whats the best gaming os out there and what tweaks do you use to optimize

i would have to say XP is a good OS... what i think would be awesome if it was possible... o create a a startup option (F8).. such as Safe Mode... Safe mode with networking... yada yada... but have an option for "Gaming Mode" which doesnt load most of your startup options, doesnt load unneeded services... etc etc..... and whatever else possible to temporarily adjust for maximum gaming performance.... or a "Restart in Gaming Mode" option from XP Shutdown dialog... ive seen people talk about creating 57 meg xp installs for gaming... but... myself.. i NEED xp and all those features most of the time.. i am not a big gamer... so i usually just MSConfig - and disable all the garbage and reboot...

easy: XP. why? Drivers.

right now xp is hogging tons of memory
so i been using a .cmd file to kill services before the game starts helps abit but need more power
i might just put more memory
512 isnt much anymore so ill put 1 gig or so

1gig is the recommended to get, so go for it

Agree with ripken. Anything below 1 gig is not worth it at all. Hell I am thinking of upgrading to 2 gigs. It is so much better to not have the game stutter because the hard drive is thrasthing trying to load up this and that when with > 1 gig of memory everything can be loaded up even for BF2.

suryad, your thinking? dont think, do it! i love 2 gigs of ram so much.

ok ill buy another stick of 512
my system right now is:
giga-byte kt400
xp 2600+ barton core
nvidia 5200 128meg i know a worthless card but it was free
going to overclock it and i put a good heavy duty fan to do it
my other video card was 7500 all in wonder 64meg but burn up bec of the mobo
sound blaster live 5.1
17 inch kds lcd
160 gig 8m 7200 drive

im going to save and build a amd fx60 dualcore system with raid0 and 1 or 2 gig mem
going to be about 2k to 3k wholesale by the time i build it

currently id have to say microwinx!
(man being a devloper ROCKS)
its a patch over winxp btw,
http://www.msfn.org/board/-t55003.html

I use a program called "Game Xp" it'll disable everything that i don't need such has windows theme, and alot of other useless servieces that ain't needed to run games and it can be download here:

http://www.theorica.net/gamexp.htm

XP for sure...and defo MIN 1 gig, i wanna go for 2 gigs now...

Go for 4GB of ram, trust me, you'll notice the difference, lol !!

and no... i'm not running windows, haha... i run fedora core 4, but i can still run games mainly call of duty, battlefield 2 and unreal tournament 2004

the only thing with 4 gigs is.....


it costs a hell of a lot! lol

well most almost all ppl say that 4gigs is just a waste and i agree. i bought 2x1 sticks so that if for some reason i ever need to upgrade to 4gigs, then i can. who knows what vista will bring, it could use a bunch of ram and you wont have enough for your games. but right now for XP 2 gigs is pretty much the max that you should have.

but undeadsoldier has fedora core 4 so i have no clue how it is on that

Someone on Gentoo Linux discovered that instead of loading up a desktop environment, you could do a little hacking and get UT2004 to load as your DE. No extra services; just the drivers and UT.

i been thinking of using linux but im not that good to get games installed on it excpet using winex for gaming but dont want to send for it