Windows 98 Turns 70 In Dog Years
That’s 70 In Dog Years
This year marks the 10th anniversary of windows 98. Because of this and the fact that Vista is getting so much press, albeit negative, we decided to do an actual comparison using Windows 98, Windows XP, and Windows Vista, just to get a true idea of how far technology has progressed. The results might be surprising to some of you and were certainly an eye-opener for me.
To keep things as fair as possible, the hardware was exactly the same for all three operating systems. The system was somewhat of a compromise in order to satisfy all the requirements of operating systems separated by 10 years. I’ve listed the hardware below. Because memory suggestions always gets a lot of comment from those that think more is always better, and others that think anything over 256 MB is wasted, I used what I consider the minimum amount necessary for anything that resembles computing. I know there are some that question whether Windows 98 will function with that amount but although I’ve heard stories; I’ve never met anyone whose 98 system would not operate with 512 MB of memory.
None of the installs used firewalls, anti virus, or protection software of any sort. All update, and unnecessary background programs were disabled. This included the Vista UAC. All systems were run without themes, or clear type. All systems were run without updates and as the original install disk was shipped. All systems were set for maximum performance in the systems performance section. Drivers were supplied by the motherboard manufacturer or by the hardware manufacturer.
Test System
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In order to accommodate Windows 98, the drives used were older ATA drives. I tried several suggestions to supply drivers for the newer SATA drives but stopped short of making a “slip streamed” copy of Windows. Without that, Windows 98 would not recognize the SATA drives for the OS installation. You will see that I later came to regret that decision.
Notice in the chart below that I’ve left the drive scores out of the mix. That is because a short time after testing Windows 98 using the PC Pitstop test, the drive failed. The disk test scores reflected a failing drive and were not a reflection of the operating system. I was able to transfer/clone the install to a newer drive with similar specifications to complete the testing.
The competition consisted of a combination of CPU, memory, and 2D scores from the PC Pitstop Test, along with3DMark 2003, and 3DMark 2001. The results were then totaled and shown on the far right. This is reminiscent of some of the past benchmark competitions we’ve held in the Custom PCs, Case Mods and Over Clocking section of the forum. This combination is a good representation of how a system will perform on a daily basis.
And the winner is!
| OS | Benchmark Program |
||||||
| 3D/01 | 3D/03 | PC Pitstop Test Total |
CPU | MEM | 2/D | Group Total | |
| Win98 | 15,031 | 10247 | 1646 | 510 | 619 | 517 | 26924 |
| WinXP | 16,206 | 10736 | 1501 | 543 | 638 | 320 | 28443 |
| Vista | 11,307 | 9476 | 1295 | 542 | 585 | 168 | 22378 |
I think it’s fair to say that most people would have expected or at least hoped for the latest version of windows to dominate a competition like this. Even if there had been some time given to tweak the video settings for the Pitstop test, Vista would not have been close to Windows 98 in performance. It lagged behind its older brothers in every race. Although I included the 2D section of the PC Pitstop test in the totals, any of today’s hardware should be able to complete that portion of the test with no problem.
The competition between Windows 98 and XP was pretty tight. Not much of a gap considering the length of time between their development. Not only are the totals close, but also the scores are evenly matched across all tests.
The one thing that the benchmarks don’t show is ease of installation and operation of tasks and programs. While 98 ran the benchmarks right with XP, getting the Operating System installed with working drivers took a good amount of time. When I bought my first computer it came with Windows XP, so I was not prepared for the problems I ran into trying to use Windows 98.
Just surfing the Internet seemed too much sometimes for Windows 98 and it’s accompanying IE 5. Finding a connection and opening programs are things I expect to happen instantly. This was not the case with Windows 98. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to a person who considers himself an over clocker but it looks like speed is dependant completely on hardware. I just expected there to be a bigger difference between Windows 98 and Windows XP.
