikely you will use the same programs for 5yrs, you will likely get newer versions of appz that will make use of 2 cores. why not just use linux?? use little resources and will use 2 cores.

 

[Andric]

well win2k pro is comming up to the end of its support life time. iirc its limited to 2 processors/cores and should be ok on core duo but its no longer being updated so it will die a natural death sooner than later. I think its can manage SATA ok though only via patches/drivers so you may have problems installing it onto a sata system especially if in raid configurations. Otherwise you should be ok if the manufacturers supply drivers for w2k. But without support you coudl well get into trouble with no life line.

Clients I'd say same as server about win2k - be careful of things too new and you could have a lot of trouble with sata and maybe motherboard drivers. Vid drivers could also be problematic soon if not already.

also I think there must be some problems with your set up for xp sp2 to be slower on the clients. on the server likely enough - but xp is definitly not server software. also bloat can be limited a lot by a custom install but also modern memory management pre-allocates a lot - the bloat isnt as bloated as it seems from the page files. there are though a ton of bad drivers and software and especially poor virus scanners/firewalls many of which are usless as well as processor/memory hogs.

 

[clocka]

yeah, download nlite and remove some of the unneeded things in xp and create a new .iso to burn, will use a lot less resources. but with a core2duo xp will fly so just wont matter at all!

 

[Fr0dders]

to be honest Windows 2000 is past it

i cant see any reason to suggest why windows 2000 would be faster than a properly setup XP

i suggest any perceived improvement is exactly that, perceived. Care to post some benchmarks to establish this as fact and not just "Im fed up with microsoft" ?

actually take a rain check on that, think what you like, but you'll honestly be much better off on XP than 2000.

 

[Sarduk]

XP SP2 is by far the most stable Windows operating system I have ever run - not to mention the fastest. It is robust and simply very good; I haven't had any hardware that has not worked out of the box, even old stuff.

That said, I am currently on Vista x64 which has given me no stability issues as of yet. I'd have preferred to stay with XP, but need to address more than 4GB of RAM so I needed some sort of x64 OS - I reasoned that rebuying XP (64bit) was a waste of money so I took the plunge

 

[DavidB]

If you really must stick with windows 2k, then im not sure how well people could spec you a decent system.

Its an oddity when the operating system itself is the bottleneck, and i personally think your comparison of operating systems (on dated hardware) isnt a true representation of how they would compare on a modern system.

 

[PocklingtonDan]

Thank you for all the replies, but there seems to be a little misinformation about and most people still aren't answering the question posed.

first of all 2000 sp4 isnt secure

I'm not sure what you're basing that on but I'm not sure what I can say other than that you're wrong. There were some posted vulnerabilities after the codebase was leaked but you're talking several years and hundreds of patches since. I'm guessing that if vista's code was leaked you'd see similar vista-specific vulnerabilities being uncovered. If anything the win2k code leak has made the operating system MORE secure than any since, since the code is out there and what vulnerabilities there were to discver have been discovered and patched. In what sense in Win2k less secure? Given I run my home network through a hardware firewall and don't need the useless winXP software firewall etc etc, what vulnerabilities are there with win2k exactly?

2000 may use less resources but with a new computer it wont matter

It *does* use less resources, not may, it is unquestionable fact. It can run faster on the same hardware and with a smaller memory footprint. And with a new computer it does of course still matter, it just matters less - but that's my point - its infuriating to have to buy faster and faster hardware because larger and larger chunks are being eaten up by OS bloat.

if you are not going to overclock get the e6850, its 3.0ghz core 2 duo 1333fsb, run that on a gigabyte ds3r p35 board with 2gb ddr2 ram and it will be extremely quick.

A proper answer at last. Overclocking is an option - haven't overclocked a chip since back with my amd k2 years ago but not against it in principle. Is the above the fastest 2-(logical or physical) processor system I can sensibly get?

why not just use linux??

For the (client) workstation and laptop several reasons - my work laptop has to have windows (or minimum dual boot, and that's messy and twice the hassle) because of windows-specific apps I have to use that don't run well enough in wine. Linux is not an option for the clients. For the server, I tried it with several distributions, wasn't happy with it, end of story.

I think its can manage SATA ok though only via patches/drivers so you may have problems installing it onto a sata system especially if in raid configurations..

That might be an issue - server runs SCSI and old workstation runs SCSI too but I wouldn't want to cripple the new workstation with IDE or spend bucks on SCSI. I will look into this problem

also I think there must be some problems with your set up for xp sp2 to be slower on the clients..

How do you figure that? I've installed both and it is - windows 2k simply has lower demands on the hardware and runs faster - it uses less CPU, less memory, is more responsive.

also bloat can be limited a lot by a custom install but also modern memory management pre-allocates a lot - the bloat isnt as bloated as it seems from the page files. there are though a ton of bad drivers and software and especially poor virus scanners/firewalls many of which are usless as well as processor/memory hogs.

Whatever the reason is is a little irrelevant and it seems unecessary to spend a lot of time customising to run windows XP like windows 2000 already runs.

i suggest any perceived improvement is exactly that, perceived. Care to post some benchmarks to establish this as fact and not just "Im fed up with microsoft" ?

Certainly if you can tell me of a benchmark suite that benchmarks OS-specific tasks. Otherwise, Sandra shows win2k has greater filesystem throughput (NTFS on both OSes) but otherwise similar results on both. In terms of responsiveness to user input in the OS however win2k is streets ahead, several apps launch far more quickly, especially where an earlier version of the software is available on win2k than the winXP equivalent.

I didn't realise quite so many people would be up in arms over the issue of using win2k rather than answering the question. In the consumer world everyone runs out and buys the newest OS, but at work we still use plenty of win2k machines and it seems to be working for me at home too without any downsides and the advantage of increased performance. Can we limit ourselves to just answering the question posed now please?

 

[allllec]

All we're saying is you could put £1,000,000 into hardware for win2k. but its worth bugger all if your hacked to ribbons / limited by the OS.

Now to be fair you think you know what your on about so im sure you can spec yourself a rig and i suspect you just made this thread to get a reaction however if you want a spec that baddly then lets get started. whats your budget, how much space you need? and will you be gaming, just the base unit? or monitor inc?

ta

alec

 

[allllec]

Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail

Solid 4mb cache chip. only 2 cores but thats as much as your gonna get

Intel DP965LT 965 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - Retail

Solid intel own brand board. nothing special but im guessing for a "worksation" you want stability over anything.

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC)

800mhz Ram seems a little overkill but its so cheap i figure why not, 2gb becuase x86 o/s you cant utilise all 4gb

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 2400 PRO SILENT 256MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (11109-01-20R)

Silent, does the job

Corsair HX 520W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CMPSU-520HXUK)

Solid. Relaible. Quite.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80GB ST380815AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB ST3500630AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM

one for windows other for data. solid drives. although tbh i woulda put western digital se16's but i forgot

Akasa AK-ZEN-01-BK Zen Black Case - No PSU

A case

NEC AD7170S Serial ATA 18x18 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM

A cd/dvd-rw


nobody will agree with that spec, but for a solid relaible computer using a x86 os such as 2k id say it'll do the business, and to be fair is probably over kill.


whops forgot

Total : £513.31

 

[ih8modem]

2nd hand P4

I'd suggest not spending a great deal, get a 2nd hand P4 with 2GB of RAM and a decent size HDD. Win2k will fly on that.

Heck I remember running Win2k on a Pentium 1. It was not supposed to work, but it did, albeit very very slowly.