[GlobalExplorer]

Originally Posted by bigboywooly

Interesting find GE
:hmm:
May have to have a dual boot
I dont normally access the net while playing

I recommend everyone to get an exchangeable hard disk mount, and buy 2-3 cheap hd's in the range of 80GB. It's not that much of an investment, but combined with well planned imaging of system partitions (see Acronis, etc) it will help you overcome all probs with deterioting OS's, conflicting configuration demands, or uninstalling things.

Originally Posted by Gizzmoe

How much better? The XP SP2 you tested it with, was it a fresh installation? Did you use the same video driver version?

How much better .. I would say enough to stay clear of SP2 for gaming.

I always use fresh installations as I install my OS from an image file every couple of weeks.

Let me say again that everyone must use SP2 as soon as he/she goes to the internet. Let me also say that results may vary, but on my machine, the results are definitely visible.

To clarify, SP2 is not causing fps to drop per se, but it is causing obvious stuttering with hardware intense games. That might be because of the additional processes running in the background, security, hard disk access, etc.

Of course no one should uninstal it rashly, as this is not a solution for everything.

I was just posting an observation I made over the last 2 years, and I would like to discuss what others have experienced.