Vista, what can I say? It’s pitiful. Blame it on the need for more memory. Blame it on the background apps. Blame it on whatever suits your fancy. It doesn’t perform in benchmarks any better than it performs in ease of use.
As for Windows 98, what the heck not bad for 10 year old technology, after all that’s 70 in dog years.
Windows Vista Test Results Summary
Windows 98 Test Results Summary
Windows XP Test Results Summary
FutureMark 2001
FutureMark 2003
* Special thanks to Doug, Sandy, and Corey.
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Windows Vista is good but it can hog your CPU and Memory.’.;
“They think if we upgrade to Vista it would be SO much better and faster! Somehow they think the apps will run better on Vista, after all, it’s the latest and the greatest.”
That is _hilarious_. Back when I first “upgraded” from Windows 98 to Windows XP, I was using a 350-MHz CPU with 512 megabytes of RAM, and my system was screamingly fast. Then, I upgraded to XP, and it suddenly felt sluggish. I didn’t regain that previous feeling of speed until I went to a 2.8-GHz CPU. That is evil because XP doesn’t do anything more for me than 98 did: browse the web, play music, and check e-mail.
I’m not saying XP isn’t architecturally more sound, but so was NT. The only major thing NT was missing was Plug N Play, and I can’t believe Plug N Play requires 10 times more clock cycles considering people only change devices say 0.0001% of the time.
Windows 98 is still great to use. I am currently running 98SE with several modifications to the system. I run KernelEX to run XP only programs (FireFox 3 ect) My 98 is skined to look like XP (this dosent hurt my prefomence) I have Unoffical SP3 on it it is awsome! The setups are not to hard to preforme you can get some of these patches at http://www.msfn.org/ you can look at my blog and see what my 98 looks like. http://helpdesk98.blogspot.com/
Kurt, I have a pretty new Vista laptop, and it takes just a few seconds faster to boot than a brand new XP install. Both are fully patched, and the XP install is straight from an OEM media disc (the laptop is an Asus G2S B2, with a lot of the Asus stuff stripped away), and both have almost identical processors (e6600 in one, t7700 the laptop; laptop has 3 GB memory, XP machine has 2).
Before that, that XP install made the hard drive make lots of noise and pause for a while as the result of years of aborted profiles (going back to 2005!), so this is really based on whether you’re treating your OS right.
Anyway, one of the many little things that makes older OSes hard to bear after Vista is the newly corrected GUI support for variable size fonts. Try making text bigger in any pre-Vista OS – it’s a freakin’ nightmare. On Vista, you can do it easily; and you can make it as big as old or young eyes require. As a result, you have your big 1600×1200 (or 1920×1200 for that laptop) screen size and you can keep your vision.
That alone makes it worthwhile – but then we have features like nearly performance impact-free thumbnails, even thumbnails on folders, and a great file replace dialog that will give you all the relevant information to decide whether to replace the old copy, or rename the new copy, or skip it altogether; and you can set it to do that same action on the whole folder when you’re certain you’ve made the right choice. When it comes to the next folder it asks you again.
No doubt there’s some non-freeware method of getting even Windows98 to act like that, but this is actually integrated with the OS.
actually 20
my first pc is win98 with a 486 P90 CPU which is worth of a Dua Core of today.
I have used XP for 5 years and find it is just wonderful. Maybe I am old.
How about that! I googled the internet for “win 98 pc” and ended up here. I never expected to find a “contemporary” site.
… Come to think of it, I never tried Firefox on that machine. Anyway, the experiment was a success, everything worked fine, even the familiar reboots and crashes 
That pc ran Win2000 for a while after that.
Anyway…I googled because somebody is getting rid of his 98 machine, and he’s throwing it my way. As it has been a while, i wanted to see what kind of hardware (processor, mainboard,GPU…) I might be expecting. I don’t expect to get much, considering I’m trying (and failing) to keep up with OS’es and hardware. I assembled a brand new QuadCore to run Vista, and I’m happy. I’m getting used to it anyway. Due to circumstances, I ended up with a second, simular QuadCore and I really had to hurry to get an XP pro for it. I didn’t want to run Vista on that one.
