winME vs. winXP

[R2D2]

I have a P4 - 1.7Ghz, 512 RDRAM computer, and I use it intensively for video processing (DVD2SVCD, mainly, and other more easy stuff). My SVCD encodes are made with CCE 2.50, NTSC to PAL, CBR=2500, Audio=224 @ 48000, Bicubic Resize and no other filters, subtiltles on. One may say that this should be the most speedy settings combination for CCE.

Initially, I clean installed WinXP on it, but, due to the video hardware I have - DxR3, from Creative, and Dazzle DVC2 -, I was forced to re-format & go back to WinMe. This was, mainly, because DxR3 was behaving bad -probably, the driver was not too good, even the one from Sigma Design, maybe, also, because of WinXP. From then, on, my machine worked fine, the only setback is that it is not very speedy, meaning that my top speed for a CCE encode does not go beyond 0.8.

Recently, WinXP came up with SP1, and people around say that this is a major improvement. Since I know that my FAT32 & WinME is not the winning combination compared to WinXP & NTFS, I am planning to migrate to WinXP - the drivers may behave bad, since October 2001 they are still Beta.

My questions are for those who migrated from WinME & FAT32 to WinXP & NTFS: what was the speed gain - if any- after this change, and what might be the pro's & con's for such move.

Thanks

[markrb]

I have WinXp and choose to remain with Fat32 for several reasons, not the least of which is that I can get to my files in Dos if need be. Plus I run a Win98 partition that I sometimes, but rarely, use.

I did try NTFS and I saw no real performance increase. We are mostly dealing with streaming files and there isn't much to be gained. If you were running something that had a little more random access I would say NTFS is the way to go, but with video and audio once it's found a point it just reads from there like a train on the track.

WinXP is so far superior to WinME that it isn't even funny how one company can make such different pieces of software.

However don't upgrade do a clean install. An upgrade can bring over bad drivers and tons of clutter you don't need. Bite the bullet and do it right.

Mark

[hoozdapimp]

mark said it perfectly...i would also like to say that you probably wont see a speed gain, the stability wise XP is far superior.

[UltimateDBZ]

Don't even think about using ME. Ever. If for some odd reason you decide not to use XP, then use 2000 or even 98. But do NOT use ME. It's an utter joke, Microsoft even admitted it to be a joke of an OS.