I think the Vista PC takes about a minute, minute and a half longer to boot. In all fairness, the XP PC isn’t ‘fully loaded’ yet. I’m not running a lot of programs on it thus far. But still… you tend to notice stuff like that if you have them side by side.
Anyway…as for previous OS’es,… I remember trying to install an early Win 95 a while back on a AMD sempron. It worked, ’till I tried to connect to the internet. The things I didn’t have to do to get that working!
Anyway, my two cents… when XP showed up for the first time, it was the same thing. It needed a lot more resources, lot’s more memory, hard disk space,… it crashed on several pc’s and what have you not. And now, people a signing petitions to keep it alive. Give Vista a chance. If you turn on the “classic theme” it looks just like XP anyway. I haven’t had a single crash since I installed it in December last year.
well… if you put vista to a pc with 4gb ram it will be for sure much faster. this is the situation for windows 98, it just simply was not designed for a pc equipped with that much of ram memory and that fast processor
the test was pretty unrealistic.
you cannot make a race with a windows 98 and windows vista in a 2008 computer environment.
It’s pretty ridiculous for them to “expect” Vista to run better than 98 or XP. XP does a little better because it improved on the underlying core of the OS, but Vista is a newer OS with new features built on that same core, so it was made with the expectation that it would be running on newer hardware.
If you ran Mac OS 9 on a new Macbook, I doubt anyone would be impressed that it runs really well.
I still don’t like Vista, but they’re not really offering some shocking revelation here.
This test really isnt fair. You ran vista gimped on memory. Saying a new os that is optimized to run on current equipment loses to windows 98 is not fair. If you could have benchmarked dos, dos would have won.
I work quite a bit with vista at work and we run it decently well on older machines but the minimum ram we install is 1 gig for standard users and 2 gigs for people that use lots of diffrent or special software. The main problem on the older laptop is that the old 5400 ata mini laptop drives really choke on the indexing stuff.
I have had vista on my laptop since the RCs when it launched at first i found it kinda buggy and slow. Now since sp1 i dont think i have ever had a single problem with speed or crashing. People that complain vista is too slow on a new machine might have some problems with the machines themselves. Its true windows xp will always outperform vista in speed tests. However in most cases id say that the performance diffrence on new computers wouldnt be really noticable to standard users.
The fact that vista defragments the drive automaticaly and the more granular control we have over administrator priveledges (which prevents people from getting spyware at all) means that the vista machines in our it infrastructure maintain a very constant performance. Our XP machines would often after 6 months be full of spyware and the drives would be fragmented and they would run like mollases.
For the Home user vista is not really worth it. Most of vista’s good features are aimed directly at enterprise use. Bitlocker, Image bassed installations, UAC. This is where vista shines but to most home users all those 3 things are completely useless.
I can personally say that vista has benefited our company greatly. I did a vista deployment to a 450 users across 3 sites with 1 image. 1 image to maintain,1 image to rule them all. 2 of our 3 sites are made up of mostly french users the other is english, 2/3 sites are made up of all ibm/lenovo the last one is using half HP and half lenovo.
The idea that i can cover this kind of enterprise with 1 image is incredibly timesaving.
We did a survey after the migration on 2 key factors, Speed and functionality the overal results were over 85% satisfaction which is a big win when dealing with a product that has so much negative press.
Well anyway. Im starting to feel like a dirty dirty microsoft whore now so il just stop here.
I did a similar test to this in an Algorithms & Analysis class in college just a few months ago. We compared Windows XP, Windows Vista, and a release of Debian Linux (Linspire 5.00). The benchmark was a number of different sorts on a some-odd million number array. Interestingly, Windows XP and Linux went back and forth, but were always right in line with each other in performance…Vista? Horrible. I had to make my Excel graphs bigger so you could see the line spin off into outer space on the Y-axis for “time”.
Yes, Vista is made for modern hardware and so will use up more resources itself. That is why you should run XP for gaming and system intensive things like a server. But, of course, Micro$oft doesn’t want you to do that. In the case of gaming, they limited DirectX 10 to Vista. For businesses, Windows XP isn’t supported anymore. Their actions simply don’t line up.
So, lets see… Minimum ram for 98se is 64Mb, XP 128Mb (256Mb for SP2), and 512Mb for Vista. The majority of this “wah wah Vista sucks” is very similar to the same outcry about XP when it first came out. This is because people do not like change. Computer usage went through the roof during XP’s reign, and when given something different, people are too lazy to figure out how to use and tweak it. Yes Vista has it’s issues, but so does EVERY other OS. OSX needs 2Gb of ram to run smoothly, just like Vista. I don’t have a Mac yet, But I do have other fully functional (and great performing) systems: a 98se tower, 2 XP towers, a Vista tower, 2 Vista Laptops, and a Linux laptop. I’ve been working on computers for 20 years now (starting writing code in BASIC on an Apple IIe in fifth grade) and know that each system is best when tweaked, modified, and supplied with the proper hardware to run the system. The hardware at Vista launch was horrendously underpowered to run vista properly. Most Hardware in pre-built machines are limited to 4Gb of Memory addressing which causes problems when trying to run Vista with 4Gb of ram and a video card since they will fight for memory addresses. 4Gb is Vista’s sweet spot. What I’m really trying to say is that people need to learn how to use and tweak a system to get the best performance out of it before they start to bash it. Don’t be lazy, learn something. I’m starting to build my next Vista desktop: Intel QX6850, Asus MB, 8GB pc8500 ram, and 64bit Vista Ultimate. Not sure about the video card or HD setup yet since I’m going to try to have 4 different OS’s (64 bit XP, 64 bit Vista, Linux- probably ubuntu, and OSX AKA the hackentosh) on the machine and try for a quad boot machine. I think the test results for that box might be a bit different.
Hey man, you should of used the MINIMUM requirements for each OS as opposed to one for all; that’s like putting a WWII era car engine in a Lexus & then comparing torque. Silly
Don’t FORGET, that you have 100x times faster machine now to run VISTA, over what you may had in 1998 to run WINDOWS98, with at least 20-30x times more RAM.
Still, in 1998 WINDOW98 ran lot faster on a 1998 machine that VISTA runs now in a 2008 machine.
It’s all about HOW FAST the operation system reacts, do you have to wait AGES for programs to run or NOT.
That’s SO SIMPLE. And, you have to wait LOT MORE than you had to WAIT in 1998.
Ridiculous test. Vista got a lot faster with SP1, as did XP with SP2. And that PC is way too slow to run Vista well anyway. You’re running 2007 software on 2002 hardware and you’re surprised it chokes?
I’m running Vista at home and it’s terrific. No problems whatsoever and it’s a lot more responsive than similar-spec PCs running XP.
Could you run the test again with 1GB and 2GB of RAM? It would be interesting to see if the same performance differences exist with the larger memory.
-Bulch
make vista open source and let the community sort it out.
they know they want to!
Ohh boy That’s like putting a [deleted by admin] motor on a brand new ship.. Of Course Xp And 98 are going to fair better with 512mb… vistas a beefy, meaty, juicy OS it cant be put up Against its older brothers without meeting its system needs.
Also is this a updated vista machine? Or is it like super buggy first release of vista? Cause then your just stacking the odds in your favor. Im guessing you were using updated windows 98 and xp boxes..
Seriously whats everyone’s issue with Windows Vista? I work retail and its surprising how many people i hear rant about how they hate vista.
The big super dooper question i always ask “Have you ever used vista?”.. Of course they haven’t they hear all this crap from their friends, and who wants to spend like 700 hundred bucks on a new Computer; when they just bought their xp comp like 3 years ago? So instead of being neutral they complain that vista sucks because of uhhhh.. Incompatibility issues…. UHH That annoying allow pop up (Uac) (Which can be easy be turned off) UMM. MICRO$OFT IS EVIL 66666666
Ive been running vista since it was in beta though it was admittedly buggy i honestly have only had ONE compatibility issue, it was with star trek Legacy and the ability to play online..
This test is obviously a very cleaver troll ORR shogan is a mac user ORRRR he bought a xp machine right on the brink of that OS’s VERY NEEDED death, and wants to justify not spending another grand on new shiny Pc outfitted with THE VISTAS (What old people call it)
lololololololol
More and more it just proves the point, newer isn’t always
better. I run xp and win98se on computers and with good
hardware and 512mb ram, win98se is still very capable.
if I have to, I’ll go to linux……. maybe.
Nah, that’s (way) too little RAM for Vista to perform as it should. That said, Vista runs excellent here. Boots fast (within 30 seconds), applications, games, etc. run fine. That said, I have a total of 4 GB of RAM. And well, an operating system functions as well as it’s drivers do.
I have all three OS’s running on 4 computers, heck I even have a laptop running a Linux distro. I will be honest and say this: Vista is made to run on current hardware. When I built my new machine (not new anymore) I bought XP and it ran like a dream for a few months. Then I got a Vista upgrade and guess what – it runs much, much better than XP did on the same hardware. It loads a lot faster, it shuts down faster and it has never crashed in the 1+ years I have had Vista. XP crashed several dozen times in the couple of months I had it. Don’t get me wrong, XP runs very smoothly and fast on my 4 year old desktop and 3 year old laptop, but I would not go and put Vista on either one of them and complain that it runs slower. I wasn’t surprised when I saw the results from this run – the setup was fairly mid range about 4-5 years ago when XP was the king. That setup gave XP the advantage as well as 98, but Vista??? Never stood a chance. You might all spit at Vista, but why don’t you go out now and build a proper current system and see if XP can run faster than Vista. I think it will either tie Vista or lose – it will not be better than Vista. One thing I wanted to see is a popular Linux distro against the 3 MS OS’s. Why not do that for the next article? I would really like to see the results.
Seriously what the hell?? This test is as so unfair its unbelievable, did you really expect vista to run faster than Win 98 which I might add will be far more unstable than XP or Vista. Of course its gonna run faster, software requires better hardware over the time, you could say the same about Macs or even Linux, you won’t be running the latest copy of Ubuntu on a 486 anytime soon.
What you SHOULD be doing is comparing it to similar hardware when each came out. Besides Vista also manages RAM considerably better than any Windows version before it. RAM is so cheap now that it would be insane not to have anything less than 2GB.
Well, i have some machines here running on dos, some on variuos flavors of linux, and yes indeedy, one on win98SE, several on win2k, and several on xp. I have been running computers for well over 20 years, and fondly remember the good old statement of 640k being more than enough ever…
those were simpler times indeed.
I’ve tried vista… it’s very pretty.
But in all honesty, i get better functionality from an xp install, on comparable equipment.
Meaning a gig and a half of ram, and a 3 ghz cpu on xp, and 4 gigs of ram, and a dual core 3ghz cpu…
the xp box smokes in comparison. let alone the xp installed onto the “vista” box.
like it or not, you have to accept that vista is slower. moreover, while vista requires heavy duty hardware, xp will run on that hardware a lot quicker.
why would i go out of my way to choose a slower alternative for my hardware?
seriously. if you had to choose between an engine which would get you places faster, on less fuel… wouldn’t you? or would you choose the slower, and mroe cumbersome alternative in the same car?
Do a large percentage of people out there really expect that new software will be faster than older software? What a funny thing to think. The truth is exactly the opposite and it’s not a screw up or conspiracy theory, I’m a programmer myself. Old software was designed for and developed on old machines. If a function or feature seemed undesirably slow it got additional time spent on it. You would either optimize it as written checking for speed improvements or approach the problem in a completely different way. Fast forward ten years and assign someone to do the same task on a newer, faster computer and hey what do you know the feature seems fast enough without any additional time spent making it more efficient. This should be obvious for anyone who has been using the same software for many years. Photoshop 5 ran great on my machine in 1999. Today CS3 runs great on my modern machine. Try to run CS3 on the 1999 machine (i’ve done this) and you’ll want to slit your wrists. The sad thing is I don’t really use any of the new features… might as well switch back to version 5 and go at light speed.
Doesn’t surprise me that the Vista machine got the worst score. Just like many other posters have stated…. Vista Requires MUCH more memory than 98 or even XP.
I do miss the days of win 98… Though i think my most stable systems had either Debian or WinXP on them.
It is unfair to test Win98, XP and Vista on the same hardware for the following reasons:
1) You are running Win98 (and to a lesser extent XP) on hardware that would have been top-end, expensive hardware during the time those operating systems were released.
2) You are running Vista on a PC that doesn’t come close to meeting its (advertised) minimum requirements.
3) Vista has features and uses that were not included (or needed) in Win98, which is why the OS is ‘slower’. The OS is actually doing a lot more work in the background, such as supporting advanced graphics cards, different storage types, etc. XP originally didn’t even support USB 2.0, for example.
How about doing one of the following:
1) Test each OS on a machine that meets its minimum requirements
2) Test each OS on a typical machine of a mid-price level from the year that OS was released. Sure Vista needs 1GB RAM and a fast processor, but these are available on sub-$500 PCs these days.
I now run Vista exclusively because its performance is comparable to XP on the same hardware and Vista is far more useable (after a brief learning curve). I can do several things in Vista with less mouse clicks than with XP. I recently did fresh installs in the same day of both XP and Vista and the XP install was a total pain compared to Vista. Vista is also more stable than XP and less prone to security risk. My Vista PCs have only ever crashed due to bad hardware drivers. When I ran XP I remember it used to crash quite regularly. Win98 crashed a lot.
And people keep making the same argument of ‘why should I give Microsoft more money when what I have is good enough?’, which is a moot point. Nobody is forcing you to upgrade, and Microsoft have gone out of their way to recommend that Vista only be installed on modern hardware.
My first PC didn’t even meet the requirements to run Win 3.1, so does that prove that MS-DOS is better than all versions of Windows? No, because with DOS I can’t do a fraction of the things I do on my PC today, nor is it as user friendly.
I wonder how well Windows 2000 and ME would fair in these tests? I realize that ME was the bastard child that no one wanted, (kinda like vista) but Windows 2000 runs almost everything that XP does (same core) and did it with a lot less overhead.
I still use Win2k for one of my virtual machines. runs my fax program like a dream and hardly takes any space.
Anyone for going back even further and trying win 95 or 3.1?
Whats the point in this? you’re surprised that Vista doesn’t perform well on that old hardware with 512mb of ram and that Windows 98 screams along on it?
Sorry but no sh*t sherlock, one is an old DOS based operating system while the other is the latest NT incarnation with greater hardware requirements.
Vista is just fine, for some reason (likely the very same crowd that moaned upon the release of XP and claimed how superior 2000 was) some people just don’t seem to want to give it a fair chance. Yes graphics drivers (nothing to do with Microsoft) need a chance to mature but to suggest it is somehow inferior to XP and 98 on such weak grounds as this test is dumb.
OMG Dude, Windows 98 was DA BOMB! I miss that ole bird.
[deleted by administrator]
Surely it’s not fair to compare Vista vs Windows 98 on a machine with just 512MB of RAM. Vista requires 2GB to perform at it’s optimum level, and Windows 98 needs about 256MB.
Sometimes like for like just isn’t a fair test.
I strongly agree with those running XP. I ran Vista on my custom rig Epox Motherboard and AMD Athlon-64bit Processor with 512 cache and it ran crappy. XP It runs extremly well! I see they havent worked out all of the bugs out of vista. Ill stick with